Tension between South Korea and Japan could hurt US goals

[soryang]

Tension between South Korea and Japan could hurt US goals in the Pacific — and China is watching
By: Aaron Mehta
August 15

In what the U.S. has declared to be an era of great power competition, part of the plan to blunt Chinese influence in the region comes from relying on Japan and South Korea, two key American partners, to focus on shared threats in the region. But since October, new rifts have formed in the Japan-South Korea relationship, with the two countries in the last few weeks trading major economic blows and neither side dialing down the rhetoric.

Now, there are concerns that what have been social and economic tensions could boil over and destroy a key intelligence sharing arrangement, one the U.S. had hoped to use as a platform for building greater defense cooperation between the two neighbors. Should that happen, it may impact America’s long-term strategy in the region.

“This isn’t Japan and Korea going to war,” said Patrick Cronin, a regional expert with the Hudson Institute. “But it is a worse situation than we should be allowing right now, and it’s dangerous if it spills over into things like severing the intelligence sharing arrangement. It’s dangerous for all three countries."

“You have literally the foundation of America’s Indo-Pacific strategy being called into question at a time when it’s vital for the United States to be showing this strategy” can work, Cronin added. “We’ve had ups and down. But I don’t want to sugarcoat the fact that this deterioration of the relationship we’ve witnessed since October 2018 is fundamentally against U.S. national interests.”

This is an excellent article written from the point of view primarily of US national defense interests. "You have literally the foundation of America's Indo-Pacific strategy being called into question..." The author gets it. Most US analysts minimize this problem because they refuse to look at its historical roots which aren't all that pleasant to consider.

https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2019/08/15/tension-between-south-korea-and-japan-could-hurt-us-goals-in-the-pacific-and-china-is-watching/