rishi0109
Because its military is larger and more technologically sophisticated than Japan, the United States shoulders much
of the burden for patrolling and protecting the shipping lanes of the West Pacific.
(A) its military is larger and more technologically sophisticated than Japan
(B) their military is larger and more technologically sophisticated than Japan
(C) their military is larger and more technologically sophisticated than that of Japan
(D) its military is larger and more technologically sophisticated than Japan’s
(E) its military has been larger and more technologically sophisticated than those of Japan
I rejected all the its choices because its refers to it's and does not have any antecedent because as per my knowledge possessive pronouns only refer to possessive nouns.
The original statement has a huge flaw which is comparing a military to a country, so that knocks out A and B.
The possessive "their" must be singular, because the United States is singular. This is reinforced by the fact that the verb outside the underlined portion is the singular "shoulders", so B (again) and C are eliminated.
We're down to D and E. E is incorrect twice, once for using the plural "those" when referring to its military, and second for the timeline of "has been larger..." not working with the present tense used outside of the underlined portion.
The answer is indeed D, and it's fairly obvious from eliminating clearly incorrect answer choices. I can understand the confusion on "its", but all the other answer choices must be eliminated (often twice) for egregious errors. I don't see this question as 700+.
Hope this helps!
-Ron