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SEOUL, South Korea — The U.S. was in full-on reassurance mode over the weekend with Indo-Pacific allies and partners, as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin worked to shore up relationships at Singapore’s Shangri-La Forum, the region’s leading annual defense symposium.
Those meetings came after Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell hosted his counterparts, Japan’s Masataka Okano and South Korea’s Kim Hong-kyun, in Virginia on Friday.
The background for both efforts: Ongoing strife in Ukraine and Gaza.
“Despite these historic clashes in Europe and the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific has remained our priority theatre of operations,” Mr. Austin told the Singapore forum. “Let me be clear: The United States can be secure only if Asia is secure.”
Asia is simmering, but not flaming, with both China and North Korea arming up and engaging in intimidation tactics.
The Biden administration’s moves to reassure allies come amid concerns about the strength of U.S. commitment to the region.
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, headquartered in Hawaii, deploys 375,000 troops region-wide, but American armed services, with about 1.3 million service members overall, are facing recruitment difficulties.
China, meanwhile, is adding military muscle while pursuing territorial disputes with India, Japan and the Philippines, and intimidating Taiwan. North Korea continues to defy the U.S.-led Global North with its weapons of mass destruction program.
The fear is that U.S. forces, deployed worldwide, may lack traction across Asia. That concern has been reinforced by strife in Ukraine and Gaza, where the U.S. is supplying combatants with weaponry, and where both crises might escalate.
Facing down China in the South China Sea, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. told the Singapore audience he expects the U.S. to honor its commitments.
Speaking Friday, he said if a Filipino were killed as China confronts his country’s coast guard and fishermen, it would be “very, very close to what we define as an act of war,” and that treaty allies, including the U.S. “hold the same standard.”
Mr. Austin, who called Manila-Washington ties “iron-clad,” held sideline talks in Singapore with Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun. However, Mr. Dong, on Sunday, made clear Beijing’s displeasure with Taipei.
“Those separatists recently made fanatical statements that show their betrayal of the Chinese nation and their ancestors,” Mr. Dong said. “They will be nailed to the pillar of shame in history.”
Mr. Dong was likely referencing the inauguration of William Lai as Taiwan’s president last month. Immediately after Mr. Lai’s assumption of office, China launched two days of military drills around the island — exercises some believe are training for a blockade, or even an all-out attack, upon the democratic island.
Earlier, in Virginia, Mr. Campbell had hosted his counterparts from Japan and South Korea to discuss energy, tech, security, regional and global challenges, and the broader Indo-Pacific partnership.
Mr. Campbell noted that, after last August’s trilateral of the three national leaders at Camp David, “We are committed to forming some sort of coordinating body, a secretariat of some kind.”
While Washington maintains separate alliances with Seoul and Tokyo, no official security partnership binds all three.
“We have been tasked by our leaders to support that, to make sure that we maintain forward momentum on the important work of this trilateral grouping,” Mr. Campbell said.
A secretariat could seal that deal.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who took office in 2022, made upgrading strained relations with Japan his core foreign affairs initiative, enabling trilateral security cooperation off China’s northeast flank — a long-held U.S. aim.
However, his party suffered defeat in April’s legislative elections, and there are concerns that if the leftwing opposition wins the 2027 presidential election, they will reverse Mr. Yoon’s Japan policies.
A trilateral secretariat could future-proof the relationship.
Jeffrey Robertson, a Seoul-based academic who watches regional security relations tweeted on X: “Cooperation is now entering a level of institutionalization that will make it considerably more difficult for future administrations in Seoul to change.”
That issue may have been on Mr. Austin’s mind, too.
In Singapore on Sunday, according to the U.S. Department of Defense, he and Japanese Minister of Defense Kihara Minoru and South Korean Minister of National Defense Shin Won-sik agreed to “institutionalize trilateral security cooperation, including senior-level policy consultations, information sharing, trilateral exercises, and defense exchange cooperation.”
A new trilateral, multi-domain exercise, “Freedom Edge” will be inaugurated this summer, the DOD noted.
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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