Top Biden officials tout improved Seoul-Tokyo ties, cooperation against NK threats as key policy feats
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during the 2024 Australia-U.S. Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) at the State Department in Washington, D.C., Aug. 5. Reuters-Yonhap
Top U.S. officials highlighted "unprecedented" defense and economic cooperation between South Korea, the United States and Japan, and tighter multinational collaboration against North Korean threats as feats of President Joe Biden's Indo-Pacific diplomacy in an opinion piece published Monday.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan wrote the piece in The Washington Post, underlining "tremendous results" of Biden's policy strategy while noting that America's standing in the region was "at its lowest point in decades" at the time of his inauguration in January 2021.
Their joint op-ed came as Vice President Kamala Harris is set to be formally nominated this week as the Democratic Party's flag-bearer for the Nov. 5 general election, where she is to take on former President and Republican nominee Donald Trump.
"President Biden brought together Japan and South Korea — two countries with a difficult history — to join the United States in the Camp David trilateral summit, spurring unprecedented defense and economic cooperation among our countries," they said in the op-ed.
They were referring to the Camp David summit, the first-ever standalone trilateral summit among Seoul, Washington and Tokyo, which yielded a series of landmark agreements, including the leaders' "commitment to consult" each other in the event of a shared challenge.
Blinken, Austin and Sullivan also stressed that under Biden, the U.S. upgraded the old "hub-and-spoke" model of diplomacy with an "integrated, interconnected" network of partnerships, pointing to the trilateral partnership among Seoul, Washington and Tokyo, and the AUKUS security pact, which consists of the U.S., Britain and Australia, among other groupings.
U.S. President Joe Biden arrives at Delaware Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Del., Aug. 2. AFP-Yonhap
The officials said that Washington's security cooperation with allies and partners is paying dividends, as they pointed to North Korea's nuclear saber-rattling and China's "dangerous and provocative actions at sea" as "serious" security challenges in the Indo-Pacific.
"We're locking arms with our allies and partners against North Korea's destabilizing weapons programs," they said, stressing that the U.S.' security partnerships across the Indo-Pacific have become "more effective and more united."
Though they did not mention Trump by name, the three officials took note of the foreign policy environment when Biden took office, and claimed that a strategy by Biden and Harris has led to the "transformation" of America's approach to the Indo-Pacific.
"But when President Biden took office, America's standing in this critical part of the world was at its lowest point in decades. The region was still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. Our allies and partners feared that the United States had become an unreliable friend," they said.
"An increasingly assertive China was taking advantage of America's turn inward to advance its alternative vision of the world — a vision hostile to U.S. interests. So, President Biden instructed us to transform our approach to the region."
At the core of Biden's policy strategy is to reinvigorate and leverage a network of America's allies and partners to confront shared challenges together.
The officials also noted that South Korea has adopted a new strategy to "surge" economic investment in key industries in Southeast Asia, strengthening supply chains the U.S. economy relies on. They were referring to Seoul's regional strategy seeking a "free, peaceful and prosperous" Indo-Pacific. (Yonhap)