Korea leans toward partially joining Quad
Posted : 2021-05-17 16:55
Updated : 2021-05-17 21:37
U.S. President Joe Biden, left, participates in a Quad summit remotely with Indo-Pacific nation leaders at the White House, Washington, D.C., March 12. Reuters-Yonhap
By Kang Seung-woo
Ahead of the summit between President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Joe Biden later this week, Korea appears to be leaning toward participating in the U.S.-led Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) partially, as the country is allegedly reviewing how to cooperate with the strategic forum s working groups in non-military sectors.
Given that the Quad has been regarded as a means to contain China, Korea has been reluctant to accept the U.S. s repeated calls to join, due to Beijing being Seoul s largest trading partner.
Quad is not Asian NATO, White House NSC senior director says
Posted : 2021-05-08 08:14
Updated : 2021-05-08 08:14
Edgard Kagan, a senior director on the National Security Council of the White House, speaks during an online forum, The Quad and Korea, held by the Chey Institute for Advanced Studies, Friday. Captured from live streaming
By Nam Hyun-woo
Edgard Kagan, a senior director on the National Security Council of the White House, said the U.S.-created Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) is not a security alliance or an Asian NATO, defying the wide held view here that it is a platform designed to contain China.
Thursday, April 29, 2021 9:00 am - 10:30 am
The CSIS Southeast Asia Program is pleased to present The Future of the U.S.-Vietnam Partnership, a two-part discussion on key issues in the U.S.-Vietnam comprehensive partnership. This session will feature keynote remarks from Edgard Kagan (Senior Director for East Asia and Oceania, National Security Council) and a panel of experts on political and security issues.
For more information on Session One on economic issues (Tuesday, April 27, 2021), please click the following link: https://cs.is/3xj0ExA
This event was made possible with support from Samsung.
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Pay for VFA? Romualdez hopes Pentagon list of aid will satisfy Duterte
Mar 5, 2021 1:24 PM PHT
After President Rodrigo Duterte railed that the United States must provide payment for the continuation of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), the Pentagon sent the government a list of military aid intended for the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
Philippine Ambassador to the United States Jose Manuel Romualdez, who received the list from US officials, hopes it will be enough to “satisfy” Duterte.
The Philippine leader’s threats about the VFA were discussed during a meeting between Romualdez, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and Edgard Kagan of the State Department “last week,” said Romualdez on Friday, March 5, in a virtual interview. He was referring to late February.
Victor Cha
Koreans are familiar with the proverb, when whales fight, it breaks the back of the shrimp. In the geopolitics of Asia, this phrase is often used to describe Korean concerns about strategic competition between the U.S. and China. With the former as their most important security patron and with the latter as their key economic patron, Koreans find themselves in uncomfortable situations when Beijing and Washington collide, as was often the case during the Trump administration. Whether it was freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, democratic rights in Hong Kong, Trump s war on Huawei, resiliency of supply chains, or the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense battery, Koreans were compelled to escape the comfort of hedging and were instead forced to choose. What then will be the state of U.S.-China relations under a Biden administration? Will it continue with strategic competition advanced under Donald Trump?