With the twin threats of North Korea and China uniting them, the leaders of Japan and South Korea put it aside

a history of historical

animus and joined President Biden at Camp David on Friday for a rare three-way summit to plan a joint long-term defense strategy.

Biden, Japanese Prime Minister, hails a “new chapter” in trilateral relations

kishida

fumio

kishida

and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol announced a series of steps

,

including annual military exercises, improved ballistic missile detection systems, a regional crisis hotline and

otherssimilar

measures

,

to enhance their ability to confront belligerent forces.

Our countries are stronger and the world will be safer when we stand together, Biden said from the leafy grounds of the presidential retreat in Maryland, with Kishida and Yoon by his side.

Perhaps the bigger problem looms

the newsreader

conference the three held after their meetings was whether agreements now made by leaders facing domestic challenges would survive their tenure.

Biden said the initiatives announced Friday were “institutional changes” that would outlast governments and “create momentum … to make the relationship stronger and more certain to preserve it.” His predecessor and hopeful successor, Donald Trump, pushed to reduce the US presence in East Asia and withdraw defense aid.

Biden, Yoon and Kishida emphasized the importance of

just now

encounter. Biden praised his counterparts’ “political courage” for being there.

This is the first triple summit between these leaders that is not kept on the sidelines

some up

other meeting and

comecame

after years of intense diplomacy to ease tensions between the two former Asian enemies. It is also the first meeting with foreign leaders at the highly symbolic Camp David in eight years.

“The fact that we, the three leaders, have come together in this way, I think means that from today we are indeed writing a new history,” Kishida said. “The international community is at a turning point in history.”

The White House said the defense deals announced Friday will strengthen cooperation and security across the Indo-Pacific region, a huge area of ​​growing economic and diplomatic priority for the Biden administration.

We’re going to build a strong foundation for this trilateral partnership to make sure it’s deep, strong and built to last, Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said at the meeting

S

started.

Sullivan said the agreements also provide protections against supply chain disruptions and improvements to maritime security in the South China Sea, where Beijing has launched numerous aggressive operations to claim territory, Sullivan said.

The United States has long tried to close gaps in its Asian security profile by bringing together South Korea and Japan, both of which host U.S. troops and military bases, as a way to counter attacks from North Korea or a Chinese attack on self-control. ruling island of Taiwan.

But historical friction between Seoul and Tokyo,

the

legacy of Japan’s ruthless occupation of Korea in the first half of the last century has been a stubborn obstacle until now.

For the meeting to take place, South Korean Yoon had to put aside his country’s grievances, which have always complicated security ties between the two countries. South Korea has held Japan responsible for decades

a history of sexual slavery of the making

Korean women

sex slaves in that country

other

to drag in

forced labor during the

Japanese

occupation

between

1910-1945. Over the years, attempts have been made time and time again to resolve the conflict and compensate the victims, but with only sporadic success.

US officials credit Yoon

now

working to improve the relationship despite domestic resistance.

Yoon “puts capital on the line,” said Robert Daly, chief of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Wilson Center, and Friday’s summit was meant to be a “capstone” for the diplomatic shift.

“This is to capture the gains of the past year and institutionalize strong mutual defense with clear connection and commitment.”

said

Daly, a former US diplomat in Beijing

said

.

U.S. officials are seeking to make the agreement permanent to prevent it from falling by the wayside if and when political leadership changes in any or all of the three countries. Each leader faces his own set of domestic issues, and Friday’s summit itself could have consequences.

For Yoon, this initiative set in Camp David is politically risky; less for Kishida, because Japan has not given up that much

fewer

in pursuit of rapprochement with Seoul, said Shihoko Goto, deputy director of the Asia Program at the Wilson Center. Yoon has largely taken charge, while Kishida has responded. Many Koreans feel that Japan owes more in terms of apologies and reparations.

; while

a lot of

in

Japan

to eat

feel that they have already fulfilled. It remains unclear whether the new twists in diplomacy and security really overcome distrust, Goto said.

“So far it’s been very top-down,” she said. “Does it speak to the hearts and minds of men? I would say it should speak to the minds, but not necessarily the hearts.”

Despite concerns about whether the agreements

want to

future administrations, US officials are stopping to make the new terms part of a formal treaty, which would spell out defense commitments rather than commitments, because China and North Korea are likely to

That

a great provocation.

Sullivan and other government officials stressed that the agreement does not represent “Asian NATO,” as China and North Korea complained.

in voice complaints

for the top. Beijing and Pyongyang are deeply suspicious of US military efforts in the region, which a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry described earlier this week as “countries forming different cliques” with “their practices of exacerbating confrontations and weakening the strategic jeopardizing the security of other countries”.

The summit comes at a time of rising tensions in East Asia. Both China and North Korea periodically remind the world of their nuclear capabilities, and Pyongyang has launched a series of missiles, including tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

weapons missiles

. Beijing repeatedly reiterates its claim to Taiwan and flexes its military muscles in the Taiwan Strait and other parts of the South China Sea.

Also pushing the countries together

now

is the war in Ukraine, where a larger nuclear-armed country, Russia, invaded Ukraine, a smaller neighbor it claims to be its own, much the same scenario as the China-Taiwan dispute.

The external environment is just so uncertain and unstable, said Victor Cha, senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. There is nothing like an actual real war, even if it is in a different part of the world, to completely change or influence the way leaders think about their security.

Greater unity between the US, Japan and South Korea is in itself a deterrent to some regions’ aggression, but a broader and more formalized security plan is essential for long-term guarantees, said Mirna Galic, a senior China policy analyst at the US Institute. van de Vrede and former adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The wider Indo-Pacific will also benefit from trilateral cooperation shifting from an exclusive focus on the Korean Peninsula to areas such as better support for ASEAN [Ass

n.oc.

of Southeast Asian Nations] and Pacific Islands states, she said.

The rustic backdrop of Camp David, away from the seething cauldron of the White House and

Washington, central

DC is considered very symbolic and special, giving its leaders plenty of time for private walks and talks.

While once a frequent venue for large meetings, and

the

rather than some of the most important pacts of modern US diplomacy, this was the first appearance of foreign leaders at the Maryland retreat since 2015, when President Obama hosted six Persian Gulf states for a summit on Washington’s international nuclear deal with Iran.