SEOUL, South Korea — With authoritarian states asserting their power and the prospect of an “American First” administration returning to power in Washington, senior U.S. officials have been busily enhancing security ties in the region in recent days.
Both Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin attended multiple meets in Tokyo on Sunday and Monday, and met with Japanese Premier Fumio Kishida. Their packed schedules suggest the Biden administration is feeling an urgent need to get deals done while there’s still time.
In the biggest move, Mr. Blinken, Mr. Austin, Japan’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Yoko Kamikawa and Japan’s Minister of Defense Minoru Kihara agreed Sunday to significantly U.S. military command structures in Japan, which hosts the largest single group of GIs stationed overseas.
“The United States will upgrade the U.S. Forces Japan to a joint force headquarters, with expanded missions and operational responsibilities,” Mr. Austin said in a statement.
That effectively shifts the command’s mission from administrative management to having the ability to fight a war. The new command, which will report to Hawaii-based Indo-Pacific Command, will serve as a counterpart to Japan’s recently established Self-Defense Forces Joint Operations Command, Mr. Austin said, who called the move the “most significant change to U.S. Forces Japan since its creation” some 70 years ago.
It will streamline currently tangled lines of command and coordination.
“Essentially, the component U.S. commands in Japan — Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines — answered to their service HQs in Hawaii, so U.S. Forces Japan would have fought under four separate commands,” said Lance Gatling, a retired U.S. officer who served in Japan.
“In levels of integration, ’joint’ just means two or more services — army and navy; air and space; whatever,” said Mr. Gatling, now principal of Tokyo’s Nexial Research. “Combined means one command, one commander, with mutually agreed authority to direct combat operations.”
The new Japan-based command, based on Mr. Austin’s comments on “expanded missions,” might enjoy wider regional leeway, given shared Tokyo-Washington concerns over the security of the Philippines and Taiwan in the face of threats from China.
In a statement following the joint meetings, the Japanese and U.S. delegations concurred that China wants to reshape the international order for its benefit at the expense of others. They accused Beijing of employing political, economic and military coercion of other countries to achieve its objectives.
“Such behavior is a serious concern for the alliance and the entire international community and represents the greatest strategic challenge in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond,” the delegates said.
Sunday’s meeting also discussed upgrading bilateral presence in Japan’s flashpoint southwest islands. Japan is currently fortifying the Ryukyus, which dominates critical seaborne attack corridors north of Taiwan. It is also confronting Chinese maritime assets in the Senkakus, which are claimed by China, which calls them the Diaoyu.
A separate agreement signed in Tokyo this week, the “Trilateral Security Cooperation Framework,” entrenches emergent but fragile security cooperation between Japan, South Korea and the U.S. Inked by the defense ministers of the three countries, it formalizes “high-level policy consultations, information sharing and trilateral drills.”
The specter of a second Trump administration is not the only political wild card. Some analysts worry that when South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, whose pro-Japan posture enabled security trilateralism, leaves office in 2027, Seoul politics may revert to its customary anti-Tokyo stance.
The three governments are hedging against that possibility. They have committed to an annual trilateral exercise, Freedom Edge — initiated last month — and to establishing a joint secretariat.
A third meeting, held Monday in Tokyo, brought together members of the Quad Security Dialog - Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. The top diplomats from the four countries agreed to reinforce maritime safety, create cybersecurity initiatives and also support regional countries in upgrading their defenses on the region’s tense seas.
With the Indo-Pacific region lacking a NATO-style multinational defense body, the Biden administration — aided by pro-U.S., pro-alliance governments in Manila, Seoul and Tokyo — has worked to strengthen regional security relationships.
While current Vice President Kamala Harris looks to continue the current administration’s policies if she wins in November, there are concerns that Mr. Trump is less protective of allies and less focused on historic alliances. In his first term, he demanded increased payments for the upkeep of GIs in Japan and Korea, leading some to accuse him of lacking the strategic vision to understand the import of boots on the ground in those countries.
This month, in an interview with Bloomberg, Mr. Trump again linked defense to economics.
“I don’t think we’re any different from an insurance policy,” Mr. Trump said of Washington’s security stance toward Taipei. “Why are we doing this?”
“I think Taiwan should pay us for defense,” he added. He also claimed Taiwan had stolen U.S. semiconductor technologies.
Regional concerns were on display earlier this month in Seoul: In an under-reported development, a new forum was launched at the National Assembly to discuss the possible development of a South Korean nuclear weapon — instead of relying on the U.S. nuclear umbrella to deter North Korea. The “Mugunghwa Forum” is named after the Rose of Sharon, the country’s national flower.
But some say Mr. Trump’s statements should be seen as negotiating tactics, not policy positions for his next administration
“There is a lot of press to this effect — Japan gets leaks from U.S. left-wing media — and they tend to parrot that here,” said Mr. Gatling. “But what [Mr. Trump] says and does are different things, and the Japanese understand trans-national negotiations.”
• Staff writer Mike Glenn contributed to this report from Washington.
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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