Biden said the three countries would establish a hotline to discuss responses to the threats, the Associated Press reported. He announced the agreements, including what the leaders called the “Camp David Principles,” at the end of his talks with South Korean President Yun Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
“Our countries are stronger and the world will be safer if we stand together. And I know that this belief is shared by all three,” Biden said. He argued, as did American, South Korean and Japanese officials, that the summit was “not about China” but focused on broader security issues. However, the leaders said in a joint closing statement that they “strongly oppose any unilateral attempt to change the status quo in Indo-Pacific waters.” Yoon also noted the threat posed by North Korea, saying the three leaders agreed to enhance “the joint capability to respond to North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, which is more sophisticated than ever.”
The United States, Japan and South Korea have agreed to a new security “duty of consultation” that requires them to speak to each other in the event of a crisis or security threat in the Pacific. According to a senior Biden administration official, the compromise is intended to show that the three countries have a “fundamentally interconnected security environment” and that a threat to one is a “threat to all.” Under this commitment, the three countries agree to consult, share information and align their messages in the face of a threat or crisis, the agency source said.
In the meantime, the sources noted, the meeting could have far-reaching resonant consequences. For Biden, it was pushing two of America’s closest Asian allies, South Korea and Japan, to further enhance security and economic cooperation between them. The historical rivals were divided by differing views on the history of World War II and Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945. On the other hand, many in Japan fear that greater security cooperation will lead the country to an economic Cold War with China, its largest trading partner. Biden’s predecessor and potential successor, Republican Donald Trump, has stunned South Korea during his White House tenure by talking of reducing the US military presence on the Korean peninsula. “If a far-left South Korean president and a far-right Japanese leader come to power in their respective countries, or even if Trump or someone like him wins in the US, Biden, Yoon and Kishida have been doing it.” they’re working right now,” said Duyon Kim, a senior fellow for the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.
Efforts to maintain trilateral relations will not go without a reaction from the PRC and the DPRK. Beijing sees the strengthening of this trilateral cooperation as the first steps of a Pacific variant of NATO, a transatlantic military alliance, that is forming against it. In addition, US and two Asian officials expect that Pyongyang will inevitably react harshly to the meeting, possibly with new ballistic missile tests and harsh rhetoric.
