Pressure on Beijing’s island building in the disputed seas has eased since defence ministers from Japan and South Korea failed to negotiate security. The pair were due to meet at the Asian security forum in Singapore until it was decided formal talks would be “premature”, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported. International relations expert Stephen Nagy said the only winner between the two US allies would be China.
Mr Nagy told SCMP: “My sense is that Japan sees South Korea as not engaging in negotiations on a number of issues and not adhering in good faith to agreements that it has already signed.
“Japan is not ready to get into any more agreements because it fears that Seoul will not follow through or that they will become politicised in the future.
“Tokyo wants binding, long-lasting agreements rather than having to renegotiate something each time a new Korean government comes in.
“The biggest winner in this stand-off between the US’ two most important allies in the region is, of course, China.
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“They must be delighted to see this playing out because it means the US is not able to exert nearly as much pressure in areas such as the South China Sea.”
The US has vowed to keep the Indo-Pacific free and open.
They have conducted several freedom of navigation operations in the area to push back China’s claims on the sea.
China claims almost all of the strategic South China Sea with Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam pushing competing claims to parts of the maritime region.
Mr Nagy added: “If Japan, South Korea and the US could find a way to cooperate, imagine the influence they could exert over the South China Sea or over North Korea.
“If Japan and Korea could find a way to put their differences aside and with their security capacity, it would be a powerful deterrent to Beijing and Pyongyang.”
Another expert, Toshimitsu Shigemura, told SCMP: “By avoiding talks in Singapore, Japan is doing its best to avoid public problems between the two sides and I believe that talks are already taking place between the two governments on these issues.
“The US will have told Tokyo and Seoul that it does not want to see more disagreements and that it is very important that they cooperate and calm things down a bit.”