Historic alliance brings US, Japan and Korea together

The “historic” trilateral American-Japanese-South Korean summit held at Camp David on Friday has been hailed as a crowning achievement for President Joe Biden, as he continues to weave a web of multilateral alliances in the Indo-Pacific to encircle China, while saying at the same time that this is not about China.
Bringing Japan and Korea together and making them partners, despite their historic baggage of tension and grievances borne of war and occupation, is considered a resounding success for the American president. It opens up a “new era” of cooperation among the three countries, as he put it. If the American pivot to the Asia-Pacific needed a milestone, this is by far its crown jewel, because America believes its strength is its alliances.
But this is not all. Politico reported, after the trilateral summit, that Biden will next month “sign a strategic partnership deal with Vietnam, China’s neighbor to the south, in the latest bid to counter China in the region.” President Biden will reportedly visit Vietnam in mid-September. He is also going to India for the G20 Summit next month.
This new trilateral alliance joins two more alliances the US has established in the Indo-Pacific region: AUKUS with Australia, the UK and Japan, and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, known as the Quad, with India, Australia and Japan. These are in addition to the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity of 14 countries.
This must be a strategic nightmare if you are sitting in China. To have these two powers, Japan and South Korea, which are among Beijing’s biggest trading partners, enter a trilateral alliance with the US is a cause of great concern for China.
The White House went to great lengths to deny that this new alliance was against China. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan underscored that this “summit today, this partnership is not against anyone. It is for something,” and it is not new. But “what is new is that we are now stitching all of that work together to try to enhance regional stability and security,” he said.
A Chinese newspaper described the summit as an effort to create a NATO-like presence in Asia, according to The New York Times. Sullivan denied that, saying “it’s explicitly not a NATO for the Pacific. We have said that. We will continue to underscore that and so will both Japan and Korea.” Other American officials repeated that this summit and the trilateral alliance are not against China.
But American Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel was more blunt. He said America’s message in the region is: “We are a permanent pacific power and presence, and you can bet long on America.” While it was not in this summit’s pronouncements, China has been a Biden administration priority since day one.
In fact, “out-competing China” is the most prominent component of the most recent American National Security Strategy, which identified China as “the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it.” This strategy laid out what the US perceives as China’s ambitions to increase its sphere of influence in the region, where it is “investing in and modernizing a military” that is “increasingly capable in the Indo-Pacific, and growing in strength and reach globally — all while seeking to erode US alliances in the region and around the world.”

Bringing Japan and Korea together and making them partners is considered a resounding success for Biden.

Dr. Amal Mudallali

The trilateral alliance summit produced a flurry of statements, a fact sheet, a “Commitment to Consult” and the “Camp David Principles,” which outline the objectives and goals of this “new era of trilateral partnership.” The Camp David Principles affirmed the commitment of the leaders to a “free and open Indo-Pacific, and vowed to oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion.”
To allay the concerns of other allies in the region, the statement assured them that this new alliance would not replace the regional cooperation mechanism that unites them as a group. The purpose of the trilateral security cooperation, the statement said, “is and will remain to promote and enhance peace and stability throughout the region. Our commitment to the region includes our unwavering support for (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) centrality and unity and the ASEAN-led regional architecture.”
The leaders also sent a message to North Korea when they asserted their unity “in our commitment to the complete denuclearization of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in accordance with relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions.” But at the same time, they said they “remain committed to dialogue with DPRK with no preconditions.”
They also reaffirmed the “importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait as an indispensable element of security and prosperity in the international community.”
In the Commitment to Consult document, the three countries committed their governments to “consult trilaterally with each other, in an expeditious manner, to coordinate our responses to regional challenges, provocations, and threats affecting our collective interests and security.” They vowed, through these consultations, to “share information, align our messaging, and coordinate response actions.” They also committed to “retain the freedom to take all appropriate actions to uphold our security interests and sovereignty.”
They vowed to cooperate on a wide range of issues, from security cooperation to technology, economic and financial stability, climate change, and supply chains. But not a word on who they are aligned against.
The American president and his administration were very keen on presenting this as an alliance for “decades and decades,” as Biden said, and they took many steps to “institutionalize” it and make sure it outlives any elections or any American president’s term in office, or any leadership change in Japan and Korea. They made sure to put a structure in place that “has a tailwind behind it that will propel it forward and be very difficult to knock it off course,” Sullivan said.
Public opinion in Korea has been very critical of a closer relationship with Japan and of the trilateral alliance, with weekly demonstrations criticizing President Yoon Suk Yeol, according to the American media. To guard against any fallout resulting from political change in any of the three countries, the leaders vowed to hold “trilateral meetings between our leaders, foreign ministers, defense ministers, and national security advisers at least annually,” and “hold the first trilateral meeting between our finance ministers as well as launch a new commerce and industry ministers track that will meet annually.” They will also “launch an annual Trilateral Indo-Pacific Dialogue to coordinate implementation of our Indo-Pacific approaches and to continually identify new areas for common action.”
The future agenda for the trilateral alliance is impressive, but it is its implementation that will matter. White House Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell, speaking at the Brookings Institution, hoped that this trilateral alliance would be embedded in “our national psyche in a bipartisan way.” The current domestic American political landscape does not lend itself to strong bipartisan support on many issues, but China is different and the White House might get the support it needs. The real test is whether this trilateral alliance will survive the politics in these three countries, with their strong institutionalized foundations. Time will tell.

• Dr. Amal Mudallali is an American policy and international relations analyst.