Biden dispatching Sullivan to Tokyo for talks with Japan, Philippines, South Korea officials

President Joe Biden is dispatching White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan to Tokyo this week for talks with his counterparts from Japan, Philippines and South Korea.

Sullivan will also take part in "the first-ever trilateral meeting of the Japanese, Philippine, and U.S. national security advisers" while in Japan, the White House National Security Council said in a statement Tuesday.

The White House offered scant details about Sullivan's two-day visit that begins Thursday, saying Sullivan and his counterparts "will discuss ways to deepen collaboration on a number of key regional and global issues."

Sullivan's visit comes after U.S., Japanese and Philippine coast guard ships staged law enforcement drills in waters near the disputed South China Sea earlier this month. Washington has stepped up efforts to reinforce alliances in Asia amid an increasingly tense rivalry with China.

Washington lays no claims to the strategic South China Sea, where China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysian, Taiwan and Brunei have been locked in tense territorial stand-offs for decades. But the U.S. says freedom of navigation and overflight and the peaceful resolution of disputes in the busy waterway are in its national interest.

The White House confirmed Sullivan's travels after Biden during a reception at the White House for U.S. chiefs of diplomatic missions on Tuesday made an off-hand remark that Ambassador Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. envoy to Japan, was not on hand because he was getting ready for Sullivan's visit.

U.S.-China relations have been strained throughout Biden's tenure. China launched military exercises last year around Taiwan after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., visited the democratically governed island that...