IT'S AN EVER MORE UNIPOLAR WORLD:

Do you remember last April, when the president of South Korea (formally the Republic of Korea, or ROK), Yoon Suk Yeol, sang "American Pie" at the U.S. state dinner held in his country's honor? That was part of a historic shift in global, and U.S., foreign policy.

That shift is being marked this weekend at the U.S. president's private retreat in Maryland, Camp David, about 60 miles outside of Washington, D.C., which since President Jimmy Carter's presidency has signaled historically significant diplomatic meetings. (This is one of the reasons why former president Trump's plan to bring Afghanistan's Taliban leaders to Camp David to sign a peace plan was so shocking; in the end, Trump never hosted a foreign leader at Camp David.)

President Biden is meeting at Camp David with President Yoon and Japan's prime minister Fumio Kishida in the first-ever trilateral summit between their countries. Japan and the ROK are two of the largest allies of the U.S. in eastern Asia, but their own history of conflicts has made the idea of a joint summit impossible before now. 

President Joe Biden will chalk up a fresh victory in his campaign to boost U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific by sealing a deal with Vietnam next month aimed to draw Hanoi closer to Washington at a time of rising tensions with Beijing.

Biden will sign a strategic partnership agreement with Vietnam during a state visit to the Southeast Asian country in mid-September, according to three people with knowledge of the deal's planning. 

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