The top U.S. military officer told American troops based in Japan on Thursday that “the best way to avoid war is to prepare for it.”
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made the comments at Yokota air base amid heightened tensions in the region after repeated threats from North Korea.
In response, the U.S. has deployed an anti-ballistic missile battery to Guam, while the Japanese government has deployed Aegis cruisers and land-based missile interceptors around Tokyo.
Prospects for dialogue were dim after North Korea demanded the lifting of U.N. sanctions and the end of U.S.-South Korea military drills as conditions for resuming long-suspended talks aimed at defusing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
But Dempsey said the U.S. would continue military exercises with its allies.
“We’ll continue to do whatever exercises we need to do to make sure we have the right command and control, the right skills, the right collaboration, interoperability with our allies in the region in the event that there is a miscalculation,” he told the military personnel during the visit, his first to Japan since he assumed his post in 2011.
Dempsey’s visit came after a trip to Beijing, where he held meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping as well as China’s chief of the general staff, Gen. Fang Fenghui, and Defense Minister Chang Wangquan.
Issues on the Korean Peninsula were prominent in those meetings, and Dempsey also called on Beijing to be more transparent about cyberattacks and boost collaboration with the U.S. to tackle a common threat to their economies.
While distrust lingers on both sides, efforts to expand cooperation between Chinese and U.S. armed forces have gained momentum in recent months, and new anti-piracy and humanitarian relief drills are planned.
Dempsey said he hoped to build a better relationship going forward.
“This won’t be a straight line, but I assured them that we want there to be a better relationship between our militaries because the world needs us to have a better relationship,” he said.
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