When the world's at stake,
go beyond the headlines.

Welcome to Rewind & Reconnoiter. Each week, we’ll ask one of our authors to look back at an article they’ve written for War on the Rocks in light of a current news event. Did their argument hold up? Read more below to find out.***Takuya Matsuda has co-authored two pieces for War on the Rocks that consider the tensions in the Japanese-South Korean relationship and their implications for the U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific: “An Alliance Division of Labor in East Asia” in 2022 and “Geopolitics Redux: Explaining the Japan-Korea Dispute and Its Implications for Great Power Competition” in 2019. In light of the U.S.-Japanese-Korean trilateral meeting earlier this month, we asked him to look back on these pieces and discuss how the relationship has evolved since. Read more below.Official Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force photo1) What was your reaction to the U.S.-Japanese-Korean trilateral meeting earlier this month? What were your top takeaways, and what surprised you most? Do you have any critiques?The trilateral meetings are a steady step forward in implementing the series of security cooperation agendas highlighted during the Camp David Trilateral Summit in August. For example, the U.S. Department of Defense revealed after the meeting that a data-sharing mechanism “to facilitate the exchange of real-time missile warning data” from Pyongyang is “in the final stages of testing and the three nations are ready to “fully operationalize the mechanism by the end of December.” These developments are not surprising since missile defense and military intelligence-sharing have long been the pillar to facilitate defense cooperation among the three nations since a General Security of Military Information Agreement was signed between Japan and South Korea in 2016. The three defense chiefs also agreed on accelerating the development of a multi-year trilateral exercise plan that underscores the momentum to further institutionalize close defense coordination