> Japan and South Korea are not western nations and hence not part of the west

Japan and South Korea are commonly treated as being part of the West for the same reason Australia is - they are geographically in Asia but aligned with the United States and EU.

If you don't like Japan or South Korea being called "Western" we can call them NATO+ then.

> Think it had more to do with the US forcing Japan to join its trade war against china. Don't you?

Japan began moving REE processing to India all the way back to 2010-12 when the Senkaku Diaoyu standoff happenened and China blockaded Japanese access to REEs. That's when both Toyota and Hitachi began working with IREL on REE extraction and processing.

And China initiated the trade war with Japan all the way back to the Senkaku Diaoyu standoff, just like China initiated the trade war with South Korea due to South Korea allowing THAAD deployments. The interest in developing an ExChina supply in Japan and South Korea has existed ever since China was the aggressor to both countries.

And Japan (as well as South Korea) has been an economic partner of India since all the way back during the socialist 1980s era. Japanese JVs like Maruti Suzuki, Tata Hitachi, Tata Docomo, Sumimoto Chemicals India, and others have been around for decades. Heck, it was Softbank that helped spark India's startup boom in the 2000s and 2010s which became the IPO boom today.

> Japan and South Korea are commonly treated as being part of the West for the same reason Australia is

Australia isn't "treated" as being part of the West. It is a western nation. It's people, institutions, culture, language, etc are all of western origin. Japan and South Korea are not western nations. All you would have to do is go ask the japanese or south koreans themselves. I don't know of anyone who "treats" Japan and South Korea as western nations except those with a bizarre agenda.

> they are geographically in Asia but aligned with the United States and EU.

Australia would still be a western nation even if australia was aligned with china. Also, western nations existed before the EU and even before the US were created. If the US and Australia went to war against each other, they would still be western nations.

> And China initiated the trade war with Japan all the way back to the Senkaku Diaoyu standoff.

Then you might as well argue Japan initiated the trade war by imperial expansion to those islands.