Japan begins first joint military drill with U.S., France

Awesome, surely the ccp can see the support others have in wanting to keep the area free of the ccp control and keep it open for freedom of ocean trade and vessel movement.

Plus the islands and territories in this vicinity do not belong to the ccp that is why many countries are showing support to the nations in this area.

Not that far as the aircraft carrier sails or the ballistic missile flies from the first island chain to the French Pacific possessions of Tahiti and New Caledonia. Best to keep Chinese forces penned up inside the first island chain.

Oooops, pardon my french!!!

CCP must be having a really bad case of diarrhea right now!!!

Great to see the French following the Americans! In a sad note, I am not for war however it looks like we are going in that direction. It's much better if it can be avoided. However, the Dragon seems to keep pushing for it.

The message is, China go home. The South China sea, the East China sea and the Indo-Pacific are not yours. They are international waters. Everyone can sail through them but nobody can claim ownership of them so take your man made islands and go home.

Japan should be trying a more negotiable route, it's too close to home to proda sleeping dragon

You do not negotiate with a thief. You take action to stop them doing it again.

China military is not the biggest threat rather than a diversion, it is the economy and technology overtake.

Due to the global Pandemic, we all focused on the lock down, crisis, money stimulus when China planned this for years .. Dollar printing, fake currency etc with them sending few ships around Taiwan and South China sea. Wake up! there are other items China is taking over that goes beyond the military. Western corporate invested Trillion of $ and big market aspiration feeding their Communist Government for the world supremacy on technology and economy (gold and resource in their reserve) ... they took us off guard from the back.

France, US, miles away from China. Now let's look at Japan. Japan should be trying a more negotiable route, it's too close to home to proda sleeping dragon

Of course! That worked out so well for the Czechs. Peace in our time.

I hope the democratic nations including Japan learned the lesson that appeasing an aggressive dictator does quite the opposite of guaranteeing peace. It only whets their appetite for more conquest. Only armed deterrence, a military force large and well trained enough to make your adversary doubt their ability to prevail against that force combined with the threat to use it if attacked will maintain the peace. While a large military costs a lot of money, the expense is a fraction of the cost of a war and is ultimately a bargain for everyone.

France, US, miles away from China.

No, not true. Have you ever heard of Guam, Tahiti, New Caledonia or Wake? Both France and the US have sovereign territory in the Pacific within range of Chinese weapons and the PLAN, if not stopped, could attack and do severe damage to all of these. Even the Hawaiian Islands could be subject to attack from Chinese carrier based airpower in the not very distant future. They have a big deck, US style, aircraft carrier under construction in Shanghai with at least one more to follow and plenty of high quality destroyers and frigates to protect those aircraft carriers.