“What if it’s Trump?” Europe and Asia Work to Institutionalize Security Cooperation

Support for Ukraine, With or Without Washington

The thirty-third NATO Summit, held in early July 2024 in Washington DC, took place against the background of concerns surrounding the potential return of Donald Trump to the American presidency and its impact on global security. To address these concerns and worries about the United States abandoning its global leadership role more generally, both American allies and the administration of President Joe Biden have been diplomatically active over the last few months.

For example, the Biden administration proposed the “Ukraine Compact” at the NATO Summit. This is a framework for the provision of long-term security assistance to Ukraine including training and aid for weapons and military supplies. More than 20 countries, including Japan, and the European Union signed on to the initiative. Its unspoken aim is to ensure continued support for Ukraine even if Trump returns to power.

Former President Trump is well known to be at best a reluctant supporter of Ukraine. Furthermore, Trump’s pick for vice-president, Senator JD Vance, is on record publicly stating that “Ukraine is going to have to cede some territory to the Russians” to bring the war to a close. Therefore, if a Trump administration is inaugurated in early 2025, many fear that American support for Ukraine will end, and Kyiv will be forced to accept ceasefire conditions that will compromise its sovereignty and security.

For this reason, the signatories to the Compact agreed to continue support through the 2030s to enhance Ukraine’s ability to “defend its freedom, independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity today and deter acts of aggression in the future.” The EU will play an important role in facilitating the Compact and signatories will make use of existing mechanisms such as Ukraine Defense Contact Group and its “Capability Coalitions” to achieve this. The defense ministers of the Compact signatories agreed to meet before the end of the year—and before a new American president is inaugurated—to agree on a roadmap to enhance Ukraine’s force development.

Therefore, even if the current fighting comes to an end, Ukraine will receive support to continue the improvement of its military capabilities in preparation for a future Russian invasion. The agreement also codifies a commitment to bring Ukraine into the broader “Euro-Atlantic community”, including providing a pathway for membership in the EU and NATO.

Additionally, NATO Summit attendees also agreed to establish the NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine in Wiesbaden, Germany. This is a new NATO-run command center comprising 700 personnel who will “plan, coordinate, and arrange delivery of security assistance that Ukraine needs to prevail in its fight today, and in the future.” A new NATO senior representative was also appointed (Britain’s Patrick Turner); he will arrive in Kyiv in September to engage with Ukrainian officials and deepen Ukraine’s institutional relationship with the NATO alliance.

Until now, the United States has been primarily responsible for the practical tasks of training and distributing equipment to Ukrainian forces. The above outcomes of the NATO Summit, therefore, point to the gradual transfer of these tasks to NATO and the EU to institutionalize cooperation without sole reliance on American leadership.

It is not only European countries that are deepening their cooperation to support Ukraine. Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand—NATO’s “Indo-Pacific Partners,” or the IP4—recently held a summit meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The five nations collectively agreed to continue cooperation based on their recognition that “Ukraine is an issue not only for Europe but also for the entire international community, including the Indo-Pacific.” The IP4 leaders also met with President Biden during the Summit, agreed to further promote security cooperation, and adopted a joint statement denouncing the deepening military ties between Russia and North Korea, a situation that “undermines peace and stability in both the Indo-Pacific and European region.”

Flurry of Indo-Pacific Security Cooperation

Many countries throughout the Indo-Pacific continue to deepen strategic cooperation with China in mind. On July 28, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Secretary of Defense William Austin held the US-Japan Security Consultative Committee (2-plus-2) meeting of foreign and defense ministers in Tokyo. This was followed by a meeting of the foreign ministers of the four Quad countries (United States, Japan, Australia, India) on July 29. The Quad countries released a joint statement criticizing China’s “coercive and intimidating maneuvers in the South China Sea.”

The two senior US officials then landed in Manila on July 30 for another ministerial-level 2-plus-2 meeting with the Philippine government. A key outcome was the American pledge of $500 million to enhance the military capability of the Philippine Armed Forces.

This is significant because tensions between China and the Philippines over the Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea have been rising. These tensions had already precipitated the first trilateral summit meeting between the leaders of Japan, the United States, and the Philippines, held in Washington DC this April. In May, the defense ministers of Australia, the United States, Japan, and the Philippines also met in Hawaii to criticize China’s actions around the Second Thomas Shoal and discuss how to respond.

The geopolitical significance of current tensions goes beyond the issue of the Philippines’ national security, however. The northern Philippines and the main island of Taiwan are only about 100 kilometers apart, with the area in between representing an important strategic chokepoint. Therefore, any Sino-Philippine conflict is closely related to the security of Taiwan and regional security. This flurry of multilateral security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific will enhance the effectiveness of countermeasures to check China’s hegemonic behavior.

Institutionalizing US-ROK-Japan Cooperation

We should not overlook the progress made by trilateral strategic partnership between the United States, Japan, and the Republic of Korea under the Biden administration. In August 2023, President Biden invited the leaders of Japan and South Korea to Camp David in the United States for the first ever trilateral leaders’ summit meeting between the three countries.

This resulted in a major leap forward for trilateral security cooperation. Up until then, the US-ROK alliance had been primarily dedicated to dealing with North Korea. This is changing, however, as the United States, Japan, and South Korea broaden the focus of their security cooperation to the entire Indo-Pacific region while keeping a watchful eye on China.

Subsequently, on July 28, the same day as the US-Japan 2-plus-2 in Tokyo, Minister of Defense Kihara Minoru, Secretary of Defense Austin, and South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik held a US-ROK-Japan defense ministerial meeting in Japan for the first time. A major goal of this meeting was to ensure that the cooperative trend initiated at Camp David would not be lost should a second Trump administration come to pass. The three ministers therefore signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at regularizing joint US-ROK-Japan training and ministerial meetings, and issued a joint statement committing the three countries to further institutionalizing trilateral security cooperation.

Delicate Issues Remain for the US-Japan Alliance

Despite the bilateral and multilateral security activity observed throughout the region, delicate issues remain surrounding the strengthening of the US-Japan alliance as the centerpiece of Indo-Pacific security cooperation. Building on the historic US-Japan summit in April 2024, where both sides agreed to upgrade their command and control frameworks, the US-Japan 2-plus-2 meeting in July focused on improving and reviewing these C2 frameworks. A key issue discussed was how best to reorganize them to enhance seamless integration of operations and planning between United States Forces Japan and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces in peacetime and during regional security contingencies.

Both defense ministers agreed to the modernization of American and Japanese C2 frameworks, including the reconstitution of the USFJ to a “Joint Force Headquarters.” This will complement the standing up of a JSDF Joint Operations Command later this year that will unify operational command of the three arms of the SDF. This in turn should pave the way for a combined USFJ-JSDF operational command arrangement in the future.

These measures are aimed at strengthening US-Japan security cooperation in preparation for contingencies such as one around Taiwan. However, opposition parties in Japan and others are concerned that if C2 cooperation is too deep, Japanese and American forces will become indistinguishable, and the JSDF will lose its independence and identity. Take, for example, the US-ROK alliance. The United States military retains operational control during military contingencies, and South Korean forces are placed under its command when a conflict breaks out.

However, even if it were desirable, Tokyo cannot delegate command of the SDF to other countries due to constitutional restrictions. This is something that will need to be managed delicately, no matter who comes to power in the United States. Ingenuity will therefore be required to continue alliance strengthening while ensuring that Japan’s military forces retain their distinctiveness.

(Originally published in Japanese. Banner photo: From left, Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Japanese Foreign Minister Kamikawa Yōko, and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken after a joint press conference following the “Quad” foreign ministers’ meeting on July 29, 2024, at the Foreign Ministry Iikura Kaikan in Minato, Tokyo. © Jiji.)