South Korean President Moon Jae-in is planning a phone call with Joe Biden this week
Credit: Yonhap/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s Prime Minister, will this week be the first Asian leaders to call Joe Biden, the US President-elect.
The conversations are expected to recharge decades-old alliances between the US and East Asia, that have come under strain in the Trump era.
Donald Trump, the US president, has been criticised for treating relations with both Asian nations as transactional rather than strategic alliances, openly rebuking Seoul and Tokyo for not spending enough on hosting US forces in the region.
Both leaders quickly tweeted their congratulations to Mr Biden at the weekend after the presidential election was called in his favour, and stressed the strengthening of ties. Their early phone calls suggest not only the desire for a reset, but also an urgency not to allow transition chaos in Washington to risk the security of the Indo-Pacific region.
“I think the most significant thing is just the call itself,” said Professor John Delury, an Asia expert at Yonsei University in Seoul.
“It says something about the confidence of America’s East Asian allies, South Korea and Japan, that they are reaching out and want to establish a contact and essentially help to make it as smooth a transition as possible,” he added.
While the conversations, expected on Thursday or Friday, are unlikely to contain much substance on policy, they will set an early tone for the new US approach towards East Asia’s major concerns on security, trade, climate change, and China’s bid for regional supremacy.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga will also speak to the President-elect
Credit: Toshiyuki Matsumoto/AP
Both Mr Suga and Mr Moon will be keen to set out their own priorities in the knowledge that Mr Biden will have tumultuous domestic challenges, including the pandemic and its economic damage, to address early in his presidency.
For President Moon, the call takes place under the shadow of a stalemate with North Korea over its nuclear weapons programme, which have been stalled since a failed February 2019 summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un in Hanoi.
Mr Delury said the call was “a strong signal of Moon’s determination to forge a good relationship with Biden” after “a rough four years for the alliance".
He added: “He wants to start early..it’s the critical relationship for Moon and then the Korean Peninsula is going to be important for Biden and he needs a good relationship with Seoul.”
With both leaders sharing a “liberal, democratic mindset” there was hope for a return to a “more normal alliance relationship” with a focus on shared goals including climate change and pandemic cooperation, said Mr Delury.
In an article run by South Korean news agency Yonhap, Mr Biden already promised more stability in the US-South Korea relationship, "rather than extorting Seoul with reckless threats to remove our troops," referring to Mr Trump’s policies.
Aligning strategies over North Korea, China and Japan will be tougher to negotiate.
Mr Biden is expected to instigate a huge shift in the US approach to North Korea after calling Kim a “butcher” and “thug,” and accusing Mr Trump of gifting him legitimacy with “three made-for-TV summits” that produced no disarmament progress.
Mr Biden is expected to take a more patient, bottom-up approach than Mr Trump to North Korea
Credit: Evan Vucci/AP
Kim, who forged a warm relationship with Mr Trump, has yet to congratulate the president-elect, who his propaganda machine has referred to in the past as a “rabid dog” who “must be beaten to death".
The Obama administration developed a “strategic patience” policy on Pyongyang that had the central aim of waiting for international sanctions to force North Korea to denuclearise in exchange for economic relief.
Kang Kyung-wha, South Korea’s foreign minister, urged Mr Biden to readjust his own policy to give “summit-level” attention to kickstart US-North Korea denuclearisation talks.
Ahead of the election, Mr Biden endorsed a slower, bottom-up approach and indicated he would be willing to tighten sanctions against Kim.
Edward Howell, a North Korea expert at Oxford University, cautioned that North Korea may revive missile testing if the US-North Korea dialogue could not be swiftly reopened.
“Although we may not see carbon copy of the Obama administration’s ‘strategic patience’, Biden’s inclination towards working-level dialogue, only escalating to higher level talks when North Korea has offered a concessionary step, is likely to play into North Korea’s hands,” he said.
“It will give them time to continue their nuclear development, but without the attention it garnered from presidential-level dialogue under Trump.”
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