Circling the Square: History and Alliance Management

Abstract

As President Barack Obama prepares to visit Asia in April 2014 with key stops in Seoul and Tokyo (most likely his last visit to these two capitals as president), the 64 dollar question is whether he will be able to foster Korean-Japanese rapprochement. Although a bilateral Korean-Japanese summit is still unlikely in the near term, a trilateral ROK-US-Japan is slated to be held in The Hague between March 24 and 25 on the sidelines of the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit. From a US perspective, the ongoing, mini-cold war (not to mention an even more volatile Sino-Japanese standoff) is highly disconcerting, given that South Korea and Japan are America’s closest and most important allies in Asia. Nevertheless (and notwithstanding core common security interests that bind Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo), it is time to put in place a new alliance management paradigm. Seoul recognizes the importance of sustained trilateral cooperation over a range of critical issues, but not at the expense of ignoring or downplaying Japan’s historical amnesia and whitewashing of wartime atrocities.