Washington
It is an unprecedented summit which was held on Friday at Camp David, the resort of American presidents. For the first time, the leaders of South Korea and Japan have been invited together for a trilateral meeting with Joe Biden. The goal was to show a united front in the face of growing threats from North Korea and rising influence from China.
The American president, since his accession to the White House, has endeavored to restore relations with the allies of the United States, very disturbed by four years of the Trump presidency. But he also made Asia, particularly China, the center of his policy. “This is a historic event,” summarized Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser. “This summit ushers in a new era in tripartite cooperation for the United States, Japan and South Korea.”
For years, US policy has come up against a big obstacle in Asia: the very strong animosity between Seoul and Tokyo, which dates back to Japan’s brutal occupation of the Korean peninsula between 1910 and 1945. But concern over the North Korea’s nuclear program and the fear, in particular, of an invasion of Taiwan have pushed Seoul and Tokyo to put aside their dissensions. President Yoon Suk-yeol has made efforts to open up to Japan since taking office.
“The consolidation of this alliance is happening now because the environment is very uncertain and unstable,” said Victor Cha, former adviser on Asia to President George W. Bush and member of the think-tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Besides China, the invasion of Ukraine has prompted more cooperation, he said. “There is nothing better than a real war, even if it is in another part of the world, to completely change or affect the way leaders view their own security.”
Joe Biden has worked hard for this rapprochement. Japanese and Korean leaders were the first foreign leaders to be invited to the White House, in 2021, and the president has made official visits to both countries. At the same time, he worked to develop other partnerships in the region to counter China, such as the Quad, an alliance formed between the United States, Japan, Australia and India. He also signed a security pact with Great Britain and Australia, the Aukus, and increased the American military presence in the Philippines…
To mark the importance of the event, the summit was held not in Washington but at Camp David, a highly symbolic place. It was to this property in the middle of nature, in the depths of Maryland, that President Franklin Roosevelt had invited British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1943. It was also there that in 1959, in the midst of the Cold War, President Eisenhower received Nikita Khrushchev. In 1978, peace agreements between Israel and Egypt were negotiated there.
The three countries were to announce enhanced national security cooperation with an expansion of their military exercises, more ballistic missile defense coordination and intelligence sharing. They will also set up annual meetings and a communication channel in the event of a crisis. They endorsed a “commitment to consult,” meaning that a threat to any one of the three countries would be considered a threat to all. The agreement does not go so far as to put in place a mechanism like that of Article 5 of NATO, which obliges the allies to act in the event of an attack on one of the members. “All three countries recognize a common interest in having a cohesive and coordinated response,” said Jake Sullivan, the US president’s national security adviser, which is much less binding.
“China’s entire strategy is based on the premise that America’s number one and number two allies in the region cannot work together and be on the same page,” said Rahm Emanuel, l U.S. Ambassador to Japan at a recent conference at the Brookings Institution. This three-way relationship is a “game changer”.
