CAMP DAVID: US President Joe Biden and the leaders of Japan and South Korea said they saw a “new chapter” with greater three-way security cooperation as they met for a first-of-a-kind summit.

Going tieless in the Camp David presidential retreat, Biden praised the “political courage” of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in turning the page on historical animosity.

“Our countries are stronger — and the world will be safer — as we stand together. I know that’s a belief that we all three share,” he told them as he opened the talks.

Biden said the three would 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.”

Joint statement

In a joint statement, the three leaders said they opposed the “dangerous and aggressive behaviour” by China as it exerts itself in maritime disputes in the East and South China Sea. “We strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the waters of the Indo-Pacific,” it said.

The two treaty-bound US allies largely see eye to eye on the world — and together are the base for some 84,500 US troops — but such a summit would have been unthinkable until recently due to the legacy of Japan’s harsh 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula.

Biden, Yoon and Fumio Kishida will agree to a multiyear plan of regular exercises in all domains, going beyond one-off drills in response to North Korea, and will announce a “commitment to consult” during crises, said Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser.

The summit aims to institutionalise three-way cooperation to make it difficult for any reversal by a future leader — a South Korean president who again seizes on hostility with Japan or, potentially, a return of Donald Trump, who has disparaged US troop commitments overseas as wasteful.

Yoon’s embrace of Japan has drawn relatively muted protests at home.

Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2023