The Evolution of the TCOG as a Diplomatic Tool
First Interim TCOG Report

One of the more successful innovations of the last five years in the area of U.S.-Japan and U.S.-South Korea alliance management has been the establishment and use of the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG) for developing common policies toward North Korea. This regular meeting of high-level diplomats from the United States, Japan, and South Korea has allowed the three governments to discuss together a range of options for dealing more effectively with North Korea, and it has provided a hitherto absent forum for coordinating policies on a regular basis.

A key question that arises is the degree to which the TCOG process can and should be strengthened and expanded (or simply copied) as a way to encourage trilateral coordination beyond issues of immediate North Korean policy and, by means of such coordination, to strengthen the two bilateral alliances and build connecting threads between them – a development that is seen as essential if existing alliance structures are to thrive in the future. Answering this question requires a comprehensive understanding of the TCOG’s strengths and weaknesses, not only from the American vantage point, but also from the Japanese and South Korean perspectives.

This is the project's first interim report and represents probably the only attempt to provide a narrative focused solely on the TCOG’s evolution from the perspectives of all three participating countries. This report is focused primarily on the history and evolution of the TCOG as a diplomatic tool. More than twenty current and former government officials from the three countries were interviewed for this report on a not-for-attribution basis.

Far from being an academic exercise, the exploration of these questions is the only way to evaluate objectively the efficacy and potential transferability of this unique policy coordination mechanism. If the process is not functioning properly, it could harm policy making vis-à-vis North Korea and weaken these important alliance relationships. If the TCOG is working well, then it could be a model for further cooperation in other policy issue areas of concern to the three countries. Perry himself expressed this hope when he presented his report to Congress in 1999, predicting that “this tripartite cooperation will endure into the future, and be applied to other problems in the region, as well.”

These other issue areas of trilateral coordination might include 1) crisis contingency planning, such as planning for responding to a collapse of government control in North Korea, regional natural disasters, or terrorist incidents; 2) longer-term policy planning, such as the impact on alliance planning and associated security postures of changes being triggered by the much-discussed “transformation” of the U.S. military, especially with respect to alternative basing options and force structure requirements in the region; and 3) institution building, such as the prospects for closer coordination on regional and global arms control, including broader bilateral, trilateral, and multilateral efforts to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in Asia.