Hot summer of war games in Asia-Pacific

As Chinese and Russian warships wrapped up joint naval exercises in Japan's backyard on Sunday, Australia was hosting the navies of 13 countries who will spend two weeks conducting air and ground combat drills.. A day earlier, North Korea fired several cruise missiles into the sea in protest of the first visit since the 1980s by a US nuclear submarine to neighboring South Korea..

In the skies over the weekend, Beijing took out 37 jets for a ride that crossed Taiwan's air defense identification zone.. A pressure maneuver on the self-governing island that this Monday began its biggest military exercises that simulate a defense against a future attack by the Chinese army.

In addition to the shock of extreme weather, with a voracious heat wave that has been added in recent days torrential rains that have left heavy floods and landslides, in the Asia-Pacific region it is being a very hot summer in terms of war games.

Beijing and Moscow intensify their military cooperation. The same is done by the tripartite of allied democracies that make up Washington, Tokyo and Seoul, with the latter two leading a historic rearmament this year.. In Canberra they are also willing to get muscle in the face of the strengthening of China in the region. And the ever-unpredictable Pyongyang continues to grab headlines with its ongoing missile tests..

Let's start with the Kim Jong-un regime. In the diplomatic field, the focus is on the fate of Travis King, the American soldier who broke into the fortified North Korean border last week.. On Monday, the deputy commander of the UN Command, Lt. Gen. Andrew Harrison, said talks with Pyongyang had begun “through the mechanism of the armistice agreement,” referring to the agreement that ended Korean War hostilities in 1953.

Some experts argue that the North could use King as a bargaining chip to obtain certain concessions from Washington, such as reducing US military activities with South Korea.. In Pyongyang, it was not funny that the nuclear submarine USS Kentucky parked a few days ago in the South Korean port city of Busan.. His response was to fire two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea last Wednesday and several cruise missiles on Saturday..

While Kim played with his rockets, nearby in the Sea of Japan, Russia and China had deployed destroyers, frigates, helicopters and J-16 fighters for their latest joint military drills.. Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu told Russian Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov that China hoped defense ties between the two countries would “reach a new level.”.

These exercises are especially alarming in Japan, which has territorial disputes with both Beijing and Moscow.. There are the Kuril Islands, an archipelago under Russian rule but that Tokyo, which calls them Northern Territories, claims a sovereignty that it lost after World War II. The Japanese country also has another open territorial front with China on the rocky and uninhabited Senkaku Islands, 1,900 kilometers southwest of Tokyo.. They are under Japanese rule, although Beijing, which named them the Diaoyu Islands years ago, also claims them as its own.

In the midst of the exercises by China and Russia, without leaving the Pacific, the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force launched a surface-to-surface missile off the east coast of Australia in the framework of unprecedented military exercises that Canberra is hosting these days and in which the US, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Fiji, Indonesia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Tonga are also participating..

Almost all of these countries share frictions – territorial, diplomatic or trade disputes – with China and are especially concerned by rising tensions around Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing considers a breakaway province.

In Taipei they have jumped on the regional war games bandwagon this week with their annual military exercises, the Han Kuang, which will last until next Saturday. These include drills to defend the island's main international airport from attack, halt amphibious landings and ensure shipping lanes remain open if the Chinese military decides to blockade Taiwan as it did briefly last year in response to a provocative visit by then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.