US Defense Secretary Austin held a trilateral meeting with Japan and South Korea after 15 years.

CNN
—

The defense chiefs of the United States, South Korea and Japan pledged to strengthen cooperation to counter North Korea’s “nuclear and missile threats” during a meeting in Tokyo on Sunday, the first escalation of tension in the region in 15 years.

The trilateral meeting comes nearly a year after a major summit between the three countries hosted by US President Joe Biden at Camp David – part of Washington’s efforts to strengthen ties with two key allies in Asia. North Korean provocations and Chinese aggression in the region.

In a joint statement on Sunday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Japan’s Defense Minister Minoru Kihara and South Korea’s Shin Won-sik recalled their “longstanding commitment to strengthen trilateral security cooperation to counter nuclear and missile threats” from North Korea.

According to the report, they expressed “serious concern” over the “increasing military and economic cooperation commitment” between Moscow and Pyongyang. Several governments accused North Korea of ​​supplying Russia with weapons for the war in Ukraine and the two neighbors signed last month. New Security Treaty.

Growing trilateral integration between the US, Japan and South Korea marks a shift in regional relations, with Seoul and Tokyo — longtime US allies — widely seen as putting aside historic animosity and mistrust to better address shared security threats.

Kishida announced that following last year’s summit, there will be an annual series of summits among top officials from several countries, including finance, industry and trade ministers, as well as foreign and defense ministers and national security advisers. Leaders also announced new military exercises and a crisis communications hotline.

The growing integration has prompted a backlash from Beijing, which, when asked about the leaders’ trilateral summit at Camp David last year, said the Asia-Pacific region should not be “turned into a wrestling ground for geopolitical competition”.

Sunday’s joint statement did not explicitly mention China, but the defense chiefs reiterated their opposition to “any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in Indo-Pacific waters” and noted that they “shared assessments of recent naval and air military activities in the Indo-Pacific region, including the South China Sea.”

China has been aggressively asserts Its claims in the contested waters of the South China Sea maintain an extended presence near Japanese-controlled islands, and Beijing has claims in the East China Sea. increasing its military intimidation of the self-governing island of Taiwan.

According to a joint statement, the security leaders formalized a trilateral agreement that reaffirms “the unwavering nature of a new era of trilateral cooperation.”

It will “institutionalize” trilateral security cooperation among their countries’ security authorities, including senior-level policy consultations, information sharing, trilateral exercises and security exchange cooperation.

According to a defense official, Secretary Austin is also expected to announce that the United States intends to reorganize US Forces Japan (USF-J) as a Joint Force Headquarters to operate alongside Japan’s Joint Operations Command (J-JOC).

Details of the implementation, which would give the reorganized USF-J a direct leadership role “both in peacetime and potential crises,” will be worked out in task forces led by the US Indo-Pacific Command, the official said.

“The intent here is for USF-J to become a fully fledged three-star joint force headquarters. There is no intention of integrating Japanese forces into U.S. commands, apart from eventually the 5th Air Force, separately,” the official said.

“We consider this a historic announcement in the strong developments in our military-to-military relations over 70 years. “The bottom line is that this is a transformative change,” the official said.

“Once this transition is complete, USF-J will have a direct leadership role in planning and directing U.S. forces in both peacetime and potential crises, and they will do so with Japanese forces like never before.”