WASHINGTON (Yonhap) -- With robust relations between South Korea, the United States, and Japan crucial to deal with China's re-rise, Washington should seek a role in resolving historical and territorial spats between Seoul and Tokyo, a scholarly report said Wednesday.
"It is not the place of the U.S. government to render judgment on sensitive historical issues; however, the United States must exert full diplomatic efforts to diffuse tensions and refocus the attention of its allies on core national security interests and the future," former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Harvard University professor Joseph Nye said in the report published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Titled, "the U.S.-Japan Alliance: Anchoring Stability in Asia," it provides far-reaching views on the U.S. alliance with Japan and trilateral cooperation with South Korea at a time when China is increasing its economic and military power.
The report comes as the U.S. has suffered a setback in its push to bolster tripartite ties with its two key Asian allies due to their renewed diplomatic row over shared history and the sovereignty over Dokdo, a set of rocky islets in the East Sea.
The issues are emotional. Many South Koreans believe that Japan has not sufficiently atoned for its wartime atrocities and the brutal colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945.
In a surprise move, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak visited Dokdo, controlled by Seoul but also claimed by Tokyo, last week.
It was an unprecedented trip for a South Korean leader.
The CSIS report said both South Korea and the U.S. should "resist the temptation to resurrect deep historical differences and to utilize nationalist sentiments for domestic political purposes."
It did not directly mention Lee's tour of Dokdo, largely uninhabited outcroppings surrounded by rich fishing grounds and possible gas deposits.
"While we understand the complex emotional and domestic-political dynamics of such issues, political acts like the recent ROK (South Korea) Supreme Court decision allowing individual reparation cases to be heard, or efforts by the government of Japan to lobby local U.S. officials not to erect comfort women monuments, only inflame sentiments and distract South Korean and Japanese leaders and their respective publics from the broader strategic priorities they share and must act upon," the report said.
Tens of thousands of Korean and other Asian women, called comfort women, were forced to offer sexual services to Japanese soldiers during World War II.
The report urged Seoul and Tokyo to "reexamine their bilateral ties through a realpolitik lens."
Realpolitik is a German term that emphasizes practicality over ideology or ethics.
The trio also should pool their diplomatic capital to jointly deter North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons and help shape a regional environment best suited to respond to China's rise, it added.
Some diplomatic sources, however, said the authors of the report, placing all focus on countering China's rise, seem to regard the complicated Seoul-Tokyo relations as marginal.
"Although the U.S. understands that history and territorial disputes between South Korea and Japan are sensitive, it tends to see the matter as marginal," an informed source said. "South Korea's firm stance is that those are both sensitive and central issues."