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Asia’s Threesome Turns Four

Relations among Northeast Asia's’s three major powers, China, South Korea, and Japan, are burdened both by territorial disputes and by the bitter historical legacies of Japanese colonialism. But there are signs, most evident at the three countries' most recent trilateral summits, that momentum is building for greater regional cooperation.

SEOUL – Like many regions of the world, Northeast Asia faces severe political challenges in creating a viable structure of peace. But, given China’s rising power, such a regional structure is becoming all the more necessary if today’s lack of trust is not to devolve into military antagonism.

Relations among the region’s three major powers, China, South Korea, and Japan, are burdened both by territorial disputes and by the bitter historical legacies of Japanese colonialism. Of course, economic interdependence has deepened over the past three decades, but nationalism remains a convenient tool for political mobilization – and of manipulation for domestic and diplomatic purposes.

Moreover, although the Cold War is two decades in the past, South Korea and China remain divided nations. Furthermore, North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons, its economic fragility, and uncertainty about its very future as a state, are causes of deep anxiety among its neighbors.

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