US President Joe Biden with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol
As they met for a one-of-a-kind summit, US President Joe Biden and the leaders of Japan and South Korea said they saw a new chapter with increased three-way security cooperation.
Biden lauded the political courage of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in ending historical enmity at the Camp David presidential retreat.
“As we stand together, our countries will be stronger, and the world will be safer. I know that’s a belief we all three share”, he said as he began the talks in the rural hills outside Washington.
According to Biden, the three will pursue this new era of cooperation and renew our resolve to serve as a force of good across the Indo-Pacific and, quite frankly, around the world.
In a joint statement, the three leaders condemned China’s dangerous and aggressive behavior in maritime conflicts in the East and South China Seas.
“We strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the waters of the Indo-Pacific”, it stated.
Although the two treaty-bound US allies largely agree on the world stage, and jointly house some 84,500 US soldiers, such a summit would have been impossible until recently due to the memory of Japan’s cruel 1910-1945 rule of the Korean peninsula.
However, Yoon has taken political risks at home, resolving a disagreement over wartime forced labor and now referring to Japan as a partner at a time of high tensions with both China and North Korea.
“Today will be remembered as a historic day, where we established a firm institutional basis and commitments to the trilateral partnership”, Yoon added.
The three presidents also committed to a multi-year strategy of regular exercises in all fields, rather than one-time drills in response to North Korea, and formally agreed to consult during crises.
The leaders also promised to share real-time data on North Korea and attend annual summits.
Camp David is the first time the three countries’ leaders have gathered for a standalone summit, rather than on the fringes of a bigger event, and it is the resort’s first diplomatic gathering since 2015.
The meeting, according to Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, provided an affirmative vision of how the countries might deliver together while not taking aim at a country.
However, Rahm Emanuel, the US ambassador to Japan, struck a different tone when previewing the meeting, saying that the three powers created something that China was hoping would never happen.
China should grasp one thing, according to Emanuel, a former congressman turned ambassador: We are the rising power; they are declining.
Under President Xi Jinping, China has been flexing its muscles both at home and in Asia, asserting disputed maritime claims and conducting big drills near Taiwan, the self-ruling democracy claimed by Beijing.
Wang Yi, China’s Foreign Minister, instead asked the two economically developed Northeast Asian democracies to collaborate with Beijing to revitalize East Asia.
“No matter how blond you dye your hair or how sharp you shape your nose, you can never become a European or American, you can never become a Westerner”, he declared in a video posted on government media.
“We must know where our roots lie”, he remarked.
However, China’s pressure tactics have resulted in a steep decline in its favorability in Japan and South Korea, which have generally been more circumspect in their views than the US.
Tensions have also grown with North Korea, which has just launched a barrage of missiles and is expected to retaliate at the summit.
The joint statement reaffirmed a call for North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programme and asked all states to impose sanctions.
North Korea said it had scrambled jets in reaction to what it called a US spy plane invasion as the Camp David meeting began.
The meeting, though, aspires to go beyond a focus on North Korea or perhaps just Asia.
As key non-Western governments join pressure against Russia’s invasion, Tokyo and Seoul have provided significant assistance to Ukraine.
The meeting intends to institutionalize three-way collaboration in order to make any reversal by a future leader difficult, whether it is a South Korean president who rekindles antagonism with Japan or, conceivably, a return of Donald Trump, who has criticized US troop commitments overseas as wasteful.
Many observers have been surprised that Yoon’s embrace of Japan has elicited relatively subdued domestic opposition.
Yoon, a conservative, has rapidly become a key US ally, with Biden receiving him for a rare state visit during which the South Korean leader entertained the audience with a rendition of American Pie.
Yoon, however, is constitutionally barred from serving more than one term, which expires in 2027.
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