Max Bot* So Me Terry*
It is difficult to overstate the importance of last Friday’s summit at Camp David between US President Joe Biden, South Korean President Yun Sok Yul, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Challenges in the region, especially with the war in Ukraine.
It was not possible to think of such a summit nearly two years ago. Most of the credit at this summit should go to the brave South Korean president and the pragmatic Japanese prime minister for their ability to transcend their historical grievances, but the Biden administration also deserves huge credit for helping bring about this rapprochement.
Former German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck said: “Politics is the art of the possible, and the situation is the art of the next step.” The same applies to foreign policy, and Biden, who has several decades of experience in domestic and foreign policy, has a sure sense of what can be realistically accomplished, compared to What did his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, who entered his first government office when he was elected president in 2016.
Trump achieved a major diplomatic achievement, the Abrahamic Accord, which led to the normalization of three Arab countries with Israel, but his skill in dismantling international structures (withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement and the Paris climate agreement) was greater than the possibility of creating new agreements. His most daring diplomatic triumph was his participation in a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that failed to achieve its unrealistic goal of denuclearizing North Korea.
Views of the Pacific Ocean
The summit with Yul and Kishida is another major achievement, given how difficult it was to get the two countries’ leaders in one room in the past. This was the culmination of a process that Biden began with his entry into the White House, and was led by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, National Security Adviser Jack Sullivan, and the coordinator for relations with the Indo-Pacific countries of the National Security Council, Kurt Campbell.
The breakthrough that made such a meeting possible appeared in March, when Juul – with the encouragement and support of the Biden administration – made the courageous decision to compensate the victims of the war with Japan who were forced to work, without demanding contributions or an apology from Japan. This removed the damage caused by a 2018 Korean court ruling that ordered two large Japanese companies to pay compensation to wartime forced labor victims, even though in Tokyo’s view, the matter was settled decades ago. Japan’s response to this was angry, and it imposed restrictions on exports of advanced technologies to South Korea, and South Korea responded by withdrawing from a joint intelligence agreement between the two parties, and imposed restrictions on its exports to Japan, and relations between the two parties deteriorated to a large extent.
But relations began to improve following Yule’s decision to compensate forced workers, and then he visited Tokyo and met with Kishida in the first official visit between the two countries since 2011, and Kishida exchanged a visit to Seoul, and the two countries abolished restrictions on trade between them.
opinions on foreign policy
Now the Camp David meeting could take the nascent trilateral alliance to a “new level,” as the three leaders pledged last May at the G-7 summit in Hiroshima. The informal atmosphere at the Camp David presidential retreat deepened ties between the three leaders.
The priority for the three leaders was to expand the range of military exercises and share intelligence regarding North Korean missile launches, while at the same time making it clear that their countries’ common security is closely intertwined. The ultimate, long-term goal should be to link the Japanese and South Korean missile systems directly rather than using the United States as an intermediary, and it is important for both countries to expand cooperation on cyber threats from North Korea.
Enhancing economic and military security was on the agenda of the trilateral summit, and Japan and South Korea were feeling unfair, as a result of provisions of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that provides a tax exemption for electric cars made only in North America. The recovery of trade relations between Seoul and Tokyo, following the abolition of export restrictions, has paved the way for stronger cooperation between the three countries in the chip industry, which will make the three countries more resilient in facing the challenges of this industry.
But major challenges remain, with Yul and Kishida’s approval ratings in public opinion polls struggling, and Yul facing resistance from the opposition Democratic Party to his attempts to improve relations with Japan. According to a Gallup poll conducted last March, 64% of the South Korean population said that their country should not rush into its reconciliation without a change in Japan’s positions, and 8% of the South Korean population said that the Japanese government regrets its colonial past.
One top is not enough
These dynamics show just how important the Camp David meeting is, as the support of the United States can bid Lyul and Kishida move forward along their friendship’s perilous path.
Of course, there are limits to what even the most skillful female diplomat can accomplish. South Korea does not intend to lose its relationship with China, which is its largest trading partner, and the same applies to Japan and the United States as well.
Indeed, repairing damaged relations between South Korea and Japan requires more than one summit, no matter how successful it may be. That is why it is very important that the three leaders commit to conducting regular meetings and establishing a triple hot line between them. Biden hopes that by institutionalizing the tripartite process, it will not be possible to return relations to their previous state, despite the fluctuations that characterize US-Japanese and South Korean politics.
This is an ambitious goal that will be seen on the basis of whether it can be achieved or not, but Biden deserves great appreciation for having devoted precious diplomatic capital to taking the tripartite relationship to such an advanced level and so quickly.
• * Writer for the «Washington Post»
• * A former CIA analyst
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2023-08-19 22:06:00
