South Korean president will meet Japanese leader ahead of summit with Trump
Their meeting will come weeks after South Korea and Japan secured trade deals with Washington that shielded their trade-dependent economies from Trump's highest tariffs. The separate agreements negotiated their rates of reciprocal duties down to 15% from the originally proposed 25%, but only after pledging hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. investments.
Lee and Ishiba previously met on the sidelines of the June G7 meetings in Canada, where they called for building a future-oriented relationship and agreed to cooperate closely on various issues including trade and countering North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.
Relations between the two U.S. allies often have been strained in recent years over grievances stemming from Japan's brutal colonization of the Korean Peninsula before the end of World War II.
South Korea's previous conservative president, Yoon Suk Yeol, made active efforts to repair ties with Tokyo, including a major compromise on compensation issues related to Korean victims of Japanese wartime slavery, aiming to bolster trilateral security cooperation with Washington against North Korean threats.
But Yoon's presidency was cut short by his brief imposition of martial law in December, which led to his ouster and imprisonment, leaving uncertainty over Seoul-Tokyo relations under Lee, who has long accused Japan of clinging to its imperialist past and hindering cooperation.
Since taking office in June after winning the early presidential election, Lee has avoided thorny remarks about Japan, instead promoting pragmatism in foreign policy and pledging to strengthen Seoul's alliance with Washington and trilateral cooperation with Tokyo.
There also have been calls in South Korea to boost collaboration with Japan in responding to Trump, who has unsettled allies and partners with tariff hikes and demands they reduce reliance on the U.S. while paying more for their own defense.
Following his meeting with Ishiba, Lee will travel to Washington for an Aug. 25 summit with Trump, which his office said will focus on trade and defense cooperation.
His meeting with Trump comes with concerns in Seoul that the Trump administration could shake up the decades-old alliance by demanding higher payments for the U.S. troop presence in South Korea and possibly move to reduce it as Washington shifts more focus on China.
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a minute ago
- Washington Post
What will Trump's Alaska summit achieve?
You're reading the Prompt 2025 newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox. The highly anticipated Trump-Putin summit will take place tomorrow in Anchorage. On the agenda: how to end the Ukraine war. The meeting is sure to provide much theater, but will it yield anything else? I sat down with my colleagues David Ignatius and Max Boot to discuss. — Damir Marusic, assignment editor 💬 💬 💬 Damir Marusic Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk reportedly said, 'I have many fears and a lot of hope.' David, Max, how are you feeling ahead of the sit-down? David Ignatius For me, it's a mix of hope and dread. The hope is that President Donald Trump, having committed so much to ending a war that he rightly condemns as a bloodbath, will lean hard enough on Russian President Vladimir Putin to get terms that reasonable people could sell to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his country. The fear is that Trump will simply listen to Putin's demands and either seek to impose them on Ukraine or walk away from his diplomatic mission. If I had to guess, I'd opt for the fearful version. Max Boot I have more fear than hope. I see no indication that Putin is going to call off his war (which is making little progress on the ground). The offer Putin apparently made to special envoy Steve Witkoff — he is demanding that Ukraine turn over unconquered, well-defended territory in the Donetsk region in return for a ceasefire — is a nonstarter for Ukraine. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Damir I'm maybe a bit more optimistic. Not in the sense that there will be any progress, but the opposite: The White House seems to be lowering expectations about what's possible. Trump on Monday told reporters, 'It's not up to me to make a deal.' Max Yes, I'm mildly cheered to see the White House lowering expectations. But I also know that Trump is mercurial and unpredictable, and he loves surprises. So the chances of Putin-Trump meeting in private and hatching some kind of deal (or, more exactly, the framework of a deal) and Trump coming back to proclaim 'peace for our time' are not negligible. I don't see that as the likeliest outcome — and I am also buoyed by the fact that Trump was able to say no to a bad offer from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at their last summit — but it's a real danger. David Trump's flair for the dramatic is what got him into this negotiation in the first place. And recalling his diplomacy with Kim, it's hard to imagine him just having a 'listening exercise' and then saying, 'See you later, Vlad.' One way or another, I suspect Trump will want some drama. Max My concern level will rise if Trump and Putin meet alone, with only interpreters. That's what happened at their last meeting in Helsinki, and it was a disaster. I hope Trump will take Secretary of State Marco Rubio, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg and others into the room with him (but preferably not Witkoff, who has proved very credulous in dealing with Putin). David An important baseline for Anchorage will come today, when Trump speaks with European leaders and Zelensky about what Europe might do to support Ukraine against continuing Russian aggression even if the U.S. backs away. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Damir The danger for me seems to be that Trump is still in thrall to the idea that everyone just wants to make money. During that Monday news conference, in the same breath as he said it was not up to him to make a deal, he seemed to hold out hope that normalizing economic relations with Russia could bring Putin to the table, saying that Putin has to get back to rebuilding his country. David Trump has always had a fantasy that there are 'trillions' to be made in a future Russia. People keep trying to talk him out of that misjudgment, I'm told. Yet it persists. Weird. Max I thought reality was dawning for Trump last month when he started denouncing Putin for having nice conversations but then continuing to bomb civilian centers. Trump was finally on the right track in threatening massive sanctions and agreeing to supply weapons to Ukraine (albeit with the Europeans buying them first). But then he did another U-turn last week, following Witkoff's meeting with Putin, again blaming Zelensky for starting the war and pretending that Putin is interested in peace. The whole summit is built on a fundamental misunderstanding: Trump thinks Putin wants to end the war. What Putin really wants is to win the war. David Trump has tried every possible approach to diplomacy. Term sheets. Timelines. High-level meetings. But he keeps coming back to his core idea that it's only a meeting between the two big guys — him and Putin — that can resolve this, so we end up in Anchorage with very little work done on the shape of a settlement or clarity about what it might involve. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Damir Is there any sense that Trump still has the 'stick' of secondary sanctions in mind? Max I don't know what Trump will do, but if he's serious about making a deal with Putin, he first has to impose the full gamut of pressure and wait for the sanctions to bite. He is making a major blunder by prematurely rushing into a summit when there is no indication that Putin will make any concessions. David I think Trump would love to use China and India as leverage to get Putin to make concessions. I'm told that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has included Ukraine in his conversations with Chinese officials, and obviously Trump has threatened India with heavy secondary sanctions if it continues to buy oil from Russia. But my guess is that these efforts will fade if Trump encounters an immovable obstacle in Putin on Friday. Damir An immovable Putin wouldn't cause him to double down, but fold? Is it TACO all over again? Max Trump has said he may conclude there is no deal to be had and walk away. That's fine, if it happens. The question is what happens next. Will he just ignore the entire war, thereby giving Putin a free hand? Or will he return to his threats of sanctions for Russia to punish Putin for intransigence? Trump doesn't have to insert himself into the peacemaking process — ultimately, it will be up to Russia and Ukraine to make peace, and thus far Putin is not even willing to meet Zelensky — but Trump does need to continue backing Ukraine. David I don't like the TACO analogy. It just eggs Trump on, as near as I can tell. I think the question for Trump is how much he's willing to risk to gain a peace in Ukraine that's desperately important for Europe but less so for the United States. And the answer, probably, is that he's not willing to risk much.
a minute ago
Ukraine, left out in Trump-Putin summit, fears setbacks on key peace issues
LONDON -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that the Friday meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin "will not achieve anything" if peace talks exclude Ukraine. Decisions taken without Kyiv's input will be "stillborn decisions," Zelenskyy continued. "They are unworkable decisions. And we all need real and genuine peace," the president said in an address to the nation last weekend. Ukrainian expectations for the summit in Alaska are low, amid fears in Kyiv that the American and Russian leaders will seek to dictate Ukraine's future without its participation. Zelenskyy's talks with European leaders and Trump on Wednesday, though, did appear to find consensus on key Ukrainian demands according to subsequent statements from Zelenskyy and his European counterparts, including that Kyiv will be the one to decide on any territorial concessions and that no such concessions can occur without binding security guarantees. "We must learn from the experience of Ukraine, [and] our partners, to prevent deception by Russia," Zelenskyy said in a statement posted to social media on Wednesday. "There is no sign now that the Russians are preparing to end the war," he added. "Our coordinated efforts and joint steps -- of Ukraine, the United States, Europe, all countries that want peace -- can definitely force Russia to make peace." Trump said Wednesday after the virtual meeting with Zelenskyy and European leaders that there will be "severe consequences" against Russia if Putin did not agree to stop his war on Ukraine. Oleksandr Merezhko -- a member of the Ukrainian parliament and chair of the body's foreign affairs committee -- likened the coming Alaska summit to the 1938 Munich Agreement -- a pre-World War II accord by which European powers allowed Nazi Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia without Prague's consent. "Putin secured a one-on-one meeting with Trump, providing an opportunity to influence U.S. policy and push for abandonment of Ukraine and European allies," Merezhko told ABC News. "Putin would like to use the summit to persuade Trump to blame Ukraine for the lack of progress on a ceasefire and give him a pretext to walk away from the negotiations," Merezhko said. "Putin is a very masterful manipulator and he will go into Friday's meeting well prepared," Merezhko added. "He will go in with well-prepared, planned and rehearsed talking points." John E. Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine now working at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, said Putin "wants a deal with Trump that will be presented to Kyiv and other European capitals as a fait accompli." The Kremlin's goals remain the "elimination of Ukraine as a state and as a culture, elimination of NATO and undermining of the U.S. global positions," Pavel Luzin, a Russian political analyst at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, told ABC News. There are several key -- and thorny -- issues for the two leaders to discuss. Territory Territory has been a main source of conflict between the two countries since Russia's annexation of Crimea and fomentation of separatist revolt in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Putin has remained firm in his demands. Any peace settlement, Moscow has said, must include "international legal recognition" of its 2014 annexation of Crimea and four regions it has occupied to varying degrees since launching its full-scale invasion in 2022. Russia demanded that Ukrainian troops withdraw entirely from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions -- including areas that Russian troops do not control. The Kremlin claimed to have annexed all four regions in September 2022. Moscow also wants Kyiv to give up on any designs on taking back occupied Crimea. Ahead of Friday's meeting, Trump suggested that a "swapping of territories" could lead to a peace deal. However, Ukrainian officials quickly rejected that idea. Zelenskyy held that the country would not give up any of its land, saying in a Saturday statement, "Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupiers." The president has since said that any decisions on territorial concessions must be made by Ukraine, and that no such concessions can occur without Ukraine receiving binding security guarantees that include the U.S. NATO ambitions Russian officials are also looking for their own "security guarantees" regarding NATO, by which Ukraine would be permanently excluded from the alliance, which has a mutual defense agreement among members. Putin has regularly expressed concern over NATO's eastward expansion, framing the alliance's growth as an existential security threat to Russia. He has repeatedly warned the alliance against accepting Ukraine as a member, accusing the organization of trying to turn the country into a launch pad for aggression. Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexander Grushko, said in March that Moscow is seeking "the neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of NATO countries to accept it into the alliance." Ukrainian officials have continued in their bid to join NATO -- an ambition that has the backing of the vast majority of Ukrainians and is enshrined in the national constitution. During a news conference earlier this year, Zelenskyy offered to step down from the presidency in exchange for admission to NATO. "If to achieve peace you really need me to give up my post -- I'm ready. I can trade it for NATO membership, if there are such conditions." NATO nations, while backing Ukraine in its defensive war, have refused to allow Kyiv's accession to the alliance. The alliance agreed at a 2008 summit that Ukraine "will become a member of NATO," but the leaders of key allied nations -- including the U.S. -- have said Kyiv cannot accede while it is at war. Limits to Ukraine's military Russian officials have demanded limits to the size of Ukraine's military, which Moscow has framed as necessary to ensure its own security -- a claim dismissed by Kyiv as false. During peace negotiations in the opening days of the full-scale invasion, Moscow demanded that Ukraine reduce its military size to 50,000. Zelenskyy, however, has expressed concern that any reductions to Ukraine's military could allow Russia to secure more Ukrainian land, even with Western support. "The best thing is a strong army, a large army, the largest army in Europe. We simply have no right to limit the strength of our army in any case," he said in December. Russia is also demanding limits on Ukraine's weapons arsenals and the sophistication of its military technology. In the days leading up to Friday's meeting between Trump and Putin, Ukraine has increased its long-range drone strikes into Russia. Ukrainian officials have said such attacks are part of its strategy to force the Kremlin into genuine peace talks. Sanctions The lifting of international sanctions on Russia may also be discussed during Friday's meeting. Russia is currently the world's most sanctioned country with "50,000 or so measures," according to The Center for European Policy Analysis. Russian officials have stated that a peace treaty should include lifting sanctions imposed since 2022. The European Union has refused requests to reduce sanctions against Russia before a peace deal is secured, and Zelenskyy has called Putin's suggestion that reductions could lead to lasting peace "manipulative." Trump has threatened to impose further sanctions on Russia and its top trading partners if Putin fails to commit to a ceasefire. Earlier this month, the U.S. announced additional tariffs on India related to its purchases of Russian oil. "Everyone sees that there has been no real step from Russia toward peace, no action on the ground or in the air that could save lives," Zelenskyy said earlier this week. "That is why sanctions are needed, pressure is needed."
a minute ago
US, Philippines discuss missile system deployments as tensions rise
MANILA, Philippines -- The United States is discussing the possible deployment of more missile launchers to the Philippines to strengthen deterrence against aggression in the disputed South China Sea and other Asian security hotspots, but no final decision has been reached by both sides, Manila's ambassador to Washington said Thursday. The U.S. military delivered a mid-range missile system called the Typhon, a land-based weapon that can fire the Standard Missile-6 and the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile, to the northern Philippines as part of joint combat exercises in April last year. That was followed by the transport by the U.S. military of an anti-ship missile launcher in April this year to the northernmost Philippine province of Batanes, just a sea border away from Taiwan. Beijing strongly protested the installation of the U.S. missile systems, saying they were aimed at containing China's rise and warning that these would threaten regional stability. China has asked the Philippines to withdraw the missile launchers from its territory, but officials led by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had rejected the demand. Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez said without elaborating that the possible deployment by the U.S. of more Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System or NMESIS missile launchers"was being discussed for consideration by both sides.' The anti-ship missile systems could be installed along Philippine coastal regions facing the South China Sea and outlying regions to beef up deterrence against aggression, he said. 'This is part of the strong U.S. and Philippines defense partnership,' Romualdez told The Associated Press. Romualdez spoke on the sidelines of a trade and investment conference in Manila, where he and Philippine Foreign Secretary Theresa Lazaro encouraged major U.S. companies to invest in a wide array of industries — from energy and telecommunications to infrastructure and navy shipbuilding — in the Philippines, the oldest treaty ally of the U.S. in Asia. 'When U.S. companies invest here, it's not just about returns on capital — it's about returns on alliance,' Romualdez told U.S. business executives at the conference. 'A stronger Philippine economy means a more capable and reliable defense partner for the United States.' 'At a time when America is diversifying supply chains and rethinking global strategy, we are a natural choice – and a strategic necessity,' Romualdez said. 'I ask you to carry this message to the Trump administration: `Every U.S. dollar invested in the Philippines strengthens America's position in the Indo-Pacific.'' U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth flew to Manila in March in his first visit to Asia and said the Trump administration would work with allies to ramp up deterrence against threats across the world, including China's increasingly aggressive actions in the South China Sea. The U.S. was not gearing up for war, Hegseth said then, but underscored that peace would be won 'through strength.' China claims virtually the entire South China Sea. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have overlapping claims to the resource-rich and busy waters, but confrontations have spiked between Chinese and Philippine coast guard and naval forces in recent years. On Wednesday, the U.S. briefly deployed two warships in what it called a 'freedom of navigation' operation off the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea where two Chinese navy and coast guard ships collided earlier in the week while trying to drive away a smaller Philippine coast guard vessel. The high-seas accident sparked alarm among Asian and Western countries. 'Freedom of navigation is essential for the trillions of dollars worth of commerce that passes through these waters,' the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, MaryKay Carlson, told reporters on the sidelines of the Manila investment conference. 'It's about commerce. It's about lives and livelihoods.'
