Biden turns to Camp David diplomacy for first trilateral summit with Japan and South Korea | CNN Politics

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President Joe Biden is using the presidential retreat in Camp David to help with a diplomatic mission – organize the first trilateral summit with Japan and South Korea, two countries that are putting aside a tense story address shared security challenges.

Biden’s summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is intended to serve as a show of force as countries grapple with North Korea’s persistent provocative behavior. It also comes as the president has sought to deepen ties with allies in the Indo-Pacific amid concerns about a rising China.

On Friday, Biden will host the leaders at the secluded getaway in the Catoctin Mountains in Maryland, where they will deepen defense, technology and economic cooperation between the three countries, senior administration officials said.

The leaders will set up annual military exercises, including regular ballistic missile drills, and discuss new intelligence-sharing agreements, the officials said. They will take steps to establish a three-way hotline for leaders to consult in crisis and formalize the trilateral summit, the first of its kind, as an annual event.

The summit will fall short of producing a tripartite collective defense agreement, but it will stress “that a challenge to any one country is a challenge to all of them,” a senior administration official said.

The meeting will mark the first time Biden has hosted foreign leaders at the Camp David retreat, a site of historic diplomatic negotiations for past presidents. Biden will greet the leaders at Camp David on Friday morning for the trilateral meetings, and they are expected to hold a joint press conference at the end of the summit.

The prospect of trilateral progress between countries was not always a given. The relationship between Seoul and Tokyo is marked by decades of tension and mistrust, including a dispute between the two countries over forced labor by Japan during its occupation of Korea.

But in the face of persistent missile threats from North Korea and China’s military maneuvers in the region, Kishida and Yoon have done their best to put those differences aside, including holding a fence-repair summit in March, the first of its kind in 12 years. US officials have credited that work as a key step in cementing the trilateral partnership once thought unimaginable.

“China’s entire strategy is based on the premise that America’s number one and number two ally in the region cannot come together and be on the same page,” said Rahm Emanuel, the US ambassador to Japan, at the Brookings Institution on Wednesday. He added that the trilateral partnership is “a fundamental piece that upsets all the calculations.”

Ahead of the summit, South Korea believes that North Korea is preparing to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and other “provocations” around the meeting or upcoming joint US-South Korean military exercises that will begin. next week, according to a South Korean. Korean lawmaker briefed by the country’s intelligence service.

A senior administration official said the United States anticipates criticism and reactions from Pyongyang and Beijing around the summit, but said the president’s focus is “to make sure the region knows that this trilateral partnership is operating at a new level and as a fundamental force.

The meeting in the secluded wooded retreat will also highlight Biden’s mission to reinvigorate alliances after his predecessor’s tumultuous four years, a key storyline of Biden’s 2020 campaign that extends to his re-election bid.

Since the start of his administration, Biden has sought to bring Asian allies like Japan and South Korea closer, in part, to counter a rising China. Biden’s first visits by foreign leaders to the White House were Japan and South Korea, with him visiting the countries back-to-back in May 2022.

The leaders held trilateral meetings on the sidelines of last year’s NATO summit in Madrid and at the G7 in Hiroshima in May, but the Camp David meeting will be the first independent summit for the three leaders.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan has held annual meetings with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts, beginning with a meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, less than three months after Biden took office.

Biden has worked to foster his individual relations and cooperation with South Korea and Japan. Biden and Kishida have touted efforts to strengthen their country’s military alliance and the two men have worked closely together as the United States sought to rally allies against Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“I don’t think there was a time when we were closer,” Biden said when he met Kishida in the Oval Office in January.

During a state visit to South Korea at the White House in April, Biden and Yoon announced a new agreement to deter North Korean aggression, including a US commitment to temporarily deploy a nuclear-armed submarine to South Korea. for the first time since the 1980s.

The visit also included memorable personal touches when the South Korean president serenaded dinner guests with a verse from “American Pie.” The president in return gave Yoon a guitar signed by the musician behind the song, Don McLean.

Yoon’s father, Yoon Ki Jung, passed away on Tuesday, just days before the South Korean president was due to travel to the United States.

Friday’s gathering in the rustic setting could offer an opportunity to deepen those personal ties. A senior administration official said the Camp David backdrop will convey “certainly images and symbolism of reconciliation, of friendship and of new beginnings… symbols that Camp David has encapsulated for a long time.”

Located approximately 60 miles outside of Washington, Camp David became a personal haven for US presidents, beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt, who named the grounds “USS Shangri-La.” President Dwight D. Eisenhower later renamed the grounds after his granddaughter.

When not at the White House or one of his Delaware homes, Biden and his family have frequented the getaway into the woods on weekends. But this will be the first time the president has hosted foreign leaders.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was the first world leader to visit the grounds in 1943, meeting Roosevelt while the US President fished in one of the site’s streams. Two weeks of negotiations that led to the Camp David Accords, the historic peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, took place in the retreat during President Jimmy Carter’s tenure.

President Bill Clinton attempted another Middle East peace deal when he hosted Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at Camp David in 2000, but those talks ultimately failed to reach an agreement.

The last US president to use the ground for diplomatic meetings was President Barack Obama, who hosted the leaders of the Gulf states there in 2015. Former President Donald Trump considered inviting the Taliban to Camp David in 2019, but ultimately scrapped those plans after the group claimed credit for a bombing that killed 12 people, including a US soldier.