Boosting security ties

Japan is preparing military aid for the Philippines to help secure sea approaches and safeguard Taiwan’s western flank, officials say, deepening security ties that could bring Japanese forces back there for the first time since World War II.

As it steps back from decades of pacifism, Tokyo worries that the Philippines is a weak link in an island chain stretching from the Japanese archipelago to Indonesia through which ships must pass going to or from the Pacific Ocean.