Camp David Summit Paves Way For Potent Trilateral Alliance

While Seoul's defensive strategy is traditionally focused on the Korean Peninsula, Yoon's administration is adopting a wider regional outlook. Japan, for almost two decades, has been reaching out to India and other partners in South and Southeast Asia to build closer economic and security ties.

These efforts were welcomed by Washington and are further strengthening the US-led regional security architecture. As many pundits predicted, the three leaders discussed regional hotspots including North Korea and the Taiwan Strait while denouncing Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

Biden welcomed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House in June, and a visit by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is planned for later this year.

The US-JP-ROK cooperation, together with the Quad, US-AU-JP and AUKUS, is part of the American-led effort to uphold the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific region through enhanced regional deterrence against revisionist powers.

Many factors are pulling Asian states and thetogether. For example, despite the repeated Chinese narrative accusing theof creating“elitist cliques” or even an Asian mini-NATO, and accusing theand its allies of a Cold War mentality, it is China's hegemonic and coercive actions that have pushed growing cooperation throughout the Indo-Pacific.

China has engaged in economic coercion against both Japan in 2010 (nationalization of the Senkaku Islands) and South Korea in 2017-2019 (after the THAAD deployment). More recently, China weaponized trade against Australia after it sought an impartial investigation into the origins of Covid-19.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has seemingly forgotten the warning of late patriarch Deng Xiaoping:“If one day China tries to seek hegemony in the world, people of the world should expose, oppose, and overthrow it.”

Only a day prior to the summit, 11 Chinese and Russian naval ships sailed through waters near Japan's southern islands of Okinawa prefecture in an overt show of force.

The visit of Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and Chinese ruling-party official Li Hongzhong to North Korea in light of the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine and the possible trilateral cooperation of Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang is another factor pushing closer trilateral cooperation among Seoul, Tokyo and Washington.

The spillover of the Russian invasion of Ukraine seems to have reached even the Korean Peninsula. There are strong indications within theintelligence community that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is selling weapons to Russia.

Moreover, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (csis) think tank, the physical characteristics and flight data of the North Korean Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile are“nearly identical to those of the Russian Topol-M ICBM.”

CSIS asserts that Russia likely provided technical assistance in the development of the North Korean ICBM. Given the North Korean regime's penchant for threatening its neighbors, this rings alarm bells in both Seoul and Tokyo.

During the Camp David summit, Kishida and Biden agreed to develop a new missile capable of intercepting hypersonic weapons. This joint development plan comes amid China's, North Korea's and Russia's aggressive pursuit of hypersonic capabilities.

The timing of the Camp David trilateral summit was planned to initiate greater cooperation before the respective leaders face re-election. Yoon is facing parliamentary elections in April, Kishida faces re-election as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party in September, and Biden is likely to run again in November.

For Biden, the summit was not only a way to ensure his political legacy but also an important stepping stone in the election cycle as he strives for a second presidential term. At least for this term, it is politically impossible for theto return to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) regional trade agreement.

Japan and South Korea are aware that the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity
(IPEF), with its missing free-trade element, is a Band-Aid in the absence of greatereconomic involvement in the Indo-Pacific region.

Kishida's government, despite its numerforeign political successes, is under pressure due to its lackluster economic performance and numeraffairs, most recently the My Number Card issue. Kishida is more respected by his allies abroad than at home. Nevertheless, for now, his position as leader of the LDP is uncontested.

The largest conservative LDP faction, Seiwakai, hurriedly named Abe's successor in August after more than a year since Abe's assassination. Abe's murder caused a shockwave in the LDP. Not only did the Seiwakai lose their leader, but so too did independent conservatives.

The moderate Kishida cannot turn to his conservatives for support any longer and now must face a fractionalized conservative camp. Moreover, with Abe gone, Kishida lost a possible ally who was able to mitigate the worst impulses of formerpresident Donald Trump, who could conceivably return in 2024.

It remains an open question whether Ryu Shionoya, as the new Seiwakai leader, can unify the conservatives and be an effective counterpart to Kishida.

Yoon faces the most difficult situation. Elected to office by a razor-thin margin, Yoon faces an opposition majority in parliament. In the event that the opposition retains this advantage after the upcoming election in April 2024, Yoon will confront a hostile parliament until the end of his tenure in 2027.

For now, the historical grievances between Japan and South Korea have been put aside in favor of future-oriented cooperation. Nevertheless, significant issues of cultural and historical weight remain.

These include challenges connected with Japan's colonization from 1910-1945 but also the territorial spat over the Dokdo/Takeshima islands as well as the 2018 incident when a Korean naval vessel illuminated a Japanese patrol plane with its fire control radar.

These issues will not simply disappear. It is likely that the Korean opposition will play the“Japanese card” against Yoon's conservatives in the legislative election campaign.

Moreover, the upcoming release of treated Fukushima water is, despite International Atomic Energy Agency assurances of safety, another point that Yoon's opponents vocalize.

Yoon offered to host the next leaders' summit in Seoul. After their meeting symbolically in Hiroshima on the margins of the Group of Seven summit, the electoral turf of Kishida, and then in Washington, it seems a reasonable proposal.

Many in Tokyo look back to 2015 when the abe-park deal was reached with the blessing of the Obama administration on comfort women. The succeeding Moon Jae-In administration dismantled the agreement and his entire tenure was marked by a confrontational attitude toward Japan.

It is important not only to Yoon and Kishida that the positive momentum of the tacit institutionalization of trilateral cooperation take root as early as possible, but also to Biden, who is particularly vested in the budding trilateral alliance's endurance.