Joint military exercises risk escalating regional tensions, experts say

The Republic of Korea, the United States and Japan held joint military exercises this week as the three countries deepen trilateral security cooperation in the region. Experts said the exercises could heighten regional tensions by increasing the risk of miscalculations and conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

The three nations held their annual Freedom Edge exercise from Monday to Friday in international waters southeast and south of Jeju Island, ROK's Joint Chiefs of Staff, or JCS, said.

Major naval and air assets from the three countries took part in the drills, covering maritime, air and cyber domains. The three sides also jointly operated an exercise control group, the JCS said.

The JCS described the Freedom Edge as an annual defensive exercise aimed at strengthening deterrence and response capabilities against the "nuclear and missile threat" from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and safeguarding regional peace and stability.

Kim Song-gi, the DPRK defense minister, warned that his country will take strong countermeasures if the US and its allies attempt to provoke a new military confrontation, the official Korean Central News Agency reported on Monday.

Kim also accused the US military of planning to stage Orient Shield, the largest-ever joint military drill with Japan and Australia, which kicked off on Tuesday and will run through Sept 24.

Noting "the US-Japan-ROK tripartite military cooperation system is being transformed into a dangerous offensive entity", Kim stressed that the US-led war demonstrations are being staged one after another and pushing instability on the Korean Peninsula and beyond the region to the limit.

The DPRK military official condemned what he called "the reckless military moves of the US and its satellite countries to create a serious military confrontation and possibility of conflict on the Korean Peninsula", and sounded a note of warning against the consequences to be entailed by them.

The DPRK, if necessary, will "respond to the enemies' moves with more powerful and resolute action practice", Kim added in the statement.

Chen Hong, director of East China Normal University's Asia Pacific Studies Center in Shanghai, said that the greatest risk of institutionalizing military cooperation among the US, Japan and the ROK is that it could further shift the security architecture in Northeast Asia away from its traditional bilateral alliance framework toward a more bloc-based structure.

"Since 2023, Freedom Edge has evolved into an annual trilateral military exercise. The more the US, Japan, and the ROK emphasize joint deterrence, the greater the incentive for the DPRK to strengthen its own military preparedness. This dynamic has created a classic security dilemma, in which measures taken by one side to enhance its security are perceived by the other as a threat, prompting a reciprocal buildup," he said.

At present, these military exercises have clearly gone beyond simply countering the DPRK, Chen noted.

"Once mechanisms for real-time intelligence sharing, air and missile defense, air-sea coordination, cyber operations and maritime interception are established, they will no longer be limited to addressing specific military actions from the DPRK, but could instead serve as the foundation for a trilateral joint operations system with broader regional applicability," he said.

What the US truly values is gradually "linking" its bilateral alliances with Japan and the ROK "horizontally", so that they are capable of addressing so-called regional threats, Chen added.

The US, Japan, and the ROK are forming a "quasi-trilateral alliance", seeking military integration and pushing regional security mechanisms further toward bloc-based and group-based structures, said Liu Shuliang, an associate researcher at the Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences.

"If this trend continues unchecked, it will inevitably exacerbate tensions in the security environment of Northeast Asia, heighten security concerns among neighboring countries, fuel a regional arms race, increase the risk of miscalculation, and push the region into a spiral of security dilemmas," he said.

Experts noted that the absence of US aircraft carriers from the joint exercise reflects the practical pressures Washington currently faces in allocating its military resources around the world.

Although aircraft carriers were absent, the trilateral exercises continued to expand in areas such as information sharing, air defense and multidomain coordination, indicating that the US is nonetheless intensifying military pressure on the Korean Peninsula, Chen said.

He added that the greatest danger on the Korean Peninsula is not that any party genuinely seeks to launch an immediate war, but that, in a highly militarized environment with severely limited channels of communication, a single miscalculation could trigger a chain of escalation that spirals beyond anyone's control.

"If the US, Japan and the ROK genuinely wish to de-escalate tensions on the Korean Peninsula, they need to take rational and feasible measures," Liu said.

Agencies contributed to this story.

liujianqiao@chinadaily.com.cn