US downplays China tensions ahead of ‘force multiplier’ summit with Japan, South Korea
Joel Gehrke
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President Joe Biden’s impending summit with the leaders of Japan and South Korea promises to be “an historic meeting” with two American allies moving to put traditional tensions aside in order to link arms with the United States, according to the top U.S. diplomat.
“Japan and South Korea are core allies — not just in the region, but around the world. Strengthening our trilateral cooperation is critical to delivering for our people, for the region, and for the world,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday. “It’s a force multiplier for good.”
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Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol will join Biden at Camp David on Friday, less than two years after Japanese and South Korean diplomats refused to participate in a joint press conference following a meeting at the State Department. Yet much has changed in the geopolitical atmosphere since that frosty November encounter, including Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the inauguration of a South Korean leader keen to expand an “ironclad alliance” with the United States.
“Notably, the significance of ROK-U.S.-Japan trilateral security cooperation is increasingly growing on the Korean Peninsula and in the region,” South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said Tuesday. “The ROK-U.S.-Japan summit to be held at Camp David in three days will set a new milestone in trilateral cooperation contributing to peace and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula and in the Indo-Pacific region.”
That address is all the more dramatic given its timing, as Yoon delivered that prognostication while commemorating his country’s liberation from imperial Japanese rule. The painful history of that occupation has fueled tensions between the two countries and undermined U.S. attempts to mitigate threats from China even in recent years, but Putin’s war in Ukraine has stoked anxiety in the Indo-Pacific that Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping might also prove willing to attack a neighbor.
“There is nothing like an actual real war, even though it’s in another part of the world, to completely change the way or affect the way leaders think about their security,” Center for Strategic and International Studies Senior Vice President Victor Cha, a former White House National Security Council director for asian affairs, said Monday. “And so the war in Ukraine has had the effect of reducing the gap between the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theaters, and causing countries to think – to prioritize national security over other issues that might sometimes get in the way.”
Kishida offered a security-minded gesture of his own, one that embraced “taking the lessons of history deeply into our hearts” while converting that lesson into an imperative to deter any power that threatens to “repeat the devastation of war” in the region.
“Since the end of the war, Japan has consistently walked the path of a peace-loving nation,” Kishida said. “In this world in which conflicts have not yet ceased, under the banner of ‘Proactive Contribution to Peace,’ Japan is determined to join forces with the international community and do its utmost to resolve the various challenges facing the world.”
Chinese officials have tried to discourage such a posture by accusing Tokyo of trying “to revive the specter of militarism,” as Xi put it in a joint communique with Putin released in February 2022, and Beijing fumed at “the cobbling together of various small circles by the countries concerned” — which the communist power has characterized as an attempt to lay the groundwork for a “mini-NATO” in the Indo-Pacific.
“[China] also opposes practices that exacerbate confrontation and jeopardize the strategic security of other countries,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Tuesday. “The countries concerned should follow the trend of the times and do more that is conducive to regional peace, stability, and prosperity.”
Yet Xi and Putin’s pledge to “uphold the outcomes of World War II” came just weeks before the Kremlin chief launched his campaign to overthrow the Ukrainian government, spurring Kishida and Yoon to seek closer ties with the U.S. and its European allies.
“Security of the Korean Peninsula and the Indo-Pacific region is deeply linked to the security in the Atlantic and Europe. Accordingly, strengthening cooperation with NATO is also of great importance,” Yoon said. “Because the Republic of Korea’s security is very much aligned with security of the Indo-Pacific region, the Atlantic, Europe, and the world.”
Biden, Kishida, and Yoon are expected to issue a “major trilateral security statement” on Friday, as Cha put it.
“I don’t expect it will be an Article 5-type, NATO-type collective defense statement, but I think they will get as close as they can to it talking about how the security of the countries are interlinked,” he said.
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Blinken did not so much as mention China by name while hailing the significance of the Camp David meeting, but he acknowledged it represents one kind of answer to the problem of “geopolitical competition,” among other issues.
“I don’t think there’s any one thing that will dominate,” Blinken said. “But of course at the heart of our respective bilateral alliances and at the heart of the work that we’re doing together as three countries is security.”