Japan, France and the United States completed their first joint military drill on Monday, during which a French warship passed through the Taiwan Strait amid escalating tensions in the area.

The week-long joint exercise, named “ARC21”, was kicked off last Tuesday at a base near the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, whose territorial sovereignty is claimed by both Beijing and Tokyo.

Hundreds of troops from the three countries conducted urban warfare drills, followed by amphibious operation exercises under a scenario of defending a remote island from an enemy invasion. They were also joined by an Australian naval ship.

“The drill is no doubt a deterrent to China’s increasingly aggressive behavior in the region,” Takashi Kawakami, head of the Institute of World Studies at Takushoku University, told AFP. “In the long term, European commitment in the Indo-Pacific could lead to closer ties between Japan and NATO, something former prime minister Shinzo Abe advocated,” he added.

Akitoshi Miyashita, an international relations professor at Tokyo’s Sophia University, expected to see greater involvement of European countries in the region, as part of their response to China’s increasingly provocative actions.

Admiral Pierre Vandier, the Chief of Staff of the French Navy, said he hoped the drills would enhance France’s presence in the region during his visit to Japan in November 2020. “This is a message aimed at China. This is a message about multilateral partnerships and the freedom of passage,” Vandier said.

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