The US is to work with Indo-Pacific partners to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the broader region, US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Jonathan Fritz said on Wednesday.
The US would cooperate with South Korea and other regional partners to “uphold the international law of the sea and peace and stability, whether in the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea or elsewhere in the region,” Fritz said at the ROK-US Strategic Forum in Washington.
The alliance between the US and South Korea, as well as their extended deterrence commitments, “remain ironclad,” he added.
Photo: screengrab the Center for Strategic and International Studies YouTube
Victor Cha, president of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department and Korea Chair at the Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that South Korea’s most important role in a potential Taiwan contingency would be to prevent a second crisis from erupting on the Korean Peninsula, which would “stretch the United States very thinly.”
Cha said that the inclusion of the Taiwan Strait issue in the joint fact sheet released after the October meeting between US President Donald Trump and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung was “very significant, given that it is a different government from the previous government.”
The statement about the law of the sea and freedom of navigation was “clearly in reference to Chinese activity in the South China Sea, as well as closer to the Korean Peninsula,” Cha said.
As for South Korea’s role in maintaining peace across the Strait, Cha said that it could at least criticize China for using economic coercion against Japan after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi took a stance on a cross-strait issue.
He was referring to Takaichi’s recent comment that a Chinese attack on Taiwan would constitute a situation threatening Japan’s survival, a remark that prompted Beijing to issue a travel warning for Japan and suspend imports of Japanese seafood.
Lee Seong-hyon, a senior fellow at the George H.W. Bush Foundation for US-China Relations, said at the forum that Takaichi’s remark was not directed at Beijing, but rather at Washington.
“Japan wants to make sure that from Washington’s perspective, Japan is really a reliable partner,” he said.
A previous meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) toned down the tensions and raised the possibility of a “grand bargain” between the two superpowers, prompting “a fear of abandonment” in smaller countries, Lee said.
“Interestingly, US allies are showing strategic clarity,” even as Washington is approaching Beijing with strategic ambiguity, he said.
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