Can the Camp David Honeymoon Last?

Even the weather cooperated with the Camp David trilateral summit on a balmy August Friday. The event marked a series of firsts: the first time Joe Biden was hosting foreign leaders at the Maryland retreat since taking office as president, and of course, the first time that a summit meeting between Japan, South Korea, and the United States took place specifically, and not on the sidelines of another international forum. The photos from the meeting, showing three men in carefully calculated casual attire, are meant to personify the establishment of trust and partnership.

The summit culminated in the release of a statement declaring trilateral unity in defense of stability and the rule of law in the Indo-Pacific. However, the hard work to have the three countries cooperate in the face of regional challenges may not be straightforward once the honeymoon period ends and reality sets in.

One of the biggest unknown factors is what will happen after Biden leaves office, whether he is a one- or two-term president. For Biden, the Camp David summit was an opportunity to project his image as a global statesman, bringing together two key U.S. allies that had been plagued with tensions over historical memory for decades. While it was actually South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s overtures to Japan and his counterpart, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, earlier this year that proved to be the beginning of a rapprochement between Tokyo and Seoul, the United States has not shied away from projecting itself as a peacemaker.

Yet eventually there will be a leadership change in Washington, whether in 2025 or 2029. Whether a new U.S. president will continue to be committed to engaging in the Indo-Pacific with key partners in confronting the challenge posed by China and North Korea remains to be seen.

The Camp David principles sought to institutionalize trilateral relations precisely to address the political risk posed by the United States, as much as the possibility of Japan and South Korea returning to shaky ground. The expectation is that by hosting regular meetings at the working level to address shared security and economic issues, Japan-South Korea-U.S. relations would be strong enough to withstand any changes in personalities or indeed political stripes. Even if a U.S. president failed to show up at a scheduled annual trilateral meeting in the future, the hope is that would not hamper cooperation between the three countries at the ministerial and working levels.

The Camp David meeting made clear that the rapidly changing realities in the geopolitical landscape of the Indo-Pacific are not only bringing Tokyo and Seoul closer together, but furthering Washington’s expectations for its allies in the region as U.S. competition with China is expected to be systemic and persistent. Expanding the network of alliances and partnerships in the region that are working to confront shared challenges is pragmatic and efficient.

Moreover, even as the number of multilaterals, minilaterals, and bilaterals that overlap with the goals of the Camp David principles increase, the proliferation of such networks can be seen as an asset, rather than a burden. Certainly, the advancement of the Quad, the emergence of AUKUS, and the development of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) can all be seen as different ways to arrive at the same goal: Namely, to ensure stability and promote the interests of like-minded partners in the region.

Should Biden’s successor bow out of trilateral meetings, it is likely that the incoming president would also be lukewarm or indifferent to other mechanisms designed to strengthen U.S. commitment to the Indo-Pacific through a multilateral approach. Still, the expectation is that commitment by U.S. agencies to continue supporting broader goals of cooperation in confronting the China challenge should be strong enough to weather such tepid leadership support. If, however, the next president takes a more unilateral or inward-looking approach to foreign policy, then the expectations for the United States to act as a Pacific power, let alone a key partner in a trilateral, would diminish significantly.

At the same time, domestic concerns both in South Korea as well as Japan may well hamper further cooperation between the two countries, in which case the trilateral also faces risks in Northeast Asia too. The role that should be expected from the United States is to reassure both Tokyo and Seoul that the trilateral is indeed in the national interests of all three countries in confronting shared challenges in the Indo-Pacific. Given the political uncertainties in Washington, however, the United States may well be a bigger risk to the advancement of a trilateral partnership in the longer term.