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The meeting was the clearest sign yet that China’s aggressive regional expansion and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is driving democracies in Asia to completely rethink their strategic situation. Japan is doubling its defense budget over the next five years. South Korea is reconciling with the country that occupied its land and abused its people during the last century. While most eyes were focused on the U.S.-China bilateral relationship, the Biden administration was working behind the scenes to take advantage of Beijing’s stumbles to bring these frenemies together after decades of estrangement. The summit shows their strategy is working — but it only goes so far and the clock is ticking.
“The strategic plates have shifted,” U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel told me. “The one thing that China never wanted to see is happening.”
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But it’s telling that the first reporter called on at the summit news conference chose to ask Biden why Asian countries should have confidence in the United States’ long-term commitment. After all, Biden’s predecessor (and likely opponent next year) threatened to abandon Asian allies, shook them down for money, wanted to withdraw U.S. troops from the region, and spent his time clumsily courting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
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“This isn’t just about one summit,” Biden replied. “What makes today different is it actually launches a series of initiatives that are actually institutional changes in how we deal with one another. … And all of this will create momentum.”
In other words, the Biden team is acutely aware of how even big diplomatic accomplishments can be undone. Remember, these are some of the same people who worked on the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran. The Biden administration has 17 months left in its current term to cement the three countries’ cooperation on security, economics, technology, supply chains and development.
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South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida are also taking big political risks by pursuing policies such as coordinating technology restrictions on China and deepening missile-defense cooperation, which will surely irritate the Chinese government. Both Japan and South Korea depend heavily on the Chinese economy, and Beijing is known to use such leverage against foreign leaders who irk them.
“We’re trying to build really firm foundations that weather the changes of the politics in any of our countries,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told me during an interview, adding that all three leaders want to build something “that can command support from the institutions of each country indefinitely out into the future.”
The work to make the Camp David summit happen began even before Biden took office, Sullivan said. The president decided early on he wanted to devote significant resources to this push. In April 2021, Sullivan hosted his counterparts from Tokyo and Seoul in Annapolis to kick off the effort.
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Sullivan explained to me how the administration approached the allies: “I basically said, ‘Look, I have instructions from the president, as does Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken, to really work on this trilateral cooperation, to try to build it out in a way where it becomes an enduring feature of the Indo-Pacific security architecture and economic architecture — and we’ve got to get to work on this.’”
In May 2021, Blinken and his two counterparts met on the sidelines of the Group of Seven Summit in Britain. After that, they would meet together whenever the three were in the same place at the same time. Similar trilateral meetings sprouted up among the allies’ defense and military officials.
Luck is sometimes defined as the intersection of preparedness and opportunity. Biden caught two significant breaks when new leaders took the helm in both Japan and South Korea. Kishida, who took office in October 2021, hails from the more South Korea-friendly side of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Yoon, who took office in May 2022, had fond childhood memories of Japan, where his father was a professor.
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These three leaders came together for the first time in June 2022 during the NATO summit in Madrid. The symbolism could not have been clearer. Japan and South Korea were both willing to put aside their historic differences and join with Western countries to coordinate responses to the combined China-Russia threat.
Last week’s meeting in Camp David, with the famous backdrop and the personal touches (Biden and Kishida called each other “Fumio” and “Joe”), was designed to send the message that the United States is willing to make new long-term commitments to its allies. The risk is that Camp David could end up being the high-water mark of that effort rather than a steppingstone.
“In the blocking and tackling of diplomacy, you often gain a yard here or couple yards there, and then sometimes you get a big open run up the middle for 10 yards. … That’s what this is,” Emanuel told me. The job now, the ambassador added, is to maintain that intensity during the implementation phase.
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Put together with other Biden efforts in Asia, a new strategic architecture for the region becomes visible. There’s also the Quad group (the United States, Japan, Australia, India); AUKUS (Australia, Britain and the United States); and JAROPUS (Japan, the Philippines and the United States), an acronym Emanuel himself coined.
These various relationships do not add up to an Asian version of NATO. Instead, they comprise a network of overlapping relationships that form what Sullivan calls “a latticework approach” to responding to China’s regional expansion. Right now, the military aspects are the most developed, while the economic and trade side is the most lacking. But if officials in Beijing are wondering who is most responsible for driving these countries together, they need only to look in the mirror.
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President Biden’s summit last week at Camp David with the leaders of Japan and South Korea was an historic, hard-fought achievement for the governments of all three allies. The question is whether the Biden administration can do enough in the time it has left to ensure this progress can’t be reversed. Let’s hope so.
The meeting was the clearest sign yet that China’s aggressive regional expansion and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is driving democracies in Asia to completely rethink their strategic situation. Japan is doubling its defense budget over the next five years. South Korea is reconciling with the country that occupied its land and abused its people during the last century. While most eyes were focused on the U.S.-China bilateral relationship, the Biden administration was working behind the scenes to take advantage of Beijing’s stumbles to bring these frenemies together after decades of estrangement. The summit shows their strategy is working — but it only goes so far and the clock is ticking.
“The strategic plates have shifted,” U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel told me. “The one thing that China never wanted to see is happening.”
But it’s telling that the first reporter called on at the summit news conference chose to ask Biden why Asian countries should have confidence in the United States’ long-term commitment. After all, Biden’s predecessor (and likely opponent next year) threatened to abandon Asian allies, shook them down for money, wanted to withdraw U.S. troops from the region, and spent his time clumsily courting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“This isn’t just about one summit,” Biden replied. “What makes today different is it actually launches a series of initiatives that are actually institutional changes in how we deal with one another. … And all of this will create momentum.”
In other words, the Biden team is acutely aware of how even big diplomatic accomplishments can be undone. Remember, these are some of the same people who worked on the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran. The Biden administration has 17 months left in its current term to cement the three countries’ cooperation on security, economics, technology, supply chains and development.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida are also taking big political risks by pursuing policies such as coordinating technology restrictions on China and deepening missile-defense cooperation, which will surely irritate the Chinese government. Both Japan and South Korea depend heavily on the Chinese economy, and Beijing is known to use such leverage against foreign leaders who irk them.
“We’re trying to build really firm foundations that weather the changes of the politics in any of our countries,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told me during an interview, adding that all three leaders want to build something “that can command support from the institutions of each country indefinitely out into the future.”
The work to make the Camp David summit happen began even before Biden took office, Sullivan said. The president decided early on he wanted to devote significant resources to this push. In April 2021, Sullivan hosted his counterparts from Tokyo and Seoul in Annapolis to kick off the effort.
Sullivan explained to me how the administration approached the allies: “I basically said, ‘Look, I have instructions from the president, as does Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken, to really work on this trilateral cooperation, to try to build it out in a way where it becomes an enduring feature of the Indo-Pacific security architecture and economic architecture — and we’ve got to get to work on this.’”
In May 2021, Blinken and his two counterparts met on the sidelines of the Group of Seven Summit in Britain. After that, they would meet together whenever the three were in the same place at the same time. Similar trilateral meetings sprouted up among the allies’ defense and military officials.
Luck is sometimes defined as the intersection of preparedness and opportunity. Biden caught two significant breaks when new leaders took the helm in both Japan and South Korea. Kishida, who took office in October 2021, hails from the more South Korea-friendly side of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Yoon, who took office in May 2022, had fond childhood memories of Japan, where his father was a professor.
These three leaders came together for the first time in June 2022 during the NATO summit in Madrid. The symbolism could not have been clearer. Japan and South Korea were both willing to put aside their historic differences and join with Western countries to coordinate responses to the combined China-Russia threat.
Last week’s meeting in Camp David, with the famous backdrop and the personal touches (Biden and Kishida called each other “Fumio” and “Joe”), was designed to send the message that the United States is willing to make new long-term commitments to its allies. The risk is that Camp David could end up being the high-water mark of that effort rather than a steppingstone.
“In the blocking and tackling of diplomacy, you often gain a yard here or couple yards there, and then sometimes you get a big open run up the middle for 10 yards. … That’s what this is,” Emanuel told me. The job now, the ambassador added, is to maintain that intensity during the implementation phase.
Put together with other Biden efforts in Asia, a new strategic architecture for the region becomes visible. There’s also the Quad group (the United States, Japan, Australia, India); AUKUS (Australia, Britain and the United States); and JAROPUS (Japan, the Philippines and the United States), an acronym Emanuel himself coined.
These various relationships do not add up to an Asian version of NATO. Instead, they comprise a network of overlapping relationships that form what Sullivan calls “a latticework approach” to responding to China’s regional expansion. Right now, the military aspects are the most developed, while the economic and trade side is the most lacking. But if officials in Beijing are wondering who is most responsible for driving these countries together, they need only to look in the mirror.
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