Donald Trump’s hostile signals over Greenland and the aftermath of the Venezuela attack have raised fears in Japan and South Korea that Washington is no longer committed to its allies in East Asia.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung received a very warm welcome from Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi during his visit to Japan this week, with the two leaders pictured exchanging gifts in Nara, Takaichi’s hometown, and even playing the drums together.
The two-day summit ended with Lee and Takaichi pledging to make headway on various bilateral issues.
The bonhomie was even more noteworthy given that the two leaders come from different ends of the political spectrum, with Takaichi a conservative hawk and Lee a committed progressive. Their parties have had sharp words for each other in the past.
But analysts say Tokyo and Seoul feel the need to present a united front — not only to face China’s growing power in northeast Asia and the unpredictable regime in North Korea, but also because of their shared concerns about their nominally closest ally, the United States.
Those fears have spiked after Washington’s attack on Venezuela earlier this month. The military operation was brief and ended with the seizure of President Nicolas Maduro, but it also signaled a major geopolitical shift and the rising US focus on the Western hemisphere. Commenting on the attack, US President Donald Trump invoked the 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine about Washington’s supremacy in that part of the world, dubbing its revival the “Donroe Doctrine” in reference to his own name.
Is Washington still committed to Asia?
The worry in Seoul and Tokyo is that Trump is becoming less interested in the peace and security of northeast Asia, which could encourage other nations to test the US administration in the region.
“Both Japan and Korea have reason to feel disquiet about the so-called ‘Donroe Doctrine,’ as it portends the risk of a more isolationist-leaning US that is prepared to leave its allies to fend for themselves,” said Erwin Tan, a professor of international politics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul.
“I would say that (South) Korea feels this rather more acutely than Japan and European allies of the US,” he told DW.
“Japan benefits from its status as an archipelagic country, as a result of which it does not face a serious land warfare threat,” Tan pointed out. “Japan’s existing air and naval capabilities assuage its fears of a land invasion to some degree.”
“Europe benefits from the existing nuclear arsenals of the UK and France, as well as the potential capacity for a larger pool of like-minded allies, even if the response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine among some European countries has been somewhat lackluster,” he said.
Japan and South Korea forced to step up
Current security issues in East Asia have been brewing for decades and have only grown more heated in recent years with China aggressively expanding its military, seizing the atolls of the South China Sea and making aggressive moves towards Taiwan, which it sees as its own territory. China’s ally North Korea has also forged a new alliance with Russia that is allowing it more leeway in dealing with Seoul.
In turn, US allies South Korea and Japan are forced to consider that its ties with the US are now no longer as rock solid as they once were.
In August 2023, President Joe Biden hosted the first US-Japan-South Korea summit at Camp David, creating a three-way security alliance designed to counter shared threats by deepening military, economic and technological ties.
“There is a growing feeling in Seoul that in order to keep the trilateral arrangement going, it needs to have a good relationship with Tokyo — and both sides now have reached the conclusion that it is up to Korea and Japan to pull the alliance along instead of the US taking the lead,” said Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi, senior non-resident fellow with the Atlantic Council.
Biden’s successor Trump has signaled a willingness to turn on long-standing US allies, as seen in the growing crisis over Greenland.
South Korea and Japan are “watching what is going on elsewhere and hoping that over the rest of Trump’s term, nothing goes wrong here,” said Hinata-Yamaguchi.
He added that hope does not amount to a reliable tactic, so both Asian governments are also making more concrete plans.
Hunting for new allies in the West
In Nara, Takaichi and Lee committed to forming closer security ties, working to bring about the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, greater multilateral cooperation, economic cooperation and supply chain resilience.
And while they are also working hard to keep the US committed to the existing arrangement — Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi met with the head of the US Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii on Monday to emphasize the need for cooperation to preserve regional security — both South Korea and Japan are broadening their defense horizons.
Seoul also held talks this week with defense officials from the Netherlands, looking at expanding cooperation in the development of weapons, high-level exchanges and the space and cyber security domains, while Japan is pushing ahead with the development of a next-generation fighter aircraft with the UK and Italy. For the first time, British paratroopers took part in a joint exercise with their Japanese and US counterparts in Japan this week.
The nuclear option
Hankuk University lecturer Erwin Tan points out that in 1969, the then-US president Richard Nixon put forward the Nixon Doctrine, under which the US military presence in the Indo-Pacific would be scaled back.
That position was so alarming to the South Korean government that President Park Chung-hee declared that he would be pursuing an independent nuclear capability. The crisis was resolved without South Korea obtaining its own nuclear weapons, but the debate has rekindled in recent years.
“In 2020, amidst concern over Trump winning re-election, there was public debate in both Korea and Japan about the possibility of them developing independent nuclear arsenals,” Tan said.
“I have no doubt that policymakers in both countries have been undertaking quiet discussions on the matter,” he said.
Source : https://www.dw.com/en/seoul-tokyo-watch-us-foreign-policy-twists-with-rising-fear/a-75516264