WASHINGTON — United States President Joe Biden is dispatching White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan to Tokyo this week for talks with his counterparts from Japan, Philippines and South Korea.
Sullivan will also take part in “the first-ever trilateral meeting of the Japanese, Philippine and US national security advisers” while in Japan, the White House National Security Council said in a statement Tuesday, June 13, 2023.
The White House offered scant details about Sullivan’s two-day visit that begins Thursday, June 15, saying Sullivan and his counterparts “will discuss ways to deepen collaboration on a number of key regional and global issues.”
Sullivan’s visit comes after US, Japanese and Philippine coast guard ships staged law enforcement drills in waters near the disputed South China Sea earlier this month. Washington has stepped up efforts to reinforce alliances in Asia amid an increasingly tense rivalry with China.
Washington lays no claims to the strategic South China Sea, where China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have been locked in tense territorial stand-offs for decades. But the US says freedom of navigation and overflight and the peaceful resolution of disputes in the busy waterway are in its national interest.
The White House confirmed Sullivan’s travels after Biden during a reception at the White House for US chiefs of diplomatic missions on Tuesday made an off-hand remark that Ambassador Rahm Emanuel, the US envoy to Japan, was not on hand because he was getting ready for Sullivan’s visit.
US-China relations have been strained throughout Biden’s tenure. China launched military exercises last year around Taiwan after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the democratically governed island that China claims as its own.
Relations became further strained early this year after the US shot down a Chinese spy balloon that had crossed the United States. Beijing also was angered by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s stopover in the US in April that included an engagement with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
And on Saturday, June 10, the White House confirmed that China has been operating a spy base in Cuba for some time and that it was upgraded in 2019 under the Trump administration’s watch. (AP)