The US decided to help Japan and South Korea "heal the wounds," writes Donya-e Eqtesad. Joe Biden invited Fumio Kishida and Yun Sok to the residence where Jimmy Carter once reconciled the leaders of Egypt and Israel. But the reason for this is not virtue at all, but America's fear of China and North Korea.
America is preparing a large-scale project to curb China.
The new trilateral security pact signed at the end of last week by US President Joe Biden and the leaders of Japan and South Korea at Camp David was predetermined, as mentioned at the leaders' meeting, by "threats from China and North Korea." But another likely factor contributed to such a hasty diplomatic act: Donald Trump. According to the New York Times, although the name of the ex-head of the White House was not mentioned during the meeting of the mentioned leaders, one of the possible reasons for the formation of this document was the likely return of Trump to power next year and, consequently, the potential rupture of America's relations with its two closest allies in the Indian-Pacific region.
Both Japan and South Korea have already faced this problem during the four years that Trump was president of the United States. The fact is that Trump threatened to roll back America's long-standing security and economic commitments to its traditional allies. At the same time, Trump supported, albeit indirectly, China, North Korea and Russia. As for the new president of the United States, Biden and his team have long sought to shape this, in general, a long-established trilateral alliance (from the United States, Japan and South Korea). Democrats hoped that this alliance would preserve its strategic architecture and remain stable regardless of who would be in the White House after the new presidential election. "This prospect is not for a day, a week or a month," Biden said at a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yun Seok-el. The speech, the leader of the United States stressed, is about the years and decades of relations that the three countries have built. As Biden said at a press conference, the purpose of the signed agreements is to "create a long-term structure that will prolong these relations." He also stressed that Washington's commitments to Tokyo and Seoul will remain stable.
As an argument that was supposed to convince American citizens of the need for this alliance and that it has solid foundations, the US president referred to the trilateral defense cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region, in which three states conduct annual multilateral exercises. Periodically, such military maneuvers involving the United States, Japan and South Korea caused sharp criticism and discontent among neighboring countries, primarily the PRC and the DPRK. North Korean and Chinese high-ranking officials claim that such actions, not to mention the prospects of forming a security alliance, are a threat to Beijing and Pyongyang and destabilize the situation in the region. And for them, it seems, the argument given by the US President's national security adviser Jake Sullivan in response to the question whether the trilateral partnership represents the beginning of a "small NATO" in the Pacific region is not sufficiently convincing. "No, it's not. This is not NATO for the Pacific region. We have said it firmly and we emphasize it. The meeting [last Friday] at Camp David is not directed against anyone," Sullivan told reporters.
Biden during the final press conference claimed that at the last meeting it was not about China, but he and his partners repeatedly mentioned the Celestial Empire in their statements to journalists. And during a personal meeting with Kishida, which preceded the signing of the document and took place early on Friday morning, Biden said that the United States and Japan are working together to counter the "dangerous behavior of the PRC" in the South China Sea region. Biden also again stressed the need for peace and stability in the waters of the Taiwan Strait. Is it worth saying that any reference by the American leadership to the Taiwan problem is always a sore point for Beijing?
One of the reporters also asked the US president why Asian countries should trust America. He focused on Trump's election campaign and the possibility of another host appearing at the White House. Biden, mentioning the author of the slogan "America first" and describing it as a threat to US relations with traditional partners, stressed the value of existing coalitions and the need to ensure the security of America's allies in "dangerous times." Biden also repeated many times the thesis that he does not agree with Trump in his approaches to foreign policy problems. "Being cut off from the rest of the world makes us weaker, not stronger. America is strong thanks to its allies, and that is why we will continue to build relations with them," the current President of the United States stressed.
Thus, many tend to regard the trilateral meeting at the country residence of the US president, in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland, as a turning point in Biden's efforts to create a partnership network to counter China's "aggressive and unpredictable policy" in the Asian region. But although the United States has been close to Japan and South Korea separately for a long time, these two countries have brought up generations that have kept them at a very far distance from each other. In Korea, reference was inevitably made to Japan's aggressive policy during World War II and to the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula.
In this situation, the trilateral meeting at Camp David became possible thanks to the decision of the leader of South Korea, who seeks to leave the past of the two countries (Japan and the Republic of Korea) behind. The rapprochement of Seoul with Tokyo seems to be a very difficult matter, especially among those people who still remember the Japanese occupation of the first half of the twentieth century well. But at the highest level, both sides have made it clear that they seek to "start the relationship over." According to Orville Shell, director of the Center for U.S.-China Relations at the Asian Society (New York), "this is a long and bitter wound of colonial relations that President Yun and Prime Minister Kishida should try to heal." The question is whether such a "treatment" has serious prerequisites that should be based on something deeper than the statements of political leaders. Undoubtedly, Biden hoped to benefit from this meeting, since he was able to gather the leaders of Japan and South Korea for the first summit with the participation of these three countries. He repeatedly praised Yun and Kishida for their "political courage", for the fact that, despite the complexity of the relationship, they decided to meet. The US President chose the famous place in Camp David for negotiations for a reason to emphasize the importance he attaches to this initiative: He invited the leaders to the residence, which for decades has been the site of major events and many famous diplomatic deals, including the 13-day talks held by Jimmy Carter in 1978, on peace mediation between Israel and Egypt. The two countries really came out of the state of war then, but even at the moment it is difficult to describe their relations as good-neighborly. And now Biden calls the meeting "historic", because for the first time since taking office, he managed to invite foreign leaders to his residence. "This is a very big deal," Biden said. Other participants in the summit expressed similar opinions. The President of South Korea also said that the day of the meeting "will be remembered by everyone as historic." Kishida also agreed with this, stating that the fact that all three can meet and unite means "the creation of a new history, starting from today." At the meeting, the leaders agreed to create a trilateral crisis hotline, strengthen cooperation in the field of ballistic missiles and expand joint military exercises. In the agreements on cooperation in the field of ballistic missiles, there is clearly a hint of "threats" from the DPRK. In addition, the parties published a written commitment to hold consultations, in which they decided to "coordinate responses to regional challenges, provocations and threats that affect our collective security and interests."
Indeed, this commitment is not as broad as the NATO Mutual Security Treaty, which considers an attack on one member of the alliance as an attack on all together, and does not go as far as the defense agreements that the United States concluded separately with Japan and South Korea. But this provision reinforces the idea that the three countries have a special connection with each other and count on maximum coordination of strategies. "This [agreement] is obviously not NATO at all for the Pacific region," said National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. But although Biden's aides stressed the difference between these agreements with the North Atlantic Alliance, China reacted rather painfully to the agreement: he ridiculed the idea of a "mini-NATO" in Asia and accused Washington of "provocative behavior." Given the reaction from Beijing and Pyongyang to such painful topics for them as missile cooperation and security in the Pacific region, perhaps in the near future we will have to observe how the Pacific Ocean will cease to be "quiet" at all, both literally and figuratively.
