Northeast Asian Regional Security After APEC

While the international security environment continues to be difficult to navigate amid conflicts in Ukraine and now the Middle East, some tentative gains appear to have been made in Northeast Asia regional security recently. The U.S.-China relationship is on a steadying trend following frequent high-level engagement in recent months, and in anticipation of an in-person meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco. The historic Camp David summit between the U.S., Japan, and the Republic of Korea (ROK) institutionalized trilateral cooperation between the allies, expanding the scope of coordination to include economic and development cooperation and people-to-people exchanges. Furthermore, support for Taiwan in Washington remains strongly bipartisan.

Despite these positive trends, though, significant challenges remain. Will it be possible to maintain this stabilizing momentum amidst multiple international crises and domestic political uncertainties as we enter 2024?