The Next World War Starts Here
An aggressive China and Russia’s war on Ukraine brought South Korea and Japan closer — with lots of American help. Keeping them together to deter Beijing will be one of the most important foreign policy tasks for Harris or Trump.
SEOUL — East Asia is the most serious threat to world peace. An eruption here is hotter and bigger than anything the Middle East or Europe would conceivably produce.
The Biden administration leaves behind a strong diplomatic legacy in Asia, in contrast to its failure in Afghanistan and mixed record in Ukraine and the Middle East. It built webs of security alliances across the region to deter China and forged what has proved elusive for decades — a rapprochement, if not warm friendship, between historical foes and America’s closest Asian allies, South Korea and Japan.
Huge challenges loom for Joe Biden’s successor here. The scale of the forces lining up against each other in the northern Pacific is terrifying. China is forging a deeper alliance of American adversaries in North Korea and Russia, making threats against Taiwan and staking stronger claims on territory in the South China Sea. America’s actions in other geopolitical theaters — above all Ukraine — will reverberate in East Asia.
As strange as it might seem in this moment, the next U.S. administration’s strategy is hamstrung by some old history. Japan and South Korea — which have powerful militaries, and in Japan’s case one that’s recently embarked on a major buildup — are haunted by long-running disputes from the previous century that make their entente feel fragile. It’s an open question whether it can last, even as the threats that are pulling them together grow more serious.
Over the hills that ring Seoul lies the most heavily militarized region in the world. The DMZ separates this vibrant capital from a nuclear-armed hermit state ruled by an unpredictable autocrat that weighs heavily on Korean minds.
The view from Tokyo, a quick flight across the Sea of Japan, is as unreassuring these days.
Russian military planes are breaching the country’s northwestern coastal airspace repeatedly, a reminder that Tokyo and Moscow have an unresolved, nearly 80-year-old territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands that leaves them technically in a state of war. China disputes Japan’s claim over the Senkaku Islands in the south. In the first ever known incursion, Chinese military aircraft flew through Japanese airspace in August. Chinese and Russian military ships together passed near Japanese waters in September during a joint exercise. North Korea openly considers Japan a foe and occasionally sends a missile over the country.
“Japan is now facing off against North Korea, Russia and China and that makes for a severe security environment,” Minoru Kihara, Japan’s defense minister until the government changed last month, told me in an interview in Tokyo. “We feel a strong sense of crisis considering that such incidents took place in a short period of time.”
The war in Ukraine shifted plates in Asia. After Vladimir Putin launched the invasion, Xi Jinping backed him strongly against a unified NATO — making that European conflict a test of China’s superpower ambitions. Japan is “paying close attention to China’s alliance with Russia,” Kihara added. Ukraine also brought Moscow and North Korea closer. Kim Jong Un sent thousands of his soldiers to fight there last month in return, presumably, for military technology and other goodies.
‘Drinking buddies’
The answer to this robust authoritarian axis à trois is the trilateral relationship with Seoul and Tokyo that Washington spent years trying to bring to life.
While both countries are protected by the U.S. through treaties going back over 70 years — and while both share common enemies — South Korea and Japan have long been estranged. During World War II, Japan occupied South Korea, enslaving Koreans to work in their factories and sexually service their soldiers. Japan has apologized and paid reparations to Koreans. But this remains an open nerve — and badly strained political and military ties.
During his time as the commodore of a squadron of guided missiles destroyers in the 1990s, retired Adm. Jim Stavridis recalled that during joint exercises the U.S. had to keep Japanese and South Korean vessels far away from each other — or “you’d get the on-the-sea version of ‘road rage’.” It is as if France and Germany had remained frosty after World War II. Under that scenario, Europe wouldn’t have NATO or the EU.
The Xi era in China changed Japanese attitudes about security. Ukraine is the more recent accelerant.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who stepped down this autumn, elaborated a line used by his foreign minister — “First Ukraine, then Taiwan” — to suggest the war could come here: “Ukraine may be the East Asia of tomorrow.” Russia’s biggest supporter China is the one power today openly challenging the U.S.-led order, and the only one with the ability potentially to do so.
Japan responded by unveiling plans to double defense spending — from 1 percent of its GDP to 2 percent by 2027. The budget has already gone up more than 40 percent since 2022. Under its constitution, Japan can only defend itself and had neglected the military. A previous Japanese leader, Shinzo Abe, started to change things in the 2010s. Japan built out a formidable navy and added modern weaponry. By the time the current expansion plans are in place, Japan is expected to be the world’s third-largest spender on defense, after the U.S. and China. Germany, by contrast, is reversing plans to boost defense spending.
Even for all that spending, “China is outpacing Japan’s increase of defense budget and they have four times more than we do,” said Kihara, the former defense minister. “It is difficult for us to face China on our own.”
South Korea is an obvious ally for Japan. Kishida was open to closer relations, believing Japan needed friends to resist China. What made that possible was the presidential election in March of 2022, a month after the invasion of Ukraine, that brought Yoon Suk Yeol to the presidential palace in Seoul.
The left and right swap power every five or 10 years here. The left tends to seek reconciliation with North Korea and dislike Japan. A man of the right, Yoon brought more hawkish views and something else: a genuine affection for Japan going back to his father’s time studying and teaching there.
He had his first chance to meet Kishida at the Madrid NATO summit in July of that year. “Yoon hugged him,” recalled a former Korean official who was there. Kishida was taken aback. Yoon is outgoing, Kishida circumspect. “Asian leaders don’t do hugs, unless they are communists.”
From that awkward beginning came a relationship that this former official described as “drinking buddies.”
The U.S. had been looking for an opening like this for years. Kurt Campbell, the deputy secretary of State, pushed a rapprochement strategy from Washington. Dozens of trilateral meetings followed where the U.S. did “the thing that’s unusual for America — step back and let everyone else talk,” said Rahm Emanuel, America’s ambassador in Tokyo.
Little was straightforward. Korean and Japanese ministers rarely meet each other one-on-one. Korea’s defense minister hadn’t come to Tokyo for 15 years before this July. If the Japanese defense chief goes to Seoul next year, as planned, that would be the first time in nine years. The U.S. has to play mediator and counselor to both sides.
“History is history, brother,” Emanuel said. “It has a pull on emotions and it has a pull on psychology.
“The U.S. plays an important role in keeping the plates spinning,” he added.
When Japan was hosting the G7 summit in Hiroshima in May of 2023, Washington pressed to have Korea invited. During the meeting, Yoon and Kishida went together with their spouses to pay respects at a memorial to the Korean victims of the 1945 atomic bombing of the city. It was a first of sorts and created a lasting image.
The culmination of the courtship was the Camp David summit in August last year. Yoon, Kishida and Biden hailed a new era and announced various agreements, including on sharing data about missiles and a major exercise. “This is an all hands on deck moment in the region,” said a senior administration official in Washington, who asked for anonymity.
“When you have trust in us and in the president, you don’t do the bare minimum,” Emanuel said. “They went beyond their comfort zone. In a world consumed by war and grievance, history can catch up to the present and shape it. Camp David showed dialogue and diplomacy shaped the future.
“Now,” Emanuel continued, “the goal is to institutionalize it in the DNA of governments.”
‘Not allies’
The fact is this rapprochement is far from a done deal. Leaders in Seoul and Tokyo sound at best cautionary notes.
“I’m very pessimistic,” said a senior Japanese official who was granted anonymity to discuss the matter. The Koreans “swing from one extreme to the other.” Yoon’s opponents have called him a sellout to Japan, riding him hard on the rapprochement.
Another foreign ministry official in Tokyo recalled working visits to Seoul during the lead-up to the Camp David summit. “They would yell at us during negotiations over what happened in the war and when the meeting’s over, they say, ‘no hard feelings, let’s go out for drinks’,” this official said. “The next day they yell at us some more. It’s due to the domestic political pressure they’re under.”
In Korea, this issue isn’t purely a matter of partisan politics. Distrust crosses generations and goes deep.
While Korea has agreed to joint naval and aerial exercises, Japanese forces aren’t welcome on Korean soil. “We prefer to have them somewhere else,” deadpanned a senior Korean official.
Asked whether Japan was now an ally, this official paused and said, “Don’t think so. Partner is enough.”
The recurring pain points involve Korean demands for reparations and more apologies. The Japanese reply that these demands were settled already — and want to stay away from Korea’s messy internal politics.
Yes and no. Korea’s enthusiasm for the rapprochement may pass with President’s Yoon’s departure from office. Yet Japan’s own politics are tortured by history as well, which hinders its ability to build deeper relationships with Korea and other nations across Asia that fear China’s rise.
Japan’s 21st century awakening on defense contrasts with its former wartime ally in Germany. There is another contrast with Germany that is less complimentary. “The curious thing,” Ian Buruma wrote in his book Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan, “much of what attracted [the] Japanese to Germany before the war — Prussian authoritarianism, romantic nationalism, pseudo-scientific racialism — had lingered in Japan while becoming distinctly unfashionable in Germany.”
No Japanese politician, Buruma continued, has “ever gone down on his knees, as Willy Brandt did in the old Warsaw ghetto, to apologize for historical crimes.”
The Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan for all but four years since 1955 and will almost certainly continue to despite losing its majority in the past weekend’s elections, has a vocal nationalist right wing. Many mornings outside LDP headquarters, trucks with loudspeakers and flags blare nationalist speeches.
These historical issues might have been settled long ago. The U.S. can share some blame, deciding, in order to get a peace deal done, to let the Japanese emperor stay as head of state but give up his divine right to rule. Japan’s military kept its flags and symbols. Germany was wiped clean of the Nazi regime and its vestiges.
“We didn’t really grow up,” said one foreign ministry official that I spoke to in Tokyo.
Yasukuni Shrine is a large complex in central Tokyo near the imperial palace. The shrine honors Japan’s war dead, among whom are 14 war criminals who committed atrocities in World War II. A large museum on the site treats Japan’s wartime histories with reverence. Models of a kamikaze plane and submarine are displayed. Exhibits for the last war suggest the Japanese were fighting Western imperialism in Asia. It’s as if a museum in Berlin displayed Nazi flags and honored Nazi leaders.
Whenever an LDP politician visits Yasukuni, Koreans and Chinese have an excuse to complain. Kihara, the defense minister, went on Aug. 15, the 79th anniversary of Japan’s surrender. He was unapologetic, saying that “those who had sacrificed should be given tribute” and that his own relatives worship there. “It is unfortunate that this has been politicized,” he said.
Just don’t call it Asian NATO
These two awkward neighbors need each other and America needs them to get along to marshal a credible response to the China-led threesome.
The security anxieties in the region are bound to grow. If Beijing acts on its threats and succeeds, the fall of Taiwan would be a huge economic and political blow to the U.S. It would also put the rest of Asia in play, so to speak. Add to that the reemergence of Russia in the region and the heightening of the North Korean threat. The war in Ukraine is sputtering along, and the outcome there might hang on what happens in the U.S. Tuesday.
The Biden diplomatic push of the past couple years in East Asia is intended to build out enough military muscle and overlapping alliances to create a kind of NATO for the region — with China in the role of the old Soviet Union. You just can’t call it NATO. The South Koreans and others don’t want to be formally allied with Japan. To be more like Germany, Japan would also become an equal partner to America and others.
The U.S. isn’t ready to reopen the postwar security deal that keeps Japan in a kind of arrested development. The current Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba used to muse about an Asian NATO and reopening the status of forces agreement between the U.S. and Japan. He had to disavow the idea minutes after winning power in late September.
Those political issues are a distraction, U.S. officials say. In practical terms, however, a lot has already changed. The region is arming up, passing Europe in terms of defense expenditures a decade ago. As they spend more, Japan’s terrible demographics limit their ability to add manpower. The money is going to buy hundreds of American long-range Tomahawk missiles, integrated antimissile systems and unmanned defenses. Japan’s navy could be “the swing vote on effective deterrence” over Taiwan, said Matt Pottinger, deputy national security adviser in the Trump White House. Japan wants to develop weapons with the U.S. and train its troops there.
Earlier this year, the U.S. upgraded the commander of forces in Japan from a two-star to a three-star general officer and pledged to build a new command and control center — which Emanuel called “the largest change in our force structure” and “the most important thing we have done here in 60 years.”
Other baby steps are planned. The trio is talking about putting in place some institutional roots. Perhaps a secretariat for the trilateral relationship — that’s not exactly a second coming of NATO.
The wartime history in East Asia feels far more alive and relevant to the future than in Europe. Beijing, naturally, exploits it. The Chinese government has managed to transfer animosity toward Japan to the next generation. A 10-year-old Japanese boy was stabbed to death in September while walking to school in Shanghai on the anniversary of Japan’s invasion of China, the latest in a string of attacks on Japanese in the country.
Beijing has another card to play against both South Korea and Japan. Both countries are deeply integrated with China economically, which Beijing has used to pressure them.
As much as the U.S. wants their friendship to build, Japan and South Korea will look primarily to Washington for reassurances about American power and its commitment to them individually.
“Beijing wants to send a signal that the U.S. is unable to support treaty allies in the region, and to send a signal to Taiwan, to portray us as hollow allies,” Pottinger said. “Xi has led himself into believing that America is in irrevocable decline and that China and its allies will paper the world in chaos.”
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