Editor's note: Hafijur Rahman, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is a columnist and security and strategic analyst, working in a prominent Strategic Studies Center in Bangladesh. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

In a show of diplomatic courtship, U.S. President Joe Biden hosts South Korea's President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at Camp David. In their first-ever stand-alone trilateral summit, the leaders of the three countries announced a series of joint initiatives on technology and defense. Biden hopes that the three-way discussion with the leaders from America's two strongest allies in Northeast Asia will lead to a "unified trilateral bloc." The Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark A. Milley, said earlier that the summit is "to make sure that we demonstrate that we are all shoulder-to-shoulder."

However, amid the theatrical fanfare and the ecstatic statements about the summit's potential, discussions about the underlying complexities across the three nations and the region at-large are generally absent from the scene. Particularly, the historical antagonism between South Korea and Japan, the enduring nature of their rapprochement's abrupt backsliding, and divergent strategic interests among the parties call the sustainability of the potential "trilateral alliance" into question.

The Biden administration is particularly keen to cash in on the recent political developments between the ROK and Japan by aligning them into its broader strategic agenda, with the key objective to contain China under the cover of deterring China's neighbor the DPRK. In March, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol announced a U.S.-backed agreement with Japan to settle the contentious issue of Imperial Japan's brutal exploitation of slave labor during World War II. With geopolitics at the center of the arrangement, the pact, widely denounced as a "sellout" and a betrayal to the victims, drastically fails to address the issue of Tokyo offering an apology or compensation.

Apart from the fact that the current rapprochement agreement is a sketchy outcome resulting from the geopolitical urgency on the part of Washington to mend the ROK-Japan ties in favor of its strategic interests in East Asia, the historical track record also shows that the ROK-Japan rapprochement has always been prone to abrupt failure. Tokyo and Seoul signed a similar agreement in 2015 that then declared to "finally and irreversibly" resolve the issues of Korean "comfort women," only to be annulled by the former South Korean President President Moon Jae-in in 2019 due to low public support. The largely deferential efforts for rapprochement with Japan by the Yoon administration – widely criticized for its massive political witch-hunt of his opponents – were driven by his administration's utter disregard for public opinion.

Additionally, the trilateral summit resulted in a joint statement with a specific aim among others to formalize trilateral security and defense ties. According to officials involved, Washington wants to institutionalize the annual joint military exercises aiming to enhance interoperability across security, intelligence, and military domains. With countering China and the DPRK as a key objective of the summit, the aggressive bid for forging a trilateral military nexus doesn't bode well for regional peace and stability. This belligerent approach will further squeeze the diplomatic room for improving inter-Korean relations.      

But to what extent can the South Korean President push his increasingly hawkish foreign policy against both the DPRK and China in line with Washington's militaristic strategic agenda also warrants substantial doubt. With his growing tendency to demonstrate his relevance to Washington's containment strategy against China, Yoon's foreign policy runs counter not only to his predecessor's balanced foreign policy but also to wider public opinion.

According to a 2021 survey conducted by Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University, nearly 90 percent of South Koreans do not see China as an adversary. In another survey run by the Korea Institute for National Unification, South Koreans remain unenthusiastic about America's anti-China containment strategy, with a majority supporting a neutral stance in the U.S.-China rivalry.

His administration's recently published national security strategy outlines the objectives of establishing peace on the peninsula, preparing for future unification, and laying the foundation for East Asia's prosperity. His policy towards DPRK would require strengthening deterrence, tightening sanctions and developing overwhelming military response capabilities. But those objectives stands in contrast with public opinion. According to a series of polls conducted in 2021, over 70 percent of South Koreans do not regard the DPRK as an enemy; 61 percent support relaxing sanctions on the DPRK; and 79 percent support peace with Pyongyang through diplomacy.

Besides, another formidable bottleneck to maintaining a sustained alliance with its implicit target of containing China is the divergent strategic interests of the three countries. While Washington's unrelenting strategic campaign against China is playing a complementary role in its overall geostrategic goals, Japan's ultimate goal is mostly revisionist, reinstating itself as the central power in Asian affairs. Its aggressive militarization and frenzied bid for strategic reach across the Asia-Pacific region bears evidence in this regard. Even South Koreans themselves have increasingly become worried about Japan's increasingly loose definition of pacifism.

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