Joe Biden leaves Thursday for his first trip as president to Asia convinced that the confrontation with Russia has reinvigorated US leadership, while wary that a rogue North Korean nuclear test could tear up the optimistic script.
The Democrat is going to South Korea, then Japan on Sunday to hold summits with the leaders of both countries, as well as joining a regional summit of the Quad group — Australia, India, Japan, and the United States — while in Tokyo.
During the first leg, he will visit US and South Korean troops, but will not make the traditional presidential trek to the fortified frontier known as the DMZ between South Korea and the unpredictable, isolated dictatorship of North Korea, the White House said.
The trip is being touted as proof that the United States is further building on recent moves to cement its years-long pivot to Asia, where rising Chinese commercial and military power is increasingly pushing back against decades of US leadership.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan rejected the idea that the war in Ukraine is distracting Biden from that mission.
Underlining the competing demands from two sides of the world, Biden will be meeting Thursday morning at the White House with the leaders of Finland and Sweden to celebrate their applications for joining NATO right before he boards Air Force One for Seoul.
But Sullivan said there was no “tension” in the twin focus. “We regard this as mutually reinforcing,” Sullivan told reporters.
“There’s something quite evocative about going from meeting with the president of Finland and the prime minister of Sweden to reinforce the momentum behind the NATO alliance and the free world’s response to Ukraine, then getting on a plane and flying out to the Indo-Pacific.”