US, Japan, and South Korea Sign Nuclear Energy Pact and Reaffirm Taiwan Strait Commitments at Ankara Trilateral
On July 7, on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Japanese Foreign Minister Motegi Toshimitsu and South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun to underscore, as the State Department put it, that deeper trilateral cooperation tangibly benefits their shared economic well-being and advances safety, security, and prosperity in a free and open Indo-Pacific. The centrepiece of the meeting was the signing of a trilateral Memorandum of Cooperation on civil nuclear energy in support of accelerating the deployment of small modular reactors in third partner countries across the Indo-Pacific, as well as diversification away from Russian energy imports. Rubio described energy security as one of the most important issues in the world, noting that events in the Strait of Hormuz were a live reminder of why the three nations needed to move forward jointly on next-generation nuclear generation.
The choice of a NATO summit venue for an Indo-Pacific security trilateral was itself a deliberate signal. The three ministers emphasised the importance of NATO's cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners on issues of mutual interest including accelerating defence spending and production, combatting cyber and hybrid attacks, and sharing intelligence on security developments in both the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions, according to the State Department's official readout. This bridging of geographic theatres reflects a broader US strategic logic — articulated consistently since 2025 — that the security challenges posed by China and Russia, and by North Korea's nuclear programme, require a convergence of alliance architectures rather than separate regional frameworks.
On Taiwan, the three ministers reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, expressing concern over increasingly frequent destabilising activities in the region and firmly opposing any unilateral attempts to alter the status quo through force or coercion, according to Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They also committed to strengthen trilateral cooperation to deter North Korea's malicious cyber and information technology worker activities — which Pyongyang uses to fund its nuclear and missile programmes — while reiterating their shared commitment to the complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula. This position stands in some tension with statements by South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who at the G7 in France had urged Trump to adopt a phased approach that would defer full denuclearisation to a long-term goal.
The signing ceremony at which Rubio, Motegi, and Cho formalised the SMR memorandum was notable for its tone of institutional warmth in contrast to the acrimony dominating the broader summit hall. Rubio highlighted the concrete and deliverable nature of the agreement, arguing that the trilateral forum needed to show real results rather than only statements of intent. The Korea JoongAng Daily reported that Seoul and Tokyo also held separate bilateral talks on the margins, with the two ministers pledging to deepen ties and expand cooperation, a relationship that Rubio observed has grown stronger over the past three to four years despite having been tested repeatedly by historical grievances.
The Ankara trilateral's significance extends well beyond the SMR deal itself. It marks a consolidation of a partnership that has evolved, as IBG News noted, from a traditional security alliance into a comprehensive strategic framework covering energy security, supply chain resilience, critical minerals, and emerging technologies. With North Korea's cyber operations generating hard currency for a weapons programme that Seoul is under domestic pressure to engage diplomatically, with China's coercive posture in the South China Sea intensifying, and with the Middle East conflict straining American attention and munitions stocks, the US-Japan-South Korea trilateral has become one of the most load-bearing elements of the rules-based international order. How firmly that architecture holds will depend in large part on whether the political will sustains in all three capitals as domestic pressures mount.