Biden ’s Asia Dilemma: Allies and North Korea Diplomacy

Eric GomezThe Biden administration is working quickly to make good on its rhetoric about makingAmerica ’s alliance relationships great again. East Asia has been the primary theater for alliance repair work thus far. The new administration moved quickly to reach military cost ‐​sharing agreements withSouth Korea andJapan, smoothing over a prominentsource of friction left by the Trump administration.Biden has made it clear that he wants the United States and its allies to move together when solving common problems, but this ideal is starting to run up against an inconvenient truth of divergent priorities in friendly capitals.It may be impossible for Washington to keep both Seoul and Tokyo happy because each capital has very different ideas about what it wants out of U.S. policy toward North Korea. While both South Korea and Japan would prefer to see North Korea completely denuclearize, the two U.S. allies have different priorities and their approaches to the problem vary significantly.Generally speaking, the Moon Jae ‐​in administration in Seoul would like to do more to incentivize North Korea to improve relations with both South Korea and the United States. Getting rid of North Korea’s nuclear weapons is one of the major goals of South Korea’s strategy, but achieving denuclearization will require improv ements in other policy areas along the way. South Korea’s efforts toreduce the risk of conventional military actions along the DMZ, plans for greater econo...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs