ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

The US Military will conduct its first-ever missile drill on the Japanese Island of Okinawa, located in the East China Sea, as Washington attempts to counter an increasingly aggressive China.  Japan Times  reported on Thursday that the US military had notified Japan’s government that it would deploy anti-ship missile systems around the strategically important island this year, the original story was released by Sankei Shimbun. The war exercise would fortify the island with possible truck-mounted anti-ship cruise missile systems seen as a countermeasure to potential attacks from Chinese surface-to-sea ballistic rockets, the paper said. China has repeatedly railed against US military expansion in Asia and the Pacific, describing the presence as a source of regional instability. In the last several years, Chinese warships have navigated near Okinawa, where roughly half of the 54,000 American troops are stationed, in an attempt to curb US military dominance in the East China Sea.

By the end of the year, the situation has grown more tense. This is particularly true of Algeria which will undergo a change in supreme leadership. The current president is ill, his surrounding and political elites are in a state of uncertainty, the new configuration of alliances is difficult of predict. The situation is no less fluid in Tunisia due to the conflict among party blocs, and Libya where attempts to resolve the conflict have been failing irrespective which external actors are backing these efforts. Algeria President Abdelaziz Bouteflika could not receive Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman Al Saud due to a persistent cold, which was reported by Reuters citing the presidential chancellery. The Crown Prince came to Algeria from Mauritania and before that from Argentina, where he took part in G-20 summit. The president feels so poorly that he may not run in the next election. This led the government to start negotiations with a range of political actors fro