Don't count on Camp David

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

Opinion

Donald Kirk

Don't count on Camp David

Posted : 2023-08-24 16:35

Updated : 2023-08-24 16:35

By Donald Kirk

President Biden should be credited with a terrific public relations success. In less than one day, he got the leaders of South Korea and Japan to appear in full accord on mutual defense against all the bad guys in the region, mostly North Korea but also China.

The word "historic" came up innumerable times in all that Biden, South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said and did in just a few hours in the fresh air of Camp David, nestled in low-lying mountains north of Washington.

If the three made real history, however, it was mostly because they got together, inked a couple of documents and shook hands.

Maybe the image of the leaders of South Korea and Japan looking so friendly was significant, but a reading of what they actually signed shows the vacuity of the tryst. In a mix of fawning double-talk and self-congratulations, they actually agreed on nothing substantive.

The biggest laugh may be the fuss they made over some kind of hotline over which they could talk right away about anything that was bothering them. Come on. What's a "hotline"? These days it's nothing for anyone with a phone to call anyone just about anywhere on earth.

Would this hotline rest on the desks of the American, Korean and Japanese leaders? Might it be found in the offices of the defense chiefs or the U.S. secretary of state and the foreign ministers of Korea and Japan? Is a clerk already standing by ― or more likely sleeping by ― the phone ready to pick it up at the first ring and hand it to another clerk who will hand it to an assistant who will give it to a chief of staff who will give it to the leader?

Just as silly as talk of a "hotline" is the assurance that the American, Korean and Japanese leaders will confer at any sign of danger. At the first few words of alarm, will two of the three ride to the rescue of their beleaguered fellow leader as befitting the meaning of trilateralism, an understanding that's not quite an alliance?

This assurance is about as meaningless as the hotline nonsense. In the event of a war, the conditions at the time, and the nature of the leadership of each of the three countries will determine their willingness to rush to defend one another. If Donald Trump is elected the next American president, God forbid, we can be sure of nothing.

Trump, we hate to recall, destroyed the deal that had committed Iran not to go nuclear, and he also jettisoned a great economic and trading arrangement that would have bound nations on both sides of the Pacific in common cause against China's commercial inroads. Then, for good measure, he talked about pulling U.S. forces from both Korea and Japan.

Trump or a Trump clone would not be the only menace to instant cooperation among the trilateral leaders. We can be none too sure what kind of person Koreans will elect next. The 1987 "democracy" constitution bans Yoon from serving more than one term. He has less than four years to go in his five-year term.

South Korean presidents since 1987 have swung from right to left to conservative and back again. Who can be sure the next Korean president will want to stick to the terms of this "historic" agreement that Mr. Biden believes will endure for the ages?

And what about Japan? Granted, the country is pretty certain to remain in the clutches of the same Liberal Democratic Party that's ruled the roost for most of Japan's post-war history, but can we be confident the fundamentally conservative, nationalist Japanese regime will want to go on appreciating Korean sensitivities?

If Yoon has appeared conciliatory to the Japanese, he is still besieged by a range of issues. Controversy surrounds the deal he made, in a bow to Japan, for Korea, not Japan, to pay Koreans enslaved to Japanese companies during the war. Then there's the never-ending question of compensation for the few remaining "comfort women" and their heirs. And will Japanese and Koreans ever agree on textbook revisions of colonial and imperial history, among a slew of hot topics?

For that matter, can anyone imagine the Japanese telling the Koreans, those huge rocks that you call Dokdo and we say is Takeshima, in waters you call the East Sea and we say is the Sea of Japan, is yours? Korea may cling to Dokdo forever, but the Japanese aren't going to relinquish their demand.

Contrary to Chinese claims that Biden, Yoon and Kishida conspired to set up a "mini-NATO," there's no solid guarantee of anything. The U.S., Korea and Japan are not treaty-bound to defend one another, to defend Taiwan, or to join NATO nations in the defense of Ukraine.

What counts is that these three, Biden, Yoon and Kishida, reviewed carefully crafted documents and then exchanged pleasantries. That's better than nothing but still no firm assurance of security for the region.

Donald Kirk (www.donaldkirk.com) has been covering war and peace in Asia for decades.