The US and Japan should set up new military headquarters for missions to defend Okinawa and other islands as part of a broad revamp of their alliance, according to a group of top foreign policy experts from both countries.
Japanese officers should be embedded with a US task force headquarters for “First Island Chain missions” — the name strategists give to the string of islands running south-west from Japan’s mainland — with Japan setting up a similar command on the same base.
Such a headquarters could further embroil the US with the disputed Senkaku Islands, a chain in the East China Sea controlled by Japan but claimed by China as the Diaoyu, where there are regular stand-offs between ships and aircraft from the two Asian countries.