The Camp David summit of U.S., Japanese, and South Korean leaders confirms China’s growing threat and America’s premier role in resistance. It also manifests greater comity among democracies against increasingly aggressive dictatorships, of which China is the most threatening. An historic agreement reveals that all three nations see China as the looming danger.
America is the world’s largest economy, Japan is the third, and South Korea is the 13th. China is the world’s second-largest and, until recently, was among the fastest-growing. Its economy now falters, but its strategic ambitions remain. Nations throughout the Pacific, including America’s old adversary Vietnam, now increasingly align with America against China.
South Korea, striving to overcome its historical wariness of its vicious early 20th-century occupier Japan, now sees collaboration with an old enemy as vital to its survival against China and China’s proxy, North Korea.
The Camp David agreement commits the three countries to regular joint military exercises, ballistic missile defense collaboration (especially relevant with North Korea), countering cyber warfare, rebutting disinformation, protecting supply chains, artificial intelligence protection, and regular summits with heads of government and national security officials, among other actions.
The agreement is not a NATO-like alliance or formal defense pact. But the United States has longstanding security agreements with Japan and South Korea. It now becomes almost inconceivable that Japan or South Korea would stand aside in any conflict involving the other. China is likely to get the message.
Continue reading at WORLD Magazine here.
Comment by David on August 25, 2023 at 8:44 am
Demographics will play a part in foreign relations. The median age of the population is 49.1 in Japan, 42.8 in South Korea, and 38.1 in the US. The birthrate in South Korea has shockingly dropped from 6 children per woman in 1960 to 0.78 in 2022. Many young people in Japan and South Korea do not marry and do not have children if they do. Both have declining populations. China only recently reached this point after years of the one-child policy. This produced a large excess male population with no one to marry.
The difference between Japan and Germany is quite striking in dealing with the wartime past. Germany is open about it and students are trooped to visit concentration camps. In Japan, difficult matters are barely covered in school books and on state-run TV. The impression one gets from watching the English language NHK World is that WWII consisted of the atomic bomb and the internment of Japanese-Americans. Relations among countries in Asia could be improved if Japan would face its history there.
Comment by David Mu on August 25, 2023 at 6:42 pm
From the mid 1990’s, I have had an concern that mainland China was not going to become this modern friendly nation in the East with values that many in the West thought would come with using China for cheap labor. Truly, more can be said of that last one, but this is not a place for that. Simply to say, communist China will never allow itself to be transformed into a free, modern nation promised by many elites around the West and non-China developed nations. I believed it was a profound mistake that President Bush (II), in his first act as president, to grant communist China permanent flavored trading status. Even then, it was clear that communist China’s ruling party was still communist in all matters. And the clear endless corruption both inside and outside of its nation showed it had not changed, and did not merit flavored relations.
The sooner we outside of communist China put out those spies and fellow travelers in our businesses, colleges and government, the better we will be. AND – return to be nations that actually build things again for our own people.
It will be a top order this. Not likely under the watch of Biden and his handlers, but I guess this shows the proper concern rising about what the world has with this modern China.
Comment by David on August 26, 2023 at 6:58 am
It is very true that China has engaged in industrial espionage and other intelligence gathering. However, medical research in the US is based on immigrant Chinese lab workers. Some of these had medical degrees in their home countries. Americans now avoid lab work because of the pay and competition from persons with advanced degrees. I say this based on 40 experience in the field.
Comment by Search4Truth on September 2, 2023 at 4:09 pm
Digging for worms?