In geopolitics, geography is the root of all forgiveness. Or at least that’s perhaps the lesson being taught by Japan’s quiet resurgence across Asia. On Saturday, roughly 50 Japanese troops stormed a beach in the Philippines as part of a joint exercise with their U.S. and Philippine counterparts. The drill marked the first time that Japanese armed military vehicles were used on foreign soil since the end of World War II. The Philippines, of course, was one of the countries that Japan occupied during the war. Japan has been deepening defense ties across Southeast Asia and beyond; just in the past few weeks, it publicly dispatched a submarine for the first time to the South China Sea, conducted joint drills with the British and the U.S. in the Indian Ocean, and made the latest in a series of warship visits to Sri Lanka. Its growing attention to South and Southeast Asia has provoked very little of the sort of hand-wringing that attempts by China to engage in a similar fashion tend to
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