Biden’s Trilateral Camp David Summit Advanced Preparation for War with China

By Joseph Gerson 

[Note: An earlier version of this commentary first appeared at Common Dreams on August 21, 2023] 

Meeting in a summit at Camp David on August 18, President Joe Biden, President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea, and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan posed for photos that confirmed and broadcast a long-term trilateral alliance designed to reinforce containment of China, Russia, and North Korea. 

The architect of this updated alliance structure was the coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs in President Biden’s National Security Council, Kurt Campbell. In an earlier incarnation, he served as former President Barack Obama’s assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. In which capacity he oversaw Washington’s greatest post-Cold War foreign and military transition: the “pivot” to Asia and the Pacific, intended to contain and manage China’s rise. Now, at Camp David, he nurtured the consolidation of the U.S.-Japan-South Korea military alliance to reinforce the pivot and augment the AUKUS (Australia-UK-U.S.) and QUAD (U.S.-India-Japan- Australia) alliance systems – all parts of Washington’s long march to create a NATO-like Indo-Pacific alliance system. As noted by the New York Times, the new three-pact way will serve as a “bulwark” against China and North Korea. 

With these three military alliance systems in place and the almost daily provocative military “exercises” being conducted by all parties involved, an accident or miscalculation on the Korean Peninsula or in relation to Taiwan could easily escalate into a regional, even nuclear, war. 

Little understood in the United States, there are now two competing triangular military, economic, and technological pacts in Northeast Asia. Each of these increasingly integrated triangular systems -- the U.S.-Japan-Republic of Korea (ROK) alliance and the China-Russia-Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) quasi-alliance -- has its fault lines. With Japan yet to fully acknowledge and apologize for its brutal history of colonial conquest and rule in Korea (think of its forced labor and systemic military prostitution in the first half of the 20th century), and with widespread resentment over unpopular ROK president Yoon’s kowtowing to Tokyo and Washington, South Korea is the weak link in the U.S.-led alliance. On the other side, as we see in the Ukraine War, Beijing’s commitment to Moscow is not “unlimited.” 

Nevertheless, these contending military systems, plus the Taiwan and Korean flash points, make the region -- along with Ukraine -- the most likely flashpoint for escalation to regional, and potentially nuclear, war. 

The alliance consolidation also takes place at a time when the Kishida government has opted to totally disregard Japan’s war-renouncing constitution. Even though Japan was the world’s 10th largest military spender, that was not sufficient for those in Tokyo who fear China’s rise and North Korea’s missiles and seek to restore Japan’s military grandeur. Kishida has committed to doubling the Japan Self-Defense Forces’ budget. In harmony with U.S. alliance-building (and possibly) to prepare for a time when the U.S. may reduce its Asia-Pacific commitments, Japan is deepening “security” cooperation with Australia, the Philippines, India, and Taiwan and is engaging in joint military operations as far afield as the South China Sea. That these commitments suggest the possible reprising of Tokyo’s early 20th century history as a major regional military power unsettles Beijing and many of Japan’s Asia-Pacific neighbors. 

In Korea, the unpopular President Yoon is ruling in the tradition of Donald Trump -- ignoring popular opinion, relying on his narrow but loyal right-wing base, and trading his threats to develop nuclear weapons while ignoring unresolved Japanese WWII abuses to deepen U.S. and Japanese alliance commitments. With North Korea augmenting its nuclear arsenal and increasing the pace of its missile tests -- even as the U.N. reports increased starvation in the DPRK -- Seoul is hardly alone in accelerating the pace of Korean Peninsula militarization.  

Among the trilateral agreements just secured at Camp David are the “commitment to consult” when “something that poses a threat to any one of us poses a threat” to the three nations -- just short of the NATO Treaty’s Article 5 commitment to mutual defense. Also agreed to were greater intelligence sharing, annual military exercises, deepening cooperation and interdependence in the development of missile defenses, collaborative technological development, a framework to further integrate Southeast Asian nations into the trilateral military structure, a hotline, and annual trilateral meetings among national security advisors for “institutionalizing, deepening, and thickening the habits of cooperation” among the allies. 

The summit’s much ballyhooed commitment to nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation made at Camp David serves more to manufacture consent for preparations for nuclear war than to reduce nuclear dangers. As we saw in the recent G7 summit, the U.S. and Japan remain committed to “nuclear deterrence,” or the maintenance of a powerful U.S. nuclear retaliatory capability. And the nonproliferation commitment may have more to do with preventing South Korea’s and Japan’s military from becoming nuclear powers than a commitment to fulfilling their Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) commitments. (Article VI of the NPT requires the original nuclear powers to engage in good faith negotiations for the complete elimination of their nuclear arsenals, which they have refused to do for 50 years. And, for 60 years, Japan’s military has asserted its right to possess nuclear weapons, and South Korean polls indicate that a popular majority support Seoul’s developing nuclear weapons.) 

Decades ago, many of us sang, “When will they ever learn?” When indeed! Former Australian Prime Minister, now ambassador to the United States, Kevin Rudd, warns that we are marching toward a catastrophic and avoidable war. At the height of the last Cold War, U.S., Soviet, and European elites opted for the paradigm of Common Security diplomacy to halt and reverse the spiraling and increasingly terrifying nuclear arms race. They ended the Cold War on the basis of the recognition that security cannot be achieved by taking increasingly militarized actions against their rival; that it can only be won through difficult diplomacy that acknowledges each side’s fears and resolves and addresses them with win-win, mutually beneficial compromises and agreements. 

Earlier this summer Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen observed that the world is big enough for both the U.S. and China. Let’s build on that insight, press U.S. and other leaders to engage in Common Security diplomacy, and stop wasting trillions of dollars in preparation for apocalyptic war and devote our all too limited resources to meeting human needs, including reversing that other existential threat: the climate emergency.