US-Japan-South Korea trilateral cooperation: Overcoming the populist threat
US-Japan-South Korea trilateral cooperation: Overcoming the populist threat
WRITTEN BY DR JAMES KAIZUKA
6 February 2024
The Indo-Pacific Dialogue, held in Washington, D.C. between American, Japanese, and South Korean officials on 5 January, is important not for what it said or did but for what it represents. After years of acrimony and dysfunction within and between all three states, the stars seem to finally be aligning on real, institutionalised trilateral cooperation.
The joint statement emphasises the ‘inaugural’ nature of the Indo-Pacific Dialogue, underscoring the difficulty of achieving closer cooperation despite ever-present and growing mutual threats that have scarcely changed in decades except, perhaps, in their severity. Security scholars have called for enhanced three-way cooperation for decades, but with only rare exceptions such as the GSOMIA intelligence-sharing agreement, their calls have gone unheeded as old wounds have prevented progress. Indeed, advocacy for three-way cooperation is so historied that early papers reference the Soviet threat even as they discuss many of the same barriers to cooperation which exist today.
These barriers are no secret. The bitter history between Japan and South Korea, flames fanned on both sides of the Tsushima Strait by nationalist impulses, populism, and the growing threat of information manipulation remains the largest long-term obstacle to cooperation. Much of the current cooperation is closely tied to the personal efforts of two unpopular leaders in Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida and South Korea’s President Yoon. President Biden’s personal efforts to make the most of the improved Japan-South Korea relationship in light of the greater global authoritarian threat to democracy have also contributed greatly to the deepening trilateral cooperation over the last year. While the Republican Party has not opposed this, there is an established history of former President Trump accusing US allies, whether trans-Pacific or trans-Atlantic, of free-riding, and a growing isolationist wing in the wider Republican Party may undermine the value of US alliance commitments in the long term.
Deeper institutionalisation of security cooperation, bilaterally between Japan and South Korea and trilaterally also including the United States, can head off all of these threats and ensure that the ‘inaugural’ Indo-Pacific Dialogue is not the ‘only’ Indo-Pacific Dialogue.
Consequently, current trilateral cooperation is precious but fragile — utterly necessary in the face of threats from Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang, and yet held together by glue which remains unset. With numerous threats to cooperation from both domestic and foreign sources, institutionalising and depoliticising security cooperation is an imperative for policymakers in Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo alike.
The populist and nationalist threat
Populism, backed by nationalist movements in all three countries, remains the greatest threat to long-term trilateral cooperation, and several forthcoming elections present opportunities for these movements to exert their influence. South Korea’s National Assembly, already controlled by the opposition Democratic Party which has repeatedly expressed its opposition to Yoon’s Japan policy, is likely to win again in April, and currently enjoys a significant poll lead. Even Yoon himself is sometimes characterised as a populist, albeit largely over domestic policy. While Japan does not have a lower house election scheduled until 2025, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party does have a leadership election scheduled for September, in which several prospective candidates are affiliated with the historical revisionist and nationalist organisation Nippon Kaigi. It is not inconceivable that even this process will cause acrimony with South Korea if sensitive issues are raised — in the previous election, one candidate, Takaichi Sanae, made a point of promising to continue visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine if she were to have won at the time. As for the United States, the prospect of a second Trump presidency looms large and would have enormous ramifications for trilateral cooperation, backed by a Republican Party which is itself split between moderate and less-than-moderate factions with all-too-real consequences for world affairs, particularly support to Ukraine.
Three-way fault lines that can be exploited for populist purposes abound in the trilateral relationship. Well-known South Korean-Japanese disputes over history, territory, and wartime compensation remain unresolved. Inflammatory statements have continued from politicians in both Seoul and Tokyo, whether by labelling the other country as committing “nuclear terrorism” over the sensitive release of Fukushima’s wastewater or by claiming that the Japanese government had no records of the well-publicised massacre of Koreans after the 1923 Kanto earthquake. Looking across the Pacific, both Japanese and South Korean politicians deeply fear abandonment by the United States in the event of a conflict during a second Trump presidency. In his previous term, Trump frequently accused both Japan and South Korea of being security free-riders. The attempt to institutionalise the trilateral security cooperation now via the Indo-Pacific Dialogue can be seen as a guardrail against the prospect of a change in administration which would undermine the perceived strength of the alliance and its deterrent value.
Even in the ostensibly warmer Japan-US and South Korea-US bilateral relationships and alliances of today, ill-feeling is not uncommon. Anti-military base movements continue to simmer in both Japan and South Korea. The recent Alkonis affair (which is already being exploited by populist senators in the United States and has caused public opinion backlash in Japan) has highlighted how even bilateral relationships normally defined by warmth can still carry tensions. With the “America First” rhetoric ramping up again, and with the prospect of successor governments falling into the populist trap, there are simply too many divisive issues ripe for exploitation to advance domestic political agendas across all three states, whether they be related to history, trade, or even investment.
Populist domestic politics can also be easily manipulated by foreign adversaries in Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang. In late 2023, South Korean intelligence services exposed a network of Chinese disinformation websites attempting to spread pro-China and anti-US sentiment in the country, and North Korea conducts espionage operations with similar objectives. In the United States, Russian-led interference in elections using populist messaging is a matter of public record and is an issue of major concern for the upcoming presidential election. Guarding against these threats so that they do not undermine trilateral cooperation is crucial.
Bolstering the bilateral to boost the trilateral
This paints a bleak picture, but there will always be those seeking to advance domestic political interests at the expense of foreign policy, and the threat from authoritarian states will not diminish in the near future. With this in mind, current trilateral cooperation, occurring under favourable conditions, must be understood not as an achievement as yet, but as a golden opportunity from which lasting and effective cooperation can be constructed.
Japan-South Korea cooperation cannot continue to rely on and solely be built by personal goodwill. While the agreements made at the Camp David summit in August 2023 and the recent Indo-Pacific Dialogue are promising, it remains to be seen if they will be strong enough to endure adversity. At the very least, said adversity presents the threat of dysfunction and exploitable division, as Russia has attempted with NATO and the European Union. To truly overcome this problem, Japan and South Korea must bolster trilateral cooperation with the institutionalisation of bilateral security arrangements, independent of the United States (with the bonus that this would also go some way to curtailing the risks posed by potential abandonment).
GSOMIA, an intelligence-sharing agreement, models how such arrangements might operate, both positively and negatively. Bilaterally agreed, it survived even the most acrimonious points of the Japan-South Korea relationship, albeit with the assistance of American pressure. This common-sense arrangement endures; by focusing on the possible, it acts to the obvious benefit of both countries. Replicating this arrangement in other fields, such as in collaborating on security in Southeast Asia, expanding the capacity for joint operations, or even simply holding more frequent exchanges of personnel and officials, would go a long way in building closer ties, with an ideal of a comprehensive security treaty to ensure stable deterrence even without the US being a long-term goal. Again, the promises of the Indo-Pacific Dialogue are a positive start for this.
The Japan-Korea relationship is the weakest link in the trilateral relationship. Deepening bilateral security cooperation and depoliticising it as much as possible will help stabilise trilateral cooperation, and, even if abandoned, Japan and Korea will be better placed to face mutual threats as credible friends than disconnected rivals. Unless this is done quickly and effectively, the fault lines will continue to be exploited and manipulated by not only domestic populists but also by shared adversaries.
Seibou Bunri as the basis of Japan-Korea-US relations
The history of Japanese diplomacy is awash with the concept of seikei bunri — the separation of politics and economics. This should be reconceptualised for the Japan-Korea-US relationship as seibou bunri — the separation of politics and defence. In particular, even if Japan and South Korea continue to disagree over exploitable political and historical matters, there is surely space for recognising that they present no threat to each other and can better deter mutual threats together than apart. Meaningful historical reconciliation efforts are also sorely needed.
As for the United States, populist-isolationist politicians continue to cause jitters in Seoul and Tokyo, giving a manipulable fault line to mutual adversaries. Deeper institutionalisation of security cooperation, bilaterally between Japan and South Korea and trilaterally also including the United States, can head off all of these threats and ensure that the ‘inaugural’ Indo-Pacific Dialogue is not the ‘only’ Indo-Pacific Dialogue.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
James Kaizuka is a postgraduate researcher at the University of Leeds in the UK, with expertise in Japan-North Korea and Japan-Vietnam relations, East Asian regional security, and developmental security. Image credit: Flickr/The White House.