TOKYO (BLOOMBERG) — When US President Donald Trump sits down to talk peace with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un later this month, one of America’s closest allies — Japan — will be looking on with apprehension..
TOKYO (BLOOMBERG) — When US President Donald Trump sits down to talk peace with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un later this month, one of America’s closest allies — Japan — will be looking on with apprehension.
Like the first time Trump met Kim in June, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has found himself on the outside peering in before their second summit set for Feb 27-28 in Hanoi.
The meeting brings both the promise of a less-dangerous North Korea and the potential peril of a weak deal that leaves Japan exposed to Kim’s weapons of mass destruction and does nothing to help ease Tokyo’s own hostility with Pyongyang.
Mitoji Yabunaka, who served as Japan’s envoy to six-party talks with North Korea more than a decade ago, said the country feared «a half-baked, deceptive agreement which leads to the Trump administration taking a soft line on North Korea by removing economic sanctions» without serious progress on disarmament. That would be «the nightmare scenario,» Yabunaka said.
While Japan and the US — which guarantees the country’s security under a 1960 treaty — both want North Korea to give up its weapons, their interests could diverge as talks progress. Kim’s short- to medium-range rockets pose the most immediate danger to Japan, not the intercontinental ballistic missiles that now threaten the American homeland.
Moreover, Trump’s unilateral decision to grant Kim’s request to suspend joint military exercises with South Korea during their first summit has raised concerns about a potential US pull-back after the second. The presence of some 28,500 American troops on the peninsula provides Japan a valuable buffer against a rising China, as well as North Korea.
