US President Barack Obama is certain to heap praise on South Korea and Japan as he attends back-to-back summits, but some experts see a subtle shift as he views Seoul as the more dynamic ally.
In separate remarks this year that made diplomats run to their thesauruses, Obama called South Korea “the linchpin” of regional security and Japan “one of the cornerstones” of security throughout the world.
The distinction may seem academic, but it has quietly concerned some Japanese policymakers who have long viewed their country as, well, the linchpin of US strategy in Asia.
Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said he has spoken with US officials who described Obama’s “linchpin” remark — made when he met South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in June in Canada — as a deliberate, if nuanced, sign of the administration’s views.
Lee has been a steadfast US ally, coordinating moves in a standoff with Pyongyang. It is a striking change from his predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun, who criticized US troops and US policy toward the North.
In Japan, the center-left Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) last year ended decades of conservative rule and initially tried to win more concessions on a deal to move a US air base on Okinawa.
“Certainly under Lee Myung-bak you have an administration that’s far more forward-looking to transform the alliance into having broader responsibilities,” Klingner said. “Compare that with the DPJ government in Tokyo, which came into office downplaying the importance of the alliance and seeking a relationship that was more equidistant between Washington and Beijing.”
US-Japan relations have improved since Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan took over in June.
However, experts still see a gap in momentum in US relations with Tokyo and Seoul. The Obama administration is racing to complete a free-trade agreement with South Korea by the time he arrives on Wednesday for the summit of the G20 major economies in Seoul.
The relationship with South Korea “has been the one real bright spot in US policy toward Asia,” said Weston Konishi, associate director of Asia-Pacific studies at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis.
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