The New ‘Triple Alliance’: The US, Japan & South Korea
By Shashi P.B.B. Malla
Historic Summit
The United States has achieved what many considered impossible – a historic meeting between US President Joe Biden, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol.
Camp David, the former ‘Shangri-La’
It seemed that the planets and stars were aligned right to bring about such a meeting, and Biden chose the appropriate venue.
He hosted the first stand-alone meeting among the three countries at the exclusive Camp David presidential retreat on Friday last week.
It was a diplomatic coup for the American president (BBC, Aug. 18).
Camp David was established as “Shangri-La” in 1942 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt who named it for the exotic Himalayan/Tibetan paradise in James Hilton’s novel “Lost Horizon”.
[During the 1950s, Nepal was catapulted to international fame as the modern ‘Shangri-La’, thanks to among other things by Han Suyin’s extravagant novel “The Mountain Is Young“.
This distinction has now been claimed by the only remaining Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, which has been practicing an exemplary tourism policy while preserving its ancient culture and natural environment].
Camp David lies in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Maryland, just about an hour’s drive from Washington, D.C.
It has been the scene of a number of high-level presidential conferences with foreign heads of state/governments.
The exclusive presidential retreat was the venue first of the meeting between President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during World War II (Britannica).
In 1959, at the height of the Cold War, Eisenhower (who renamed the rural retreat after his grandson in 1953) hosted Soviet Premier and Secretary General Nikita Khrushchev at Camp David.
In September 1978, through the mediation of President Jimmy Carter, the retreat was the site of a historic peace agreement [the Camp David Accords] reached between Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
In May 2015 President Barack Obama convened a rare international summit at the mountain retreat with leaders from member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council.
[Since then there has been a hiatus. One could not expect any such grand diplomatic gesture from the bumbling bumpkin and ‘great disrupter’ Donald Trump].
The History
Japan and South Korea are close neighbours only separated by the Sea of Japan/East Sea. However, they have a troubled history.
Both countries are old US allies, but they have never been friends – till now perhaps.
The geopolitical environment in the region is evolving dramatically: an increasingly assertive China, an unpredictable Russia and an aggressive North Korea have significantly renewed US interest and engagement in East Asia. “And it has brought together two countries who for decades have struggled to overcome deep historical grievances” (BBC).
Dennis Wilder, assistant professor at Georgetown University wrote on ‘X’ (previous Twitter): “I find the meeting at Camp David mind-blowing.” He had managed the Japan and South Korea relationship under former President George W. Bush.
In recent months, Kishida and Yoon had taken tentative steps to resolve their hostilities, and strengthen ties with Washington. This once-inconceivable alliance is driven by shared concerns – the biggest of which is China, but also includes Russia and North Korea.
The meeting at Camp David – also the first time foreign leaders have been invited to the presidential retreat since 2015 – was an attempt to “signify and to demonstrate how seriously” Biden takes the relationship between Japan and South Korea [ and of course the nascent alliance ], according to a White House spokesperson.
The Camp David summit is truly historic, unimaginable until now, because the Seoul-Tokyo relationship was always fraught with historical disputes miring the two legs of the triangle,” said Duyeon Kim from the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security in Seoul.
“It’s an extremely rare opportunity for the three countries to propel their vision to the next level. They should seize it and push ahead boldly on even ambitious issues before presidential election cycles test or even strain the durability of their commitments.”
Andrew Yeo, Miraya Solis and Hanna Foreman (all from the Brookings Institution) write in Foreign Affairs that the current moment presented a unique opportunity, given the simultaneous presence of “an internationalist American president, a bold South Korean leader with foreign policy ambitions beyond the Korean Peninsula, and a Japanese prime minister bent on cementing Japan’s proactive security policy” (Aug. 15).
Why Did It Take This Long?
The ‘grapes of wrath’ has a long history.
Some describe the two countries as ‘frenemies’, but the term is perhaps too banal to describe the deep pain among South Koreans, including the thousands of so-called ‘comfort women’ who were abducted and used as sex slaves by the Japanese army during World War II.
South Koreans believe the Japanese never properly apologized for the colonization of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
Tokyo, however, argued that it had atoned for its historical transgressions in several treaties.
Any détente has always been fragile, constantly at risk. Even when the East Asian bloc appeared solid, a single wrong move could bring the whole edifice down.
Thus, in 2018, a long-running court case in Seoul over Japan’s use of forced labour during WW II started a trade dispute which plunged relations between the two neighbours to their lowest since the 1960s.
However, recently there has been much progress, including a milestone meeting in March, offering Washington a new
Era of Pragmatic Politics
But there is very good reason for the two new governments to put their differences aside, even at the cost of political capital on the domestic front.
This is, after all, the era of pragmatic politics – and they see a much bigger threat looming.
China’ assertive posture in Asia has alarmed its neighbours. Beijing claims Taiwan, a democratically self-governed island, and has not ruled out the use of force to “unify” it with the motherland.
Incursions into Taiwanese airspace and territorial waters and,
Then there is the constant threat from North Korea, which has carried out more than 100 weapons tests since the start of 2022, including firing missiles towards the Sea of Japan.
The war in Ukraine too has prompted many countries, including South Korea and Japan, to prioritise national security.
All this have contributed to helping Biden win where previous administrations in Washington have failed.
Breakthrough
The great Prussian/German statesman Otto von Bismarck famously said: “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.” The same is true of foreign policy, and Biden, with his decades of experience in both domestic and international politics, has a more reliable sense of what is realistically achievable than did his volatile predecessor, Donald Trump, who had zero government experience (Washington Post, Aug. 17).
The Camp David agreement requires the United States, Japan and South Korea to hold annual talks, expand joint military exercises and establish a three-way hotline for crisis communications.
“This marks a major milestone in the history of the trilateral relationship that has moved in fits and starts over the last three decades,” said Andrew Yeo, the AK-Korea foundation chair at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
He underlines that the three sides will aim to “cement the gains” they have made in the last year or so, “while building momentum…to address a range of security challenges in north-east Asia and the Indo-Pacific region.”
It’s already known that they will agree to hold regular military exercises, set up a new three-way crisis hotline and, crucially pledge to meet once a year.
Washington’s goal then is to establish long-term ties that will last well beyond the sitting presidents and prime minister.
“Biden, Yoon and Kishida have a chance to make even bigger history that lasts beyond a milestone meeting at Camp David,” said Duyeon Kim.
“Their respective governments will need to implement their joint vision proactively and beyond their leadership terms because the Seoul-Tokyo relationship will continue to ebb and flow. If an ultra-leftist South Korean president and an ultra-rightist-wing Japanese leader are elected in their next cycles, then any one of them could derail all the meaningful, hard work Biden, Yoon and Kishida are putting in right now.”
Not to underestimate the political turmoil – both domestic and external – that would ensue if Trump or another Republican were elected president of the US [‘POTUS’].
Herein lies the challenge for the statesmen.
Dormant Tensions
Kurt Campbell, Deputy Assistant to President Biden and Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs, has praised the “political courage” of Kishida and Yoon, calling it “a breathtaking kind of diplomacy.”
But a change of leadership could see a change of heart.
“Tensions that run deep, particularly in South Korea due to past historical animosities related to Japan’s colonization of Korea, do not disappear overnight, and we’re likely to continue to see diplomatic spats arise, as was the case a couple of weeks ago when the Japanese ministry of defence claimed Dokdo [Japanese: Takeshima islands, in the Sea of Japan) as its own in its national security strategy,” said Andrew Yeo.
“Relatively low approval ratings for Kishida and Yoon back at home may limit the amount of diplomatic capital the two leaders could sink into Korea-Japan relations. I also believe at some point the two sides, and Japan in particular, will need a more thorough reckoning of its colonial past in Korea and elsewhere.”
The China Factor
Japan and South Korea may also not want to go as far as Biden in criticizing China. Fearing a backlash, they may hardly mention Beijing in their public remarks following the summit.
And pacts involving economic measures might be harder to secure than agreements on national security.
US-China tensions, especially economic restrictions, have come at a cost to both South Korea and Japan.
China is a key trading partner for both [actually also for the US].
Companies in Seoul and Tokyo – such as Samsung and Nissan – rely heavily on Chinese workers and consumers.
China’s Perspective
China has repeatedly warned about a NATO-like US-led security alliance forming in Asia that could seek to counter Beijing’s ambitions and thereby provoke unnecessary confrontation.
Xi jinping has accused the United States of leading Western countries in the “all-around containment, encirclement and suppression of China.”
The Camp David summit most likely reinforces Beijing’s perception (NYT, Aug. 21).
Lu Chao, from the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences in Shenyang, China told the Communist Party newspaper, the Global Times : “It is appropriate to say that the Camp David summit is possibly a starting shot for a new Cold War.”
The summit also reaffirmed the “importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”
This could be interpreted as a warning to Beijing not to attempt to capture the island by force and could anger Chinese leaders American traditionally been restricted to the United States.
In fact, the Camp David agreement follows a whole strand of moves that Beijing views as antagonistic:
- a clampdown on China’s access to advanced chip technology;
- AUKUS, a three-way security agreement with Australia and Britain;
- the strengthening of the QUAD grouping of the United States, Japan, Australia and India;
- an increased military American presence in the Philippines.
Now, China will be watching for signs that the alliance will expand, drawing in other countries, including the Philippines, commented Song Zhongping, a former military officer.
He called that a “worst-case scenario” for China because it would create an “Indo-Pacific NATO”.
In the meantime, the three statesmen from the US, Japan and South Korea have created a solid defensive alliance in North-East Asia/Western Pacific capable of keeping aggressive neighbours at bay.
The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect People’s Review’s editorial stance.
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