US, Japan, S Korea trilateral partnership basis for establishment of 'Asian NATO': Russia

United States, South Korea, and Japan's trilateral defence co-operation against the North Korean provocations is the basis for the establishment of "Asian NATO", Russian Ambassador in Seoul Andrey Kulik maintained in an interview with the Russian state-affiliated news agency, Sputnik. Kulik derided the United States for forging diplomatic alliances aimed at the deterrence of Russia and its steadfast China. He noted that the three regional allies are taking a belligerent posture against Russian Federation in the "guise of" countering the ballistic missile launches of DPRK that Japan's military labels a regional threat. 

Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, President of the Republic of Korea (ROK) Yoon Suk Yeol, and US President Biden resolved to forge closer trilateral links for the security realm of the Indo-Pacific. US Defence Department stressed that the alliance will deter the series of ballistic missile and multiple ICBM launches, as well as the conventional military action by North Korea in 2023.

Biden administration has been urging the dictator Kim Jong-un's authoritarian regime for the complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula in accordance with United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions and to stop its “Audacious Initiative”.  The US also reaffirmed the ASEAN centrality for enforcing a free and open Indo-Pacific in view of the Chinese PLA's military assertiveness. The United States also accused China's President Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin of "emboldening" North Korea's authoritarian leader Kim Jong-un at the UNSC as after nuclear-armed Pyongyang test-fired a ballistic missile that flew over Japan before plunging into the Pacific for the first time in five years.

South Korean special representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs Kim Gunn, Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director General for Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau Takehiro Funakoshi, right, and US special representative for North Korea Sung Y. Kim, center at the US Embassy in Jakarta. Credit: AP

US-Japan-South Korea Alliance 'cornerstone of future Asian NATO'

Russia's President Vladimir Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, at an earlier state briefing slammed the United States' role in exacerbating the ongoing hostilities in Ukraine. Ukraine President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Western allies, he noted, are not willing to listen to Russia's concerns and have demonstrated no willingness in coming to the table for negotiation for brokering peace, he told reporters in Moscow. Peskov slammed the Biden administration for its intent on fighting a proxy war with Russia “to the last Ukrainian".

Echoing Peskov's anti-American stance, Russia's Kulik asserted that there is "a strengthening of the 'triangle' of the US-South Korea-Japan, which in the future can be seen as one of the cornerstones of the future Asian NATO." Furthermore, the Russian ambassador told the Moscow-based paper that European Union headquarters in Brussels "makes no secret of its plans to expand the alliance's area of responsibility to the Indo-Pacific region in order to deter China and Russia." 

Russia's ambassador noted that there have been increased military exercises off the coast of the Korean Peninsula by the US-South Korea-Japan citing the fabricated military threats by the North. Last week, Moscow's ally DPRK threatened to counter the US military moves with “most overwhelming nuclear force", reiterating that America was expanding military drills with rival South Korea and pushing bilateral tensions to an “extreme red line”. North's response came as US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin announced plans of mobilising the American military assets close to the Korean Peninsula that would include the deployment of fighter jets and bombers to strengthen joint training and operational planning.