There have been stories around for a while about Japan’s plans to set up an amphibious infantry force – i.e. Marines. The general assumption is that this will be modeled on the US Marine Corps, as reflected in headlines like this:
Defense Ministry preparing Japanese version of U.S. Marines
Now I have a lot of time for the USMC, but wouldn’t the UK-Japan security relationship be missing a trick if it didn’t at least explore the potential rewards of cooperation with the UK’s Royal Marine Commandos?
The naval flavour of defence cooperation remarked on in the recent RUSI conference would seem to offer a natural connection. Unlike the USMC, the RM are part of the Royal Navy. Indeed, as the Duke of York’s attendance at the RUSI conference reminded some of us, the RN-RM combination has a respectable record on re-taking small islands.
And who else has ‘Asia’ on their cap badge?
「新日英同盟」 Anglo-Japan Alliance 
NIEBERGALL support German Homeland Security, Police, Army, Navy. May be we can help Japan as well.
Volker Niebergall
http://www.niebergall-boarding.de
The US Marines acknowledge that they are part of the Department of the Navy … the men’s department!
Oorah
Fascinating idea – the RM have already show in Africa recently that the deployment of a Platoon sized group to Ghana is a great way of increasing defence relations at relatively little cost.
The UK and Japan are certainly keen to revitalise the Defence Relationship, as seen over the past 18 months, and this could be a good way of establishing a low level working relationship quickly and easily.
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