Biden’s Camp David summit is historic – in more ways than one

The past and the future will collide at Camp David

President Joe Biden (L), greets Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (R), and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol (C) during the Camp David Trilateral Summit (AFP via Getty Images)

History will be made today at Camp David, when President Joe Biden meets with President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan. Not only is it President Biden’s first time hosting foreign leaders at the iconic presidential retreat in Maryland, but it marks the first time the leaders of the United States, Japan, and South Korea have met formally and exclusively as a tripartite group.

At issue is the increasing threat from China. While it is unlikely that a NATO-style alliance with a formal mutual defense pact will emerge, The New York Times reports that “Biden administration officials said the leaders would sign off on a formal ‘commitment to consult,’ an understanding that the three nations would treat any security threat to one of them as a threat to all of them requiring mutual discussion about how to respond.”

To understand why this summit is so monumental, one must understand not only our own moment in history – one in which China is threatening regional security in the Asia-Pacific rim – but the unresolved tensions between Japan and South Korea stretching back decades. The past and the future will collide at Camp David, making this a pivotal day in the history of all three nations.

If the 20^th century was largely defined by the conflict between communism and capitalism, the 21^st century is being defined by the clash of authoritarianism and democracy. That clash is likely to play out not in Europe or the Middle East, but in Asia. And Washington understands this. Beginning with President Barack Obama’s so-called “Pacific pivot” in the 2010s, the US has recognized that its national security and economic interests lie increasingly off its west coast, not its east. Both the Trump and Biden administrations have likewise understood this.

That is not without reason. China is the world’s second-largest economy, behind the United States, accounting for 18 percent of the global GDP last year. Even with its current economic slowdown, the general trajectory of China continuing to be an economic superpower shows no signs of stopping. It is the single largest manufacturing economy in the world, accounting for almost 29 percent of the global manufacturing output in 2019. At the same time, China has been beefing up its military to a point where it may soon outpace the United States. This year, it increased its military budget by 7.2 percent.

Meanwhile, China has become increasingly aggressive in the Pacific. Last year, US Indo-Pacific commander Admiral John C Aquilino warned that China had “fully militarized” three islands in the South China Sea. Just yesterday, The South China Morning Post reported that Beijing appears to be building a runway for small warplanes on an island also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan, while The Guardian reported on footage appearing to show Chinese military preparation for conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

A build-up of Chinese authoritarian, autocratic military power is obviously deeply concerning to democratic nations who have witnessed China’s antidemocratic crackdown in Hong Kong, its detainment and harassment of dissidents last year, its continued crackdown on dissent this year, and its ongoing human rights abuses against the Uyghurs. This includes South Korea and Japan, which is why Yoon and Kishida have come to Camp David – and in doing so, marked a new era in East Asian relations.

Despite both being capitalist democracies with similar international interests, South Korea and Japan do not have the easiest relationship. The two nations have fought one another on and off since the 7^th century. More recent developments have inflicted wounds that are incredibly slow to heal.

Occupying the peninsular nation in 1910, Japan would institute brutal colonial rule that would last until the end of the Second World War. This included forcing Koreans to work in factories or conscripting them, often against their will, into the Japanese military. Most famously and among the most horrific instances of Japanese oppression of its colonized peoples, tens of thousands of so-called “comfort women” were abducted from across Asia, including many from Korea, and forced into sex slavery by Imperial Japan.

South Korea has long demanded restitution and apology for these actions. Tokyo, for its part, has maintained that the 1965 treaty with Seoul which normalized relations settled the issue, and many Japanese leaders have been hesitant to even acknowledge such atrocities occurred.

For example, in 2015, after signing an agreement with South Korea on comfort women in which the Japanese foreign minister at the time acknowledged “the issue of comfort women, with an involvement of the Japanese military authorities at the time, was a grave affront to the honor and dignity of large numbers of women, and the Government of Japan is painfully aware of responsibilities from this perspective.” However, just three weeks later, then-Prime Minister Sinzo Abe told the National Assembly that “there was no document found that the comfort women were forcibly taken away,” undermining the very acknowledgement his own foreign minister had recently given.

That was then. This is now. The two nations seem to slowly be realizing that they cannot allow the past to prevent them from securing their mutual futures.

Meanwhile, speaking in May at a bilateral summit between the two nations in Seoul, Kishida said he has “strong pain in my heart as I think of the extreme difficulty and sorrow that many people had to suffer under the severe environment in those days.” He and Yoon agreed to work on resolving these past animosities so they can better cooperate on present and future security matters, including North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and the rising threat from Chinese autocracy.

So concerning is this warming of relations between the historic rivals that in July China’s foreign minister advised Tokyo and Seoul to align themselves with Beijing. Today, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, in what can be interpreted as a swipe at the United States, said that “the international community has its own judgment as to who is creating contradictions and increasing tensions” and that “attempts to form various exclusive groups and cliques and to bring bloc confrontation into the Asia-Pacific region are unpopular and will definitely spark vigilance and opposition in the countries of the region.”

No doubt it will. That does not mean the Camp David summit should not occur, though. China has already demonstrated an increased belligerence in the region, one that should rightly concern every democracy in the Indo-Pacific.

Old animosities can no longer be allowed to prevent likeminded nations from working together to preserve a liberal and democratic international order. The free world must come together to stand up to autocracy and authoritarianism. This summit between the United States, Japan, and South Korea is a good start – and a welcome sign that the world’s leaders are finally waking up to the frightening realities of our new multipolar world order.