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Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.
Biden brings South Korea and Japan together
Nestled in the woods of Maryland outside Washington, DC, the Camp David estate -- the president's country retreat -- looms large in international diplomacy as a place where serious business gets done.
On Friday, President Joe Biden will host South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for a summit at the famous campsite where, in 1978, Jimmy Carter helped broker peace between Egypt and Israel.
While it might not seem like a big deal for Washington to facilitate a summit with America’s two closest Asian partners, it is monumental that South Korea, in particular, appears ready and willing to enlist in a new US-led trilateral alliance with Japan.
Despite a rapprochement, relations between the two East Asian giants have remained strained since Japan ended its 35-year occupation of the Korean peninsula in 1945.
So, what’s on the agenda at Camp David and why is South Korea, long aggrieved by its former colonial power, willing to create this bloc?
The three states will reportedly announce publicly that they will respond collectively to security threats in the Asia Pacific – a big deal considering that Seoul and Tokyo do not have an official security alliance. Trilateral military drills will likely be annualized, while they’ll also announce closer coordination on ballistic-missile defense and cybersecurity.
Clearly, the summit aims to send a powerful message to China and North Korea that these three advanced economies are prepared to combine their military and tech bonafides to protect their collective interests.
Why is this happening now?
Changing of the guard in Seoul. Only two years ago, such a meeting would have seemed nearly unthinkable. Yoon’s predecessor, President Moon Jae-in, broadly seen as left of center, went to painstaking lengths to engage with Pyongyang.
He also oversaw a period of worsening ties with Tokyo over compensation for Japan’s use of Korean forced labor during the occupation. Relations reached a nadir in 2019 when Tokyo placed restrictions on exports bound for South Korea needed to make crucial tech.
But this approach to regional politics took a sharp turn when Yoon, a conservative, came to power in March 2022, vowing to get tougher on China and the North, and to bolster ties with the US. And that’s exactly what he’s done.
But how much of this shift reflects Yoon’s hawkish brand of politics -- or is this a symptom of a broader anti-China shift in Korean society?
“Trilateral cooperation, and the bilateral rapprochement with Japan that have enabled it, would have been unthinkable under former president Moon or Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the center-left opposition whom Yoon narrowly defeated in 2022,” says Jeremy Chan, a China and Northeast Asia consultant at Eurasia Group.
“The big right-left divide in Korean politics is about policy towards North Korea, and the conservatives take a far more hawkish line toward Pyongyang and their backers in Beijing,” he says.
The China angle. China’s increasingly bellicose behavior in the South China Sea has indeed helped the US bring Japan and South Korea together under a joint security umbrella. After all, nothing unites a former colonial power and former colonial subject like mutual fears of a regional superpower.
Crucially, increasingly negative attitudes towards Beijing at home have also given Yoon an opening to deepen security ties with Japan and the US.
Indeed, South Koreans have soured on China since 2016, when Beijing enforced punitive economic measures on Seoul after the US deployed THAAD anti-missile systems on the Korean Peninsula. The US’ aim was to offer a bulwark against Pyongyang’s missile activities, but China said the move constituted a threat to its national security.
Still, it’s a balancing act, as Japan and South Korea’s economies are tightly interwoven with China’s, and neither wants to risk alienating Beijing too much.
What Washington wants. Getting Tokyo and Seoul to act in lockstep has been a key foreign policy priority for the Biden administration as it looks to contain China’s growth. Together, the two Asian states host 80,000 US troops, and South Korea also hosts the largest US overseas military base in the world.
Politically, the bringing together of Japan and Korea can certainly be cast as a win for President Joe Biden, who has aptly capitalized on growing fear in the region to unite two important US allies with a contentious past.
China’s fear: Asian NATO. “China is watching for how far trilateral cooperation moves forward after the summit, particularly in terms of defense and security,” Chan says, adding that, “Beijing’s greatest fear is the emergence of a trilateral military alliance akin to an Asian NATO on its border.”
What’s more, Beijing will be looking to see whether there are any new agreements on tech that might give an indication, Chan says, of just “how far each country is willing to go in moving away from China economically.”
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South Korea's President and Japan's Prime Minister on Stage in Tokyo
Japan-South Korean diplomatic ice melting fast
On Sunday, Fumio Kishida will become the first Japanese PM to visit South Korea in five years. Kishida’s trip comes less than two months after South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol went to Tokyo. The two neighbors are trying to end decades of tensions over Japan’s occupation of the Korean Peninsula (1910-1945) … with weeks of shuttle diplomacy.
Why now? Both US allies have a mutual interest in countering the threat of an increasingly aggressive North Korea, investing jointly in strategic sectors like semiconductors, and making their supply chains less dependent on China. In a nutshell: This is good for Joe Biden, bad for Xi Jinping.
But to really patch things up, Yoon needs a favor. He knows that most South Koreans believe that his recent deal with Kishida to compensate victims of Japan’s forced labor camps didn't go far enough in holding Tokyo accountable for its colonial-era abuses because it whitewashed the role of Japanese companies that benefited from the free labor.
Kishida has long wanted to win South Korean hearts and minds but is uneasy about making his zaibatsus (financial and industrial conglomerates) pick up part of the reparations tab. Still, now that Japan’s PM is starting to get his mojo back after months of polling in the red, perhaps Kishida can afford to spend some political capital on doing Yoon a solid by “encouraging” Japanese big biz to donate to the fund.
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Handout photo dated January 14, 2020 shows an MQ-9 Reaper flies over the Nevada Test and Training Range.
What We’re Watching: Drone drama, DeSantis vs. Ukraine, Japan hearts South Korea, Pakistan-Khan standoff
Drone drama over the Black Sea
In what is so far the closest thing to a direct clash between the US and Russia over Ukraine, a Russian jet on Tuesday crashed into an American drone over the Black Sea, sending the unmanned craft hurtling into the water.
Moscow disputes the claim, saying its jets didn't hit the drone. The US accused the pilots of two Russian Su-27s of being “unprofessional” and “environmentally unsafe” for harassing and “dumping fuel” on the $32 million MQ-9 Reaper drone.
But scholars point out that the US didn’t call the act “unlawful.” Russia was evidently within its rights to disrupt a drone in international territory that was almost certainly gathering intel for Moscow’s adversaries in Kyiv. Still, the incident shows the dangers of US and Russian military hardware operating in such close proximity, even if they aren’t in direct conflict.
Ron goes Don on Ukraine
Speaking of those dangers, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has waded into some foreign policy waters of his own, telling FOX News host Tucker Carlson he thinks that the Russia-Ukraine “territorial dispute” is not a vital US national interest and that Biden’s “blank check” for Kyiv is a distraction from more pressing issues like China.
This puts Desantis at odds with much of the GOP but firmly in line with … former President Donald Trump, whom he is all but sure to challenge for the Republican nomination in 2024.
Political wrangling aside, Desantis may be trying to catch a broader trend: In February, polls showed that only 48% of Americans favored providing weapons to Ukraine, down 12 points from May of last year. Is Ron on to something?
Japan and South Korea’s efforts to strengthen ties
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese PM Fumio Kishida are meeting in Tokyo this week in a bid to forge stronger economic and security ties. Diplomatic engagement between the countries has stalled in recent years owing to territorial disputes and Japan’s rearmament amid what Koreans see as Japan’s efforts to whitewash World War II-era atrocities.
This follows a recent landmark agreement between Tokyo and Seoul for a South Korean fund to compensate victims of Japan’s forced labor camps during its 20th-century colonization of the Korean peninsula – a deal that has proven unpopular with South Koreans for not holding Japan directly and financially accountable.
Improved cooperation would help both countries meet the increasing security challenges posed by China and North Korea in the region. Restoring trade links between South Korea and Japan, meanwhile, will help alleviate high-tech global supply chains. But for this to work, Kishida’s government must first win over South Korean hearts and minds.
Imran Khan 1 - Pakistan’s government 0
Pakistani security forces on Wednesday withdrew from near Imran Khan’s home in Lahore after failing to detain the former PM, despite having an arrest warrant. The reason: to allow a big cricket match to take place in the city.
As the standoff unfolded, Khan — who used to captain the national team in cricket-crazy Pakistan — took to Twitter, urging his supporters not to give up. He was ousted in a no-confidence vote last April over allegations of corruption and “terrorism”, which he and his supporters dismiss as politically motivated. But since then, Khan has fervently sought to win back the top job, leading a populist movement against Pakistan’s political elite and all-powerful army, whom he accused of being behind an assassination attempt against him in Nov. 2022.
So far, the government was too scared of igniting his base to arrest the former PM, even after he was a no-show in court. Yet, in a country where the army calls many political shots, perhaps he’s made too many enemies. And if he’s behind bars when Pakistanis vote in provincial elections this fall, will his fans remain silent?