Domestic Politics Threaten Hard-Won Success in East Asia

On Aug. 18, the leaders of the United States, South Korea, and Japan met for their first stand-alone summit at Camp David. Simply gathering for a leaders’ meeting would have been significant enough, given the thawing of a previously frozen Seoul-Tokyo relationship. But U.S. President Joe Biden, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida went far beyond a symbolic meeting.

The joint statement that resulted was impressively detailed, and the plans for new cooperation both comprehensive and wide-ranging. The Camp David summit is a testament that the convergence of political wills and political capital can transcend deep-seated historical animosity and bring countries together on shared challenges. But lasting trilateral cooperation is still an uncertain prospect: Leadership changes, innate fragility in this a trilateral grouping, and wedge-driving tactics by Pyongyang and Beijing could derail the hard work put in by the governments of today.

The bitter colonial history between Japan and South Korea has long kept them at arm’s length from each other despite their shared alliance with the United States. Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo used to have a dedicated mechanism called the Trilateral Coordination Oversight Group, which was established in 1999 because of the North Korean nuclear threat. It evolved into playing an important role in coordinating ministerial meetings, intelligence sharing, and joint military exercises. But the group dissolved after its members failed to coordinate divergent policy approaches on North Korea in the early 2000s, and animosity between Seoul and Tokyo over historical memory continued to mire the two legs of the triangle. The six-party talks then took over as the main vehicle to denuclearize North Korea.

Since then, shared interests and common threats from North Korea and China were never enough to bring the three countries together. The Camp David trilateral was made possible because of the unprecedented leadership and political courage by Yoon and Kishida to begin resetting relations despite criticism and skepticism at home, paired with Biden’s diplomatic prowess in bringing his Asian allies together.

Members of South Korea’s opposition coalition, which holds a supermajority in its National Assembly, as well as leftists in the country, have criticized Yoon’s efforts to improve relations with Tokyo as “humiliation diplomacy” and “submission diplomacy.” Kishida has faced pressure from conservative nationalist factions in his party, which he relies on for political survival in Japan. They oppose providing Seoul with any concessions on historical issues or conciliatory gestures, distrust Seoul, and are critical of South Korea. Anti-Japan sentiment and anti-Korea racism exist in both publics as well.

Yoon was able to put his conviction to mend relations with Japan into action—something his conservative predecessors were unable to do on such a sensitive and unpopular issue—because Yoon is an outsider conservative, not a party man, who does not feel the same pressures as longtime politicos. He also governs a country with an imperial presidency granted by South Korea’s constitution—especially when it comes to foreign policy, which generally doesn’t require National Assembly approval.

Kishida, for his part, was skeptical and cautious for most of the past year, especially because he was serving as Japan’s foreign minister in 2015 when Seoul and Tokyo struck the “comfort woman” agreement, only to see it erode in 2018 under a leftist Korean government. But Kishida eventually came around and has apparently bet on the latest momentum despite influential Korea-skeptic factions in his own party. Interlocutors say that it was a personal decision to work on mending ties as Japan’s prime minister after witnessing the Yoon administration’s efforts. Also, the largest faction of Korea critics in his party has not been unified since the assassination of its leader, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Camp David was a vital opportunity to revive, upgrade, and institutionalize the three-way cooperation on shared threats and strategic interests at a pressing moment in regional stability and geopolitics. China continues to coerce its neighbors and interfere with liberal democratic values in the Indo-Pacific. North Korea aims to tip the regional balance of power in the favor of itself and other nuclear-armed authoritarian regimes. Russia seeks to rewrite the rules-based international order through aggression and revanchism.

One of the most notable deliverables on security issues at Camp David was the leaders’  commitment to consult each other and use a new three-way hotline in times of crisis involving North Korea and China. They also launched defense initiatives for annual military exercises and deeper missile defense cooperation in order to be prepared to respond to a range of contingencies. Their joint documents even mentioned Taiwan and China by name in  another bold move for Seoul, which has typically chosen to take a more ambiguous stance on China policy for fear of economic retaliation.

As momentous and historic as the Camp David agreements were, this trilateral grouping is innately and structurally fragile. South Korea-Japan relations will continue to ebb and flare up in the future, impacting trilateral cooperation. Communicating through hotlines is not embedded in Northeast Asian relations, where common practice is to refuse to pick up the phone when times get tough.

Seoul would not cooperate with Japan if South Korea’s next president is a progressive—the far left is very nationalistic and harbors deep anti-Japan sentiment because of Tokyo’s colonial and wartime crimes. The same outcome could come from Japan if a far-right conservative leader becomes its next prime minister, or if conservative Japanese leaders enrage the South Korean public by further whitewashing Japan’s colonial actions. The return of Trumpism in the United States could also put a quick end to trilateral cooperation.

Although there are no guarantees, ensuring a regular summit among Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo might give trilateral cooperation a chance at lasting beyond the current leaders. Both South Korea and Japan operate in a top-down manner, in which interest and directives need to come from the president’s or prime minister’s office. Seoul and Tokyo will need to engage in active public diplomacy to raise awareness on the importance of three-way cooperation, and civil society organizations and think tanks in all three countries can help foster and support the spirit of the Camp David summit.

It is important to band together and strengthen cohesion and solidarity because security and economic security are at stake for all three countries. Their biggest advantage is shared democratic values that underpin common principles and leadership, which should transcend parochial aims in their respective countries to work toward bigger visions. Each country’s economic, technological, and military strengths and talent can come together to form a combined powerhouse that drives regional and global prosperity.

Chemistry and personalities matter in diplomacy and high politics. In April, Yoon unexpectedly won the hearts of Americans when he sang “American Pie” at Biden’s state dinner and reaffirmed his country’s commitment to liberal democratic values and nuclear-weapons abstinence. Official photos from Camp David showed friendliness and solidarity between Yoon and Kishida. All three governments should seize on this moment and push ahead boldly with both current agreements and ambitious issues in the future, before presidential election cycles and common adversaries test or even strain the durability of their commitments.

Such ambition should include paving the way for tabletop exercises and military drills among all three countries in scenarios involving North Korea’s use of a nuclear weapon in Asia, a Taiwan crisis, and a contingency in the South China Sea. Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo should train for various scenarios regarding China in a savvy way, where the skills practiced in benign drills with fake targets can later be applied to a real contingency with a real target.

Such exercises would be a useful way to practice interoperability among the three countries, which could be applied to any regional or global challenge in the future. After all, it is horrifyingly conceivable that East Asia could experience a simultaneous conflict involving China and North Korea, both nuclear-armed adversaries, in which one war could expand into another.

Building effective habits of cooperation sooner rather than later could also help create pathway dependencies for sustained trilateral cooperation if they are undergirded by political leadership. Too much is at stake for a cautious, wait-and-see approach. Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo should work now to solidify a lasting, united front that can weather the storms of the future.