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In keeping with the rustic retreat’s relaxed setting, the three wore jackets without ties.
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‘Breathtaking diplomacy’
Standing alongside Kishida and Yoon, Biden praised the leaders for their political courage in pursuing a rapprochement. He said they understood the world was “at an inflection point, where we’re called to lead in new ways, to work together, to stand together”.
“Critically, we’ve all committed to swiftly consult with each other in response to threats to any one of our countries from whatever source it occurs,” he said. “That means we’ll have a hotline to share information and co-ordinate our responses whenever there is a crisis in the region, or affecting any one of our countries.”
“Together we’re going to stand up for international law,” Biden said, and against “coercion”.
Without mentioning China by name, Kishisa said, “Unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force in the East and South China Seas are continuing”, while adding that the North Korean nuclear and missile threat was “only becoming ever larger”.
With Washington’s encouragement, Tokyo and Seoul are navigating their way past disputes dating to Japan’s 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean Peninsula.
US officials say those disputes are among the reasons the three countries are not currently pursuing a three-way mutual-defence pact like those Washington has separately with both Seoul and Tokyo – who are not themselves formal allies.
However, Kurt Campbell, Biden’s co-ordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs, said the summit represented “a breathtaking kind of diplomacy, that has been led by courageous leaders in both Japan and South Korea”.
“They have sometimes gone against the advice of their own counsellors and staff and taken steps that elevate the Japan-South Korea relationship into a new plane,” he said.
China views summit warily
Beijing has warned that US efforts to strengthen ties with South Korea and Japan could “increase tension and confrontation in the region”.
While South Korea, Japan and the United States want to avoid provoking Beijing, China believes Washington is trying to isolate it diplomatically and encircle it militarily.
Asked about charges levelled by China, Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters the aim was “explicitly not a NATO for the Pacific” and also said a trilateral alliance had not been set as an explicit goal.
Tensions in the South China Sea have flared between US ally the Philippines and China over a grounded warship that serves as a Philippine military outpost in the strategic waterway, a major global trade route.
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The White House, conscious of upcoming elections, wants to make the progress between South Korea and Japan hard to reverse by institutionalising routine co-operation across the board.
Biden, an 80-year-old Democrat seeking another four-year term in the 2024 presidential election, faces a likely opponent in Republican former president Donald Trump, who has voiced scepticism about whether Washington benefits from its traditional military and economic alliances.
South Korea has legislative elections next year and Japan must hold one before October 2025, and what analysts see as a still fragile rapprochement between the two nations remains controversial among the countries’ voters.
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