The success of the Camp David Summit will hinge on the resilience of the Korea-Japan-US partnership in the face of the rising great power rivalry
For decades, Camp David, etched in Maryland, has been a seat of arduous diplomacy for United States (US) presidents. The rocky landscape of the Catoctin Mountain Park in which it is located has symbolically reflected the tough negotiations since US President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Winston Churchill at the presidential retreat in May 1943 to plan the Normandy Invasion. The most symbolic development related to the location was the Camp David Accords of 1978 when President Jimmy Carter brokered a peace deal between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar El-Sadat following a 13-day secret negotiation.
The political and symbolic significance of this meeting stands out as this first-ever standalone summit between the leaders of the three countries.
On 18 August, it was President Biden’s turn to recentre Camp David as an important location for brokering difficult deals when he struck a new trilateral agreement between Japan, South Korea, and the US, bringing two of the most historically fraught nations in Asia-Pacific on the negotiating table. The political and symbolic significance of this meeting stands out as this first-ever standalone summit between the leaders of the three countries. Although officials from the three countries have already met over 50 times in 2022 with there being 18 meetings so far in 2023, the first stand-alone summit among the US, Japan, and South Korea at Camp David adds mileage to the measures and the momentum that the Biden administration has been pursuing to strengthen the geopolitics of northeast Asian and in the larger Indo-Pacific.
The trilateral meeting between the three leaders and bringing South Korea and Japan under US leadership is important in substance and spirit for the Indo-Pacific region. As for specific components, an annual multidomain annual exercise between the three member countries is expected to assemble military cooperation in northeast Asia and present a unified front to China, North Korea, and Russia in an unprecedented way. The central pillar of the trilateral military cooperation hinged on a ballistic missile defence commitment, a multi-year trilateral exercise plan, a trilateral working group on cybersecurity and a coordinated and timely response by information sharing through the newly established hotline between the three countries.
The three countries also agreed to create an early warning system for disruptions to global supply chains besides the security and defence-related aspects that formed the key mandate for the meeting.
The other stated aim of the trilateral cooperation is to boost economic cooperation by countering unpredictability in the Indo-Pacific supply chains. The three countries also agreed to create an early warning system for disruptions to global supply chains besides the security and defence-related aspects that formed the key mandate for the meeting. The three countries intend to do this by establishing a Supply Chain Early Warning System Pilot which is expected to provide enough time for taking proactive measures during crises like the pandemic. Tied to this, is the promised support that this trilateral cooperation intends to extend through the G7-led Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII). The PGII aims to instil economic cooperation among the financial institutions for regional development by gathering additional funds for good infrastructure and reliable communication technology. This will provide financial alternatives to poorer and middle-income countries in the Indo-Pacific area to address deficits in a range of sectors including infrastructure and health—particularly in relation to cooperative research in fighting cancer. Perhaps, the most important aspect of the PGII is its potential as a counter to the BRI in the Indo-Pacific region in the long term. Finally, the trilateral cooperation envisages to launch a first-of-its-kind cooperation between the National Laboratories of the three member countries to augment scientific knowledge and technological capacities jointly, including a focus on critical and emerging technologies. This initiative binds the new trilateral partnership between Japan, South Korea, and the US to some of the rationales of the Quad countries creating ample convergences for inter-group cooperation between the two.
As President Biden is trying to revive US leadership in the Indo-Pacific, reassuring its Pacific allies in the region is an important component of his administration’s Indo-Pacific policy.
The trilateral cooperation has sought to bind the Indo-Pacific interests of the three countries through three major initiatives: Partners in the Blue Pacific, the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, and the Friends of the Mekong. As President Biden is trying to revive US leadership in the Indo-Pacific, reassuring its Pacific allies in the region is an important component of his administration’s Indo-Pacific policy. With successive strong policies against China in technology restrictions, steps which have signalled a strategic defence of Taiwan and a multisectoral ‘invest, align and compete’ strategy apropos China, the US has entered a long-term strategic competition with China in which it faces a multifaceted threat environment. As such, a preeminent aspect of its tackling-China strategy is the US’ multi-vector policy in the Indo-Pacific where working with different minilaterals is vital. In this context, the agreement between the leaders to establish an annual trilateral Indo-Pacific Dialogue assumes importance. The member countries have agreed that they will start a yearly Indo-Pacific Conversation led by respective Assistant Secretaries, aimed at working together on carrying out their individual strategies for the Indo-Pacific region. This will especially focus on building partnerships with countries in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.
The meeting is extremely significant from the perspective of both Tokyo and Seoul for three reasons. First, the Summit demonstrates the importance accorded by Washington to curating the trilateral partnership. As a Summit not held on the sidelines of other forums, it underscores the US commitment to peace and stability in Northeast Asia as well as the wider Indo-Pacific as it comes in the wake of an increased frequency of nuclear missile tests by an ever-volatile Pyongyang; an unpredictable and war-prone Russia; and Beijing’s concentrated efforts at unilaterally changing the regional status quo, particularly in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. Despite not having a formal security agreement in place between the three members yet, bilateral defence arrangements already exist. For Tokyo and Seoul, the bolstered US presence through a trilateral arrangement is a source of assurance and security against Pyongyang’s volatility, Russia’s unpredictability, and China’s aggressive advances.
The thawing of bilateral ties between the two countries is further reinforced by the advances in trilateral cooperation with the US.
Second, Northeast Asia’s geopolitics is undergoing a transformation brought on by the steadily unfolding rapprochement between Japan and South Korea. The two held their first joint summit earlier in March this year after a twelve-year hiatus and are also working actively to ensure that bilateral ties can move past the difficult history of the Japanese occupation of the peninsula. Under the leadership of President Yoon and Prime Minister Kishida, the two neighbours have revived traditional channels of cooperation and have also found fresh areas of partnership. The thawing of bilateral ties between the two countries is further reinforced by the advances in trilateral cooperation with the US.
Third, for years, China’s strategic leverage in Northeast Asia was based on the acrimony between Japan and South Korea—both being the first and second most important allies respectively of the US in the region. The meeting at Camp David, in a way, fundamentally alters this dynamic, marking the beginning of a clear departure from erstwhile equations to one that puts to rest all doubt about whether Tokyo and Seoul could align strategically. Beijing, expectedly, has labelled the Camp David summit as the potential start of a new Cold War doomed to end badly for both Japan and South Korea.
The true success of the Camp David Summit would hinge on the sustaining partnership and resilience of the trilateral partnership in the coming years in the face of rising regional tension due to each country’s complicated relationship with Beijing.
For now, the Camp David meeting is expected to be an annual affair among the three members with Washington looking to firm structures and institutionalise the partnership. The true success of the Camp David Summit would hinge on the sustaining partnership and resilience of the trilateral partnership in the coming years in the face of rising regional tension due to each country’s complicated relationship with Beijing. The strengthening China-Russia-North Korea axis is likely to test the new trilateral framework most astoundingly. For the US, a new trilateral framework in northeast Asia imparts synergy to its broader objectives in the Pacific by alliance strengthening. It serves the purpose outlined in US Indo-Pacific policy: “We are extending and modernizing that role and enhancing our capabilities to defend our interests and to deter aggression against U.S. territory and against our allies and partners.” Both Japan and South Korea stand to gain from the extended deterrence and security umbrella of the US in a manner that could cover a broad periphery in the Pacific theatre extending from the South Pacific to the Far East. If the AUKUS alliance concentrated American strategic alliance in the Pacific by focusing on long-term threats from China, the Camp David trilateral seeks to consolidate its network of hub-and-spokes system of alliance by dispersing its purpose across a wider range of security partners in the Pacific theatre.
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Vivek Mishra is Deputy Director – Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation. His work focuses on US foreign policy, domestic politics in the US, ...
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Pratnashree Basu is an Associate Fellow, Indo-Pacific at Observer Research Foundation, Kolkata, with the Strategic Studies Programme and the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy. She ...
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