“Anti-Chinese NATO” – this could be a conventional name for the organisation that the United States plans to create in Southeast Asia in the near future. Who does Washington want to lure into this structure, why this idea is unlikely to work, and how will it affect Russia’s interests?
On 18 August, Camp David will host a trilateral summit with the leaders of the United States, South Korea and Japan. The first such summit in history. “The three leaders will discuss advancing trilateral cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond, including responses to threats posed by North Korea,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said. However, it is clear that the summit’s goal is first and foremost to create an effective mechanism to contain China.
For many years now, the United States has been trying to build a kind of “anti-China NATO” in East Asia – to gather a group of countries under its wing and organise a military-political alliance aimed at containing China. It would seem that there are plenty of candidates for this bloc. China has territorial disputes with almost all of its neighbours. China’s economic expansion is feared by many regional countries (from Vietnam to Australia), and its human rights activities (i.e. defending the rights of Chinese diasporas taking over the economies of Southeast Asia) are seen as a direct threat to national security.
However, most of these countries are either far away from China (UK, Australia), or are too weak, or do not consider it necessary to go into direct conflict with Beijing hand in hand with the Americans (for example, the same India). That is why the key allies of the US in its anti-China activities are Taiwan, as well as Japan and South Korea. It is co-operation with them that is the core of all US anti-China projects in the region.
That linchpin looks quite strong. “No matter how light you dye your hair, no matter how sharp your nose is, you can never become European or American, you can never become a Westerner. We must always know where our roots are,” Wang Yi, China’s chief diplomat, reminded his neighbours. However, all three territories are deeply Westernised (especially South Korea), fear China and have the closest relationship with the United States.
The problem, however, is that they have no such relationship with each other. And if everything is simple with Taiwan (the island’s authorities are ready to participate in almost any anti-China action with any US ally), then contacts between Japan and South Korea are far from allied.
At least at the population level, the attitude towards Japan in South Korea is quite hostile.
This is not surprising given South Koreans’ historical memory of the period of Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945. A period when the Korean alphabet was banned, when the Japanese treated Koreans as second-class citizens, and when hundreds of thousands of Korean women were forcibly sent to the Japanese army’s field brothels in Southeast Asia.
Perhaps if the Japanese government recognised this war crime and compensated those women still alive, attitudes would change – but Tokyo claims that the women themselves signed consent to work in these camps. Which, in turn, provokes even more anger from both the Korean population and national politicians. And so it goes in circles.
In the end, it took South Korea and Japan almost four years to conclude even a conventional military intelligence-sharing agreement – exactly how long it took Korean politicians to “sell” this pact with the Japanese to their own population. In 2016, it went into effect – and was halted in 2019 due to another crisis in bilateral relations. After the Korean Supreme Court ordered Japanese companies to compensate the descendants of Korean workers who were forcibly removed to Japanese factories during the occupation, the Japanese imposed sanctions on South Korea. In response, the Koreans announced a boycott of Japanese goods.
As a result, relations were frozen for several years, until the spring of 2023, when Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and new South Korean President Yun Seok-yeol held the first Japan-South Korea summit in 12 years. The main reason for the stabilisation of relations is cited as the rise in North Korean and especially Chinese military and political activity.
“If China had not twice engaged in border conflicts with India and twice with the Philippine Coast Guard, had not launched missiles into Japan’s exclusive economic zone, this would not have happened,” US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emmanuel said.
And now the Americans apparently want to build on that success. To bring Japan-South Korea relations to the status of a full-fledged trilateral military-political alliance.
There won’t be much of a problem with Tokyo. “Against the backdrop of the increasing problems and difficulties we face, the idea of bringing Japan and South Korea together is becoming increasingly important and urgent,” says a Japanese Defence Ministry white paper.
There are optimists in South Korea, too. “Seoul and Tokyo’s relationship is expected to be elevated to a ‘quasi-alliance’ in which they will co-operate on a military level to pressure China and contain North Korea. The two countries have never cooperated at this level since they normalised diplomatic relations in 1965,” the Hankyoreh publication wrote.
Other publications, however, are more sceptical. Not because Japan and South Korea have different approaches to China and the territory of Taiwan (for all the aggressiveness of the new president, Seoul still does not want to sever economic ties with China). And not even because in order to conclude such a “quasi-union” the Koreans will have to “forget history” and give up their demands to the Japanese to pay compensation to the victims.
The point is that a military alliance (whether quasi or not) must imply the possibility of Japanese army units entering the territory of South Korea.
And this is a part of history that no one on the Korean peninsula will ever forget. “In South Korea, the idea of a military alliance with Japan is not particularly favoured,” the South Korean publication Korea JoongAng Daily neatly admits.
Given all this, the chances of any serious East Asian NATO appearing, at least comparable in power to its European counterpart, are slim. And for Russia’s interests, this is certainly a plus.
First of all, it is good that the Americans cannot gather even their closest allies in the region into a tight bunch. However, this bunch is gathered not so much against Russia as against China. And the stronger the American pressure on Beijing, the more Chinese comrades will value equal co-operation with Moscow. Build a mutually beneficial partnership and respect our, Russia’s, interests.
Gevorg Mirzayan, Associate Professor, Finance University, Vzglyad
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