US President Joe Biden invited Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Seok Yeol to a summit meeting on August 18 at Camp David near Washington, D.C. This marks the first time the three leaders meeting on their own accord, and not on the sidelines of a multilateral conference. It is also the first time Biden hosts a foreign leader at Camp David since taking office, which underscores the great importance the White House has attached to these two Asian allies.
The summit is set to cover a wide range of topics, but will focus on security issues involving the Taiwan Strait and the Korean Peninsula. Since taking office, Biden has tried to combine the strength of allies to serve the strategic interests of the US in the name of military and economic security. With Russia in the midst of the war with Ukraine, the US has turned its attention to the Indo-Pacific region and has taken aim at the Chinese Communist Party.
On the military-security front, Biden has continued the Indo-Pacific strategy of the previous Trump administration, and has strengthened the deployment of military forces in the first island chain in the Western Pacific. Allies such as the Philippines, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are the main partners of US military cooperation. For example, Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun recently reported that the US and Japan are expected to reach an agreement on the joint development of interceptor missiles during their Camp David meeting. Such missiles are to intercept weapons designed to evade existing ballistic missile defense systems, such as the hypersonic warheads being developed by China, Russia and North Korea.
On the economic-security front, on August 9, Biden signed an Executive Order on outbound investment, restricting US investments in China in certain sensitive high-tech areas. This new ban is seen as one of the most stringent measures in the US strategic competition with China to date. Since the November 2022 summit in Phnom Penh, the US, Japan, and South Korea have already engaged twice in economic and security dialogues. This time at the David Camp summit, a joint statement is likely to emphasize economic security and cooperation among the three countries in areas such as cutting-edge technology in order to deal with China’s so-called “economic coercion.”
I personally think that the David Camp summit was sensational before it is held because it has at least the following five points of significance. First, Biden’s greatest diplomatic achievement is to make Japan and South Korea put aside their historical grudges for the moment and take part in the “battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies,” as he put it, and to “prove democracy works” in the light of their common security interests. Second, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a press conference before the summit that what one “can expect to see coming out of this summit is collaboration on a trilateral basis that is further institutionalized in a variety of ways, to include regular meetings at a variety of levels – senior levels – in our governments.” “Institutionalized” means that even if there is a change of government in the future, it will be difficult to reverse the defense cooperation between the three sides. Third, according to James R. Holmes, a professor of maritime strategy at the US Naval War College, US military deployments now resemble those in early Cold War. The Cold War was characterized by the emergence of bloc politics. The alliance between the US, Japan, and South Korea will compel China, Russia, and North Korea to “team up,” which will lead to drastic changes in the strategic landscape of Northeast Asia after the Cold War. Fourth, as shown by the post-war international political development, the collective security system could not provide sufficient security for the member states, and each country pursued “absolute security” by expanding its armaments, which inevitably led to a crowding-out effect in the distribution of resources, affecting the expenditures of the local economy and social welfare. Lastly, the Sino-US competitive relationship will affect the “four seas,” namely the Taiwan Strait, the East China Sea, the South China Sea, and the Yellow Sea. The South China Sea is another battleground for the future Sino-US tug-of-war. The wrestle between the US, Japan and South Korea, and China, Russia and North Korea is set to force Southeast Asian countries to take sides.
（Chao Chun-shan, Professor Emeritus, Tamkang University）
(Translated to English by Chen Cheng-Yi)
