After 20 years, APEC returned to Korea, but it feels different. Leaders arrived in Gyeongju for the first Korean-hosted summit since Busan 2005, but the optimism that defined APEC twenty years ago has vanished. The hallways are full, the cameras are flashing, yet something vital has gone missing. The truth is simple: APEC has become a zombie. It moves, it speaks, it performs all the gestures of life — but its soul has gone. What happened to APEC? It once sat at the cutting edge of multilateralism and trade liberalization. What happened over those two decades between Busan and Gyeongju? It’s simple. We reached the end of the American era that defined globalization. The liberal order built on U.S. leadership fractured into a multipolar world where power is contested, rules are conditional, and Washington’s authority is no longer taken for granted. APEC was born in a different time — one sustained by the belief that markets and multilateralism could bind the region together. That belief has evaporated. What remains is inertia: institutions that cannot adapt but refuse to disappear. Nothing shows this decay more clearly than the debate over the “Gyeongju Declaration”. Washington, once the loudest advocate for open markets, no longer argues for free trade at all. The U.S. President barely deigns to attend, staying in Gyeongju for the shortest of time. It was not APEC, it was TRUMPEC. The U.S. position is openly transactional: tariffs, reshoring, and “friend-shoring” have replaced the liberalization it once demanded from others. South Korea’s diplomats look to one side, and they’re pushing for a Gyeongju Declaration that reaffirms free trade and open markets — language designed to keep APEC’s founding ideals alive. They look to the other, and they’re locked in tense negotiations with Washington over tariffs and investment, trying to protect Korean industries from the very protectionism their summit rhetoric disavows. That leaves APEC lost in an ideological void. The institution was built to promote the very order Washington abandoned. Member economies know it, but few are ready to admit it. Some, like Japan and Korea, still frame open markets as an aspiration; others quietly align with the new protectionist consensus. The result is a declaration that will speak earnestly of “resilience” and “inclusive growth,” but say nothing meaningful about trade itself. What was once APEC’s core mission has become a taboo subject — the clearest sign that multilateralism, at least in its liberal form, is already dead. The Gyeongju Declaration has only two possible fates. It will either fail, which will forever mark Gyeongju as a failure; or it will be empty rhetoric, an empty, meaningless zombie declaration that serves absolutely no purpose. A more realistic approach would have been to seek a narrow declaration. declaration: a focus on AI, digital commerce, or one of the emerging problems that demand regional rules. APEC could have proved its relevance by solving something small and real. It could have returned to its functional roots. Instead, it’s still pretending to solve everything. APEC continues like this because the act of meeting has become the purpose. The choreography is familiar: plenary sessions, cultural performances, the group photo. None of it changes policy. Yet no government wants to be the one to end the dance. That’s zombie multilateralism — the repetition of institutional life after conviction has died. These meetings survive on habit and nostalgia, not on shared intent. They reassure bureaucracies that the system still functions, even when its outputs are empty. Here boss, deader than Hell, but won’t let go! For South Korea, this is both triumph and trap. Hosting is an impressive show of capability, but it carries no strategic reward. Korea is already respected as a world-class convenor; another flawless summit doesn’t change that. The problem is structural. Korea’s diplomacy depends on multilateral platforms where middle powers can shape agendas between the United States and China. But those are the very forums now losing relevance. The middle powers that once built APEC now find themselves maintaining an institution the great powers have outgrown. In the 1990s, APEC thrived because timing, resources, and leadership aligned. None of those conditions exist anymore. The middle powers are still present — hosting, organizing, smoothing over disputes — but they’re caretakers now, keeping the machinery polished as it grinds toward irrelevance. It’s tempting to dismiss all this as failure, but zombie multilateralism persists for a reason. It provides structure in a chaotic world. It allows countries to signal continuity and reliability. It creates the illusion that something larger than raw power still governs international affairs. But illusions cannot last forever. If institutions like APEC want to matter again, they’ll need to shrink their ambitions and focus on function over form. Cooperation will have to be modular — built around shared interests such as AI regulation, supply-chain resilience, or carbon pricing — rather than grand visions of universal liberalization. The Gyeongju summit reflects all of this. It’s a mirror held up to the global system — polished, organized, perfectly staged, and utterly detached from momentum. The leaders’ smiles, the joint communiqués, the talk of “shared prosperity” — these are the ceremonial movements of diplomacy that can no longer inspire belief. APEC will survive, just as the WTO, the G20, and other global bodies survive. They will keep walking, meeting, declaring. But survival isn’t success. It’s simply motion without direction. Zombie multilateralism is not about failure; it’s about inertia mistaken for endurance. The real question after Gyeongju is whether Korea and other middle powers will keep animating these diplomatic corpses — or finally look to a great power that is willing to support the building of something new? If you like this post, please support me by sharing it on social media or buying me a coffee!

Asia’s future will be scripted with the fate of two trilaterals — and South Korea sits at the center of both. The first is the U.S.–Korea–Japan partnership (USKJ), the most explicit security alignment in East Asia. The second is the China–Korea–Japan (CKJ) partnership, a quieter but increasingly consequential alignment built on trade, supply chains, and monetary coordination. How South Korea positions itself in these two trilaterals has the potential to determine the future of the region. These two triangles frame the geography of power in Northeast Asia. One rests on hard power and deterrence, the other on markets and monetary systems. One is anchored in Washington, the other in Beijing — and South Korea is the pivot. Both trilaterals are now central theaters in the larger U.S.–China rivalry. For Washington, the USKJ grouping is the institutionalized expression of its Indo-Pacific strategy — the consolidation of allies under a single deterrence framework aimed at denying China military coercion and technological dominance. The Camp David summit in 2023 elevated this alignment into a quasi-alliance, complete with missile-tracking integration and joint exercises designed to make any wedge-driving by Beijing politically costly. For Beijing, the CKJ process — once derided as little more than talk — has matured into a structured mechanism for buffering against U.S. decoupling. The CKJ leaders’ meeting in Seoul in 2024 quietly advanced frameworks for supply-chain resilience, financial coordination, and joint R&D in green tech. With Trump’s policies impacting both Japan and South Korea, both are increasingly hedging through diversification. These are not headline-grabbing moves, but collectively they point toward an East Asian economic bloc that could, in time, rival U.S.-led initiatives like the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. In other words, the trilaterals are not separate tracks. They are parallel contests for the same strategic ground. More worrying, both trilaterals have the potential to stretch beyond their original geometry. The USKJ trilateral is a temptation to Australia and the Philippines. Canberra’s deep interoperability with U.S. forces and its new security commitments under AUKUS make it a natural adjunct to the USKJ framework. Manila, meanwhile, has re-opened its bases to U.S. forces and is rapidly becoming the southern pillar of deterrence in the first island chain. What began as a trilateral may soon evolve into a broader trilateral-plus format — an Indo-Pacific “NATO” in all but name. The CKJ trilateral is a temptation to ASEAN. On the economic side, China, Korea, and Japan are already embedded in ASEAN+3, and recent efforts to create joint infrastructure funds and currency-swap mechanisms signal a more coherent regional economic architecture. The CKJ format could act as an executive and influential core to an emerging regional framework, managing the institutions that ASEAN political consensus often leaves paralyzed. This means Seoul’s choices do not only shape bilateral relations — they shape which trilateral expands faster, and which regional order becomes dominant. This opens avenues to more expansive roles. First, each trilateral will play a role in the region’s approach towards next-generation technologies — AI, quantum computing, clean energy, and digital finance. The USKJ grouping favors regulatory alignment around trusted supply chains and democratic governance of data. The CKJ bloc, in contrast, emphasizes commercial efficiency and production scale, with China’s industrial capacity offering irresistible pull for Korean and Japanese firms. Korea’s semiconductor sector, caught between export controls and Chinese market demand, is the testing ground for how far economic interdependence can coexist with national security boundaries. Second, each trilateral will play a role in monetary coordination and currency hedging. The dollar’s dominance gives Washington enormous leverage over Asian finance. Yet the CKJ group has quietly revived discussions about local-currency settlements and regional liquidity safety nets — ideas first proposed during the 1997 financial crisis but blocked by U.S. opposition. If CKJ mechanisms mature, Asia could see the rise of a partial yen-won-yuan clearing system. That would not dethrone the dollar, but it would signal that monetary multipolarity has begun. Finally, the success or failure of each trilateral will contribute to domestic public acceptance of regional leadership. Each trilateral’s durability depends not only on elites but also on public sentiment. In Japan and Korea, younger generations show ambivalence toward great-power rivalry and skepticism toward U.S. interventionism. In China, nationalism drives the narrative that the CKJ axis is Asia’s natural order. If Seoul’s next administration decides to moderate its enthusiasm for USKJ coordination — emphasizing autonomy over alliance — the balance could shift rapidly, without any formal withdrawal or confrontation. At the moment, Seoul sits dead bang in the center. Its support for the USKJ grouping tightened under pressure from Biden and under Yoon’s pro-American leadership. It tightened with a clear military focus — missile defense integration, trilateral summits, and intelligence sharing. Trump loosened this pressure. Tariffs, ICE raids, and investment demands, have justified hedging and made supporting the U.S. more difficult than ever. On top of this, Seoul’s medium-term economic recovery and industrial future is tied to Chinese demand and regional supply chains that will flow through the CKJ framework. Seoul’s decision does not have to be binary. The notion that it must “choose” between Washington and Beijing oversimplifies the structural realities. In practice, enthusiasm matters more than membership. A slight reduction in rhetorical zeal, fewer symbolic gestures, or slower implementation of trilateral commitments can send powerful signals without rupturing alliances. The two trilaterals are not merely alliances or forums — they are architectures of order. Just as the Breton Woods institutions are slowly being transformed or replaced as China grows relative to the U.S, so too will the fate of the two trilaterals be shaped by great power rivalry. The USKJ structure could anchor a militarized Indo-Pacific, binding Japan and Korea irreversibly to U.S. strategic objectives. The CKJ framework could evolve into an East Asian economic sphere centered on regional production, innovation, and self-financing. If both harden simultaneously, Asia will fracture into competing systems of power and finance. Asia’s next decade will be defined not by summits or slogans, but by the tempo of these two trilaterals. The United States and China will each continue to press for deeper loyalty from Seoul and Tokyo. But the real test will be how South Korea calibrates its enthusiasm — how it supports both frameworks without surrendering its own agency. If you like this post, please support me by sharing it on social media or buying me a coffee!

Sometimes, middle power enthusiasts get overly excited about the potential for said states to work together. It’s almost as if you want to see those “little guys” grab the ball and run it all the way to the try line — or the end zone, for you Americans. Like there’s a third way that allows smaller states, just by cooperation, to escape the great powers and their over-sized buffoonery. The latest one I heard was the hope for submarine cooperation between South Korea, Canada… and Australia. Canada’s next-generation submarine program is quietly taking shape — and South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean is in on the shortlist. Ottawa’s Canadian Patrol Submarine Project (CPSP) aims to acquire up to a dozen long-range, under-ice capable conventional submarines by the mid-2030s. It’s a major, middle-power purchase designed to replace Canada’s aging Victoria-class fleet and preserve sovereign control over undersea deterrence. Hanwha’s proposal — based on its advanced KSS-III design — is no speculative gesture. The KSS-III is a good boat and some say, well suited to Australia’s needs as much as Canada’s. It reflects Korea’s growing ambition to become a global defence exporter and a partner of choice for other middle powers that need capability without surrendering autonomy. Hanwha’s offer is tailored for Canada’s geography: long endurance, advanced sensors, heavy payloads, and the ability to operate beneath Arctic ice. It’s a pragmatic design, delivered on an ambitious but credible timeline. South Korea’s bid for Canada’s submarine project raises a provocative question for Australia: if Canada and Korea can build a modern, sovereign, conventional submarine fleet together, why can’t we get in on it too? While Canada and Korea quietly get on with business, Australia’s AUKUS submarine plan looks more like a submissive slow-motion sovereignty swap without the submarines. So, not really a swap. Just a submission. Under AUKUS, Australia is meant to acquire U.S. or U.K. nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) sometime in the 2040s. But that timeline depends on two fragile assumptions: that the United States and the United Kingdom will produce enough submarines for themselves first, and that Australia will be able to absorb the technology, infrastructure, and governance burden of nuclear propulsion. So far, neither looks remotely certain. American yards are already overstretched producing their own Virginia-class boats, and the British Astute line is at capacity. Even optimistic forecasts put Australia’s first nuclear submarine a generation away. Meanwhile, Canberra is being asked to legislate nuclear stewardship, manage radioactive waste, and adapt its defence strategy to a fleet that doesn’t yet exist. The price tag is staggering — well over $300 billion — and the payoff uncertain. More troubling is the strategic dependency baked into the deal: Australia’s future fleet will be reliant on foreign reactors, foreign supply chains, and foreign training pipelines. This is not a partnership. It’s procurement dependency masquerading as strategic modernization. AUKUS may deepen alliance interoperability, but it also locks Australia into U.S. and U.K. production schedules, export controls, and operational expectations. It’s a sovereignty overhang that no number of patriotic speeches can disguise. The fundamental question is not whether the alliance should deepen — it’s whether Australia can retain control of its defence decisions while doing so. Which is why the Korean-Canadian initiative should make Canberra pause. Here are two middle powers — democratic, maritime, and allied — building serious undersea capability without sacrificing control. South Korea brings cutting-edge shipbuilding and propulsion systems; Canada brings cold-water operational requirements and an established industrial base. Both share the same dilemma as Australia: a need for credible deterrence in an era when alliance guarantees look conditional. Yet they are solving it in their own way, not waiting for Washington or London to deliver salvation. Imagine a trilateral path instead — Australia, Canada, and South Korea pooling demand, aligning design requirements, and building a shared family of advanced conventional submarines. It’s not a fantasy. All three nations need endurance, stealth, and strike options suited to their geographies. All three have compatible defence industries and a commitment to transparent governance. Such collaboration could yield a design tailored to middle-power realities: affordable, exportable, and sovereign. The benefits are obvious. Shared production keeps shipyards active and costs down through volume. Joint research sustains innovation in sensors, propulsion, and energy systems. Common training and maintenance create interoperability without dependency. And each country retains final say over its own deployment, doctrine, and upgrades. Unlike AUKUS, which hands over design authority to the great powers, a middle-power submarine consortium would represent genuine strategic agency. Some will argue that only nuclear propulsion can guarantee range and deterrence. But modern conventional submarines with air-independent propulsion (AIP) and advanced lithium-ion batteries are already closing the gap. They can remain submerged for weeks, carry cruise missiles, and operate quietly in littoral and open-ocean environments alike. They also avoid the massive political and environmental overhead of nuclear technology. For most regional missions — including those Australia faces — a highly capable conventional submarine fleet would do the job with far less strategic risk. More importantly, it would signal a new direction for the Indo-Pacific’s middle powers. Australia, Canada, and South Korea all face the same strategic squeeze — caught between alliance obligations and national autonomy, between the need for capability and the need for control. By working together, they could chart a third way: self-reliant, collaborative, and regionally focused. This would not weaken alliances; it would make them more balanced and resilient. It would also demonstrate that small and mid-tier democracies can take initiative rather than waiting for Washington to decide what “security” means for them. For Australia, joining such a venture would not mean abandoning AUKUS entirely. Pillar II — which focuses on advanced technologies such as quantum, cyber, and AI — remains valuable. But the submarine component should be reconsidered. Canberra could diversify its approach: stay plugged into allied innovation networks while pursuing a tangible, near-term submarine solution with Korea and Canada. That would deliver boats sooner, sustain domestic industry, and restore an element of choice to Australia’s defence posture. The Canadian submarine project and Korea’s bid are not just about steel and sensors. They’re about strategic maturity — about nations that have outgrown the idea that security must be subcontracted to great powers. For Australia, this is a chance to rediscover what middle-power leadership actually looks like: practical, sovereign, and cooperative. So, can Australia get in on this? Probably not. Because it’s credible and achievable, if the idea were raised by any serious commentator, they’d have more manure piled on their front lawn by Australia’s US-backed think tanks than a French politician proposing an end to dairy subsidies. Instead of waiting decades for someone else’s nuclear dream to materialize and then probably just sending our trained submariners to work on someone else’s subs, Australia could join Canada and Korea in building something tangible, sovereign, and smart — but that’d probably be too logical. Sometimes middle-power enthusiasts do get carried away, dreaming of the “little guys” charging downfield and scoring one for sovereignty. Maybe it sounds naïve — but every so often the play is open, the ball is loose, and the try line is clear. Canada and Korea are already running it. Australia could too — if it just decided to run on the field. If you like this post, please support me by sharing it on social media or buying me a coffee!

It’s now in all the media. Lee Jae-myung will meet Donald Trump and Xi Jinping next week. Both are billed as state visits; only one will function as one. The first will be a circus, the second will be a summit. The difference could not be starker. The meeting with Trump will be noisy, flashy, and theatrical — a circus where the clown wears a blue suit, sports a fake tan, and has all the acumen of the bowl from a broken shithouse. The meeting with Xi will be quiet, deliberate, and steeped in planning — a summit where the statesman speaks softly, moves precisely, and brings clear deliverables. **The circus** Trump’s return to Asia looks like it was planned by a bum after a casino win — erratic, happy-go-lucky, and utterly without direction. His itinerary — Malaysia, Japan, then South Korea — culminates in a one-night stop designed for headlines, not history. In Gyeongju, he’ll deliver a keynote at the APEC CEO luncheon, attend a leaders’ working dinner, and fly out before the main APEC plenary. That brevity reveals the intent. The visit is not about negotiation; it’s about optics. Trump wants a number, a handshake, and a soundbite to broadcast back home. His team has been pushing Seoul to accept a US$350 billion investment commitment in exchange for tariff relief. The figure changes weekly, but the motive doesn’t: a quick “deal” that can be sold as a win. Donnie’s good ol’ Jersey slumlord shakedown like daddy used to do. It’s far from diplomacy. In Seoul, officials speak cautiously, as if tiptoeing around an unpredictable storm. Meetings are described as “difficult to predict.” Negotiators complain of constantly shifting demands. Even basic logistics have been confused — the White House announced the meeting would be held in Busan before correcting itself to Gyeongju. That chaos has become the signature of American diplomacy under Trump: loud, erratic, and improvised. His focus will be narrow: money, leverage, and the illusion of control. Topics like tariffs, defense cost-sharing, or even fentanyl will be treated as props for domestic consumption. The best-case scenario is a handshake and a “fact sheet,” not a joint vision. The worst-case is Lee getting roasted and flamed in a messy, messy, diplomatic debacle that will last for years to come. It’s pretty much gone beyond Trump now. It’s institutional decay. U.S. diplomacy once ran on preparation and discipline. Now it runs on emotion and marketing. What used to be the most capable foreign service in the world has been reduced to an entourage of handlers, translators, and stage managers, each praying the principal doesn’t improvise his way into another crisis. **The summit** Two days after Trump leaves, Xi Jinping will arrive — and the tone will shift markedly. Xi’s three-day state visit, the first by a Chinese leader in eleven years, is not an improvisation. It’s the product of long-term choreography. Every phrase, handshake, and announcement will be calibrated to advance a strategic agenda. Beijing’s goals are pragmatic. It wants to thaw the lingering THAAD frost; expand tourism and cultural exchanges; and stabilize the supply chains and critical minerals on which both Korean and Chinese industries mutually depend — tangible, achievable goals that endure beyond any single summit cycle. China’s diplomacy, for all its rigidity, offers predictability. Xi doesn’t arrive to score a soundbite. He arrives to embed patterns — of language, of cooperation, of hierarchy. His team will come armed with talking points on the Korean Peninsula, rare-earth exports, and technology supply chains. Beijing’s approach to diplomacy is bureaucratic but coherent: every engagement contributes to a larger strategy of shaping regional norms, not reacting to every media provocation. There will be no surprises, no offhand remarks that trigger a market panic. There’ll be no confusing bits about “love letters” and Kim Jong-un, or dashes for the DMZ and a quick photo op. Unlike Trump’s theatrics, Xi’s restraint is itself a kind of power. The visit will demonstrate China’s consistency — its ability to maintain a stable foreign policy even amid global turbulence. For middle powers like South Korea, that steadiness is valuable currency if you can fit the country into the hierarchy. It allows actual outcomes rather than crisis management. **Between the circus and the summit** President Lee stands between these two extremes: one unpredictable and transactional, the other disciplined and promising. With Trump, he’ll face pressure to pay up — to turn alliance loyalty into investment capital. With Xi, he’ll be offered partnership — with the quiet expectations of respect and deference on specific, calculated, and predictable issues. Both want something from Seoul, but only one will give Lee room to move. The Xi–Lee summit is a platform for negotiation; the Trump–Lee meeting is a test of painful endurance. Lee’s challenge is to turn proximity into leverage. The APEC week gives him a stage to show that South Korea can engage Washington and Beijing. If he can secure even modest progress on supply-chain coordination with China while keeping U.S. security guarantees intact, it would mark an achievement. The contrast between the circus and the summit captures the larger transformation of world politics. Trump represents the spectacle of power — emotional, erratic, and performative. Xi represents the strategy of power — patient, procedural, and precise. One thrives on chaos; the other manages it. In an era where the United States seems trapped in a feedback loop of domestic drama and international fecklessness, China’s methodical approach feels old-fashioned — but above all effective. China’s diplomacy may be authoritarian, but it is not anarchic showmanship. Its goals are long-term, structural, and predictable, while America’s are short-term and personal. When the week in Gyeongju ends, the contrast will linger. The Trump–Lee meeting will dominate television screens, but it will fade as fast as the next scandal. The Xi–Lee summit will barely trend online, but it will quietly alter the structure of Northeast Asian diplomacy — reopening channels, rebalancing priorities, and reminding Seoul that diplomacy still means planning, not posturing. In the end, Trump will leave behind headlines. Xi will leave behind plans to move the relationship forward. And that is why it is only after the circus packs up and leaves that the _real_ summit will begin. If you weren’t already aware, America is losing. China is winning. If you like this post, please support me by sharing it on social media or buying me a coffee!

When APEC was born in 1989, it was more than another acronym. It was a moment of triumph for middle powers — Australia, Canada, South Korea, and others — asserting that the post–Cold War world could be shaped not just by the great powers but by those who knew how to manage cooperation. It was pragmatic, elegant, and deeply functional. It promised a region connected by openness rather than divided by ideology. For a fleeting decade, APEC was the exemplar of middle-power diplomacy: agile, inventive, and confident enough to believe that globalization could be guided rather than merely endured. More than that, it was colorful! It was the fruit yogurt of multilateralism. An unnatural panoply of fruits from across the region — summits, declarations, handshakes and hesitatingly hilarious national costume photo shoots. Yet, like any unnatural mix of exotic fruit and milky proteins, its time in the sun left the color but soured the taste. Its shelf life expired, and its ingredients — dialogue, openness, flexibility—have turned rotten. The post–Cold War order, in which APEC thrived, has passed. Without reform, so too will APEC. **APEC’s achievements** To appreciate what will be lost, it’s worth recalling how extraordinary APEC once was. In an era defined by great-power institutions — NATO, the UN Security Council, the G7 — APEC emerged as something else entirely: a network of _economies_ , not states, united less by shared ideology than by shared geography and commercial logic. It embodied “open regionalism,” a concept as subtle as it was radical. Instead of excluding outsiders, it encouraged members to liberalize trade among themselves in ways that would ultimately benefit all. APEC was the height of post-Cold war middle power diplomacy and ticked off all of its criteria: active diplomacy, niche diplomacy, good international citizenship, and coalition building. Indeed, so successful was the coalition building that when you ask around for long enough, you discover as many “inventors” of APEC as there were at the first meeting! Academics will tell you that academics created APEC — the result of new levels of academic-diplomatic cooperation, inspired by Track-2 and Track 1.5 initiatives, and built upon the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC). Diplomats will tell you that it was diplomatic innovation — the result of the largest foreign affairs budgets in a generation. Australians will suredly tell you it was an Australian invention, South Koreans will tell you it was a Korean invention, Indonesians will tell you it was an Indonesian invention — and Paul Keating will tell you it was Paul Keating’s invention. All that can be said, APEC was the result of some pretty smooth diplomatic and political coalition building. And for a while, it worked. It established a framework for engagement that softened hierarchies. For business, it meant fewer barriers. For bureaucrats, it meant dialogue towards reform. For scholars, it was a living experiment in functional multilateralism. With time, the results highlighted the success: tariffs fell, investment grew, and Asia-Pacific integration became the story of the 1990s. Leaders met annually, economies coordinated, and the APEC spirit — technocratic, incremental, and resolutely cooperative — seemed to capture the essence of the post–Cold War order. **What went wrong?** APEC was the institutional reflection of its time: optimistic about liberal order, confident in American leadership, and trusting in the idea that prosperity would bind nations more tightly than politics could divide them. Its success depended on three conditions: a relatively stable unipolar system, shared faith in globalisation, and the willingness of middle powers to mediate rather than challenge. These conditions no longer exist. The unipolar world is gone. Globalization has fractured into rival standards and contested supply chains. Middle powers — once the balancers — are increasingly caught between strategic dependence and domestic fragmentation. The result is that APEC’s format now feels almost quaint. Its communiqués read like relics, its agendas recycled like the most awkward Asian national costumes worn by the sweatiest overweight western leaders after APEC conferences. It still convenes, still publishes, still talks about “facilitation.” But the energy is performative. The language of cooperation remains, but the logic that sustained it, has evaporated. **Is change possible?** Institutional transformation between eras is possible — but only for those institutions that serve clear, durable functions. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), founded in 1865, persists because it manages something concrete: technical coordination. The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), born in the 1880s, still convenes legislators because its purpose — dialogue between parliaments — transcends geopolitics. The Universal Postal Union (UPU) is another: it endures because mail must move, regardless of the century. These organisations outlived their origins because they do things. They deliver, regulate, or arbitrate something tangible. What, by contrast, does APEC do? That question reveals the problem. Was APEC about open regionalism — a strategic move by Australia to dilute exclusive Asian blocs? Was it about trade facilitation — a way for governments to streamline business cooperation? Or was it simply about middle power diplomacy — an attempt to contain major powers within a framework of dialogue and consensus? Whichever purpose one chooses, it was bound to expire. Open regionalism faded once the WTO stalled and bilateral deals took over. Trade facilitation moved to more formal, enforceable agreements like the CPTPP and RCEP. And middle-power diplomacy found new homes in G20 and ASEAN+ frameworks. APEC, lacking both the hard edge of trade law and the emotional pull of regional identity, simply drifted. **Can APEC be reformed?** APEC’s inertia is not unique. The difficulty of transforming institutions between eras is one of the great recurring themes of international relations. Once created, bureaucracies resist reinvention. They are designed for stability, not for imagination. There are exceptions — but whether APEC, South Korea _and_ reform are a neat bundle, is a difficult question. South Korea prides itself on being a model middle power — dynamic, globally connected, and committed to multilateralism. But that reputation masks a deeper weakness: its diplomatic institutions are trained for adaptation, not for innovation. South Korea was a _post_ post-Cold War middle power. Seoul never demonstrated the sustained diplomatic creativity required to establish an institution like APEC. And before you say “what about MIKTA?” or “what about the GGGI?” remember their current status. MIKTA started with fanfare holding leaders meetings and gala dinners. It is now an affair for local junior diplomats with boxed lunches on the side of more important meetings. The GGGI? It’s a multilaterally funded retirement village for former South Korean ministers and diplomats, staffed by a bevy of outsiders shuffling paper to show legitimacy. If any country in the Asia-Pacific _were_ to attempt a reinvention of APEC’s purpose, Korea _should_ be well placed. It straddles North and South, East and West, developed and developing. It understands both the vulnerabilities of middle powers and the ambitions of great ones. Yet, its foreign ministry culture — hierarchical, legalistic, and risk-averse — remains ill-suited to the kind of creative diplomacy that institutional transformation requires. The ministry excels at implementing the agendas of others, not at inventing new sustainable frameworks on their own. Don’t expect APEC to be ready for a new era after Gyeongju. APEC may have been the fruit yoghurt of post–Cold War multilateralism — colorful, sweet, and healthy. It was an inspired concoction of diplomacy and optimism, blending incompatible ingredients into something surprisingly palatable. But for institutions, just as for yogurt, preservation should never be the goal. Renewal should be the goal. The question is whether those who follow Gyeongju will have the courage to start mixing again. If you like this post, please support me by sharing it on social media or buying me a coffee!

In Seoul, there’s certain subjects that nobody wants to talk about. At conferences, they’re put off altogether or laughed away with a witty aside. Yet, hang around a while and a few good hours after the conference dinner at a late night bar, it will start. The subjects are rolled out in slurred and angry outbursts, and what is said won’t be remembered or cited in reproach. One of these subjects is the scarier side of South Korea’s medium-term future as a relatively small-to-mid-sized state amidst China, the U.S., North Korea, Russia and Japan—and it’s not overly positive. There is an inevitable fate that portends all small-to-mid-sized states adjacent to great powers—particularly those that (a) hold territory considered to be strategically relevant; (b) are heavily influenced by or controlled by a perceived opponent to the adjacent state; and (c) are heavily influenced by or controlled by a state in relative decline. Yes, (a), (b), and (c) apply to South Korea, China, and the United States. What is that inevitable fate? The trajectories below are from one such late night carousal — a soju Saturnalia between street tents and singing rooms. How’d I remember the trajectories? Here we have ladies and gentlemen, the benefits of clean living. I restructured them into more understandable and cohesive responses and left out the swearword emphasis. Below, from between drinks are some local views on Seoul’s futures. **Parallel dependencies?** The most acceptable outcome is the maintenance of parallel dependencies: a condition in which the state simultaneously relies on one power for security and another for economic survival. Defense, intelligence, and alliance commitments remain oriented toward the declining patron, while trade, technology, and investment deepen with the ascendant neighbor. The result is a brittle equilibrium — a foreign policy of balance rather than principles. South Korea already embodies this pattern: its security guaranteed by Washington, its prosperity increasingly bound to Beijing. Over time, this arrangement becomes difficult to sustain, as each dependency demands exclusivity. Parallel dependencies preserve autonomy in appearance, but in practice strategic coherence erodes like a late night drinker trying to get into a cab on Yonsei-ro after 3am. **Managed neutrality?** As pressures mount, the state may pivot toward managed neutrality — an attempt to formalize equidistance. It declares itself non-aligned, limits foreign basing, and cultivates multilateral legitimacy to avoid total capture by either side. While this strategy reduces immediate confrontation, it effectively transforms sovereignty into a managed condition overseen by both powers. For South Korea, such neutrality could be secured through strength with armed neutrality; or it could be conditional and imposed through great power negotiations. The former reflects Switzerland during the Cold War — a small state whose neutrality was backed by universal conscription, fortified borders, industrial capacity, tacit acceptance by regional states, and economic resilience. The latter reflects Austria in 1955, whose neutrality was negotiated and guaranteed by the very powers that had occupied it, trading autonomy for security under external terms. Ultimately, the durability of neutrality depends less on the smaller state’s declaration than on the willingness of great powers to tolerate and enforce it. Switzerland’s neutrality endured because it suited both NATO and the Warsaw Pact as a demilitarized buffer within Europe’s Cold War geography. Austria’s neutrality, likewise, was viable only because Washington and Moscow agreed that a neutral Vienna was preferable to another Berlin — a frozen line of confrontation. For South Korea, no such consensus exists. China views Korean neutrality as an opportunity to dismantle the U.S. alliance network, while the United States regards it as a strategic setback that would expose Japan and the wider Pacific flank. Until Beijing and Washington share an interest in a non-aligned peninsula — whether as buffer, bridge, or demilitarized corridor — Korean neutrality will remain an aspiration without structural consent. **Contested control?** If neutrality fails or is rejected, the state becomes a point of contention: the front line of competing security and ideological systems. In this phase, great-power rivalry plays out through the smaller state’s institutions, politics, and society. Domestic polarization intensifies, with rival factions acting as proxies for external interests. Ukraine illustrates the archetype of a state transformed into a point of contest. Its geopolitical position between a declining but still powerful West and a resurgent Russia ensured that neutrality was never truly an option. Western integration efforts — through EU association and NATO partnerships — collided with Moscow’s view of Ukraine as a historic and strategic buffer essential to its security identity. The result was not merely external confrontation but deep internal fracture: competing visions of nationhood, linguistic divides, and media ecosystems aligned with opposing patrons. In Ukraine’s case, sovereignty became both the battleground and the prize — a state whose internal political balance determined the outer shape of European order. In the Korean context, a similar dynamic could emerge as U.S.–China rivalry hardens. South Korea’s alliances, elections, and even cultural narratives are already sites of proxy competition. Washington seeks a technologically and militarily integrated ally within its Indo-Pacific architecture; Beijing aims to erode that cohesion through economic dependency, historical framing, and political influence operations. Should neutrality fail or be rejected, Seoul could find itself in Ukraine’s position — its internal debates reframed as global contests between democracy and hierarchy, or the West and Asia. In such a scenario, South Korea ceases to be a stable platform for projecting order and instead becomes the contested terrain upon which order itself is negotiated. **Structural realignment?** If contests persist and the declining patron’s influence wanes, the population of the smaller state may choose to realign voluntarily with the ascendant power. This process is less coercive than annexation and less abrupt than regime change; it is instead a gradual psychological and institutional migration of allegiance. Trade, media, and cultural exchange normalize the new power’s presence, while the older alliance begins to feel anachronistic — a relic of a past order. Over time, public sentiment shifts from dependency on the old protector to acceptance of the new one, rationalized as realism, regionalism, or even destiny. The ascendant power does not need to invade; it simply inherits. A historical parallel can be found in Finland’s realignment toward the Soviet Union after World War II. Though not conquered, Finland accepted the constraints of the 1948 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, aligning its foreign policy with Moscow’s interests to preserve domestic autonomy. The Western powers, exhausted and focused on reconstruction, tacitly accepted this shift as the price of stability in Northern Europe. Similarly, a structural realignment of South Korea would entail a social and generational recalibration — where economic pragmatism, security fatigue, and cultural interdependence with China gradually outweigh Cold War loyalties. The United States, preoccupied with its own strategic retrenchment, might allow or even encourage such an outcome under the guise of regional accommodation. **Collapse,division, or failed-state and fragmentation?** Once great-power competition destabilizes the state’s institutions and social contract, collapse becomes possible. This can take the form of economic crisis, regime implosion, or territorial division — a failed state by external design and internal exhaustion. This is of course the current status of the ethnic Korean state. Historical divisions between north and south, coupled with Cold War contest led to all but permanent division between a Russian and Chinese backed north, and a U.S.-led Western coalition backed south. A division that continues more than 75 years later. This is the fate of Strategic pivots. Strategic territory that was once an asset becomes a liability: a vacuum inviting intervention, partition, or trusteeship. In this scenario, South Korea’s economic interdependence and security dependence become vulnerabilities, and its geography — lodged between nuclear North Korea, maritime Japan, and continental China — ensures that no single actor can or will stabilize it alone. **Coerced realignment?** The ultimate fear of many in South Korea. The terminal outcome is coerced realignment: formal absorption into the ascendant power’s orbit. This may occur peacefully through economic leverage and political inducement, or violently through threat and subversion or conquest. The realignment is presented as pragmatic sovereignty — a “return to Asia,” “regional integration,” or “new security architecture.” But in reality, it marks the end of strategic choice. Once realigned, the state’s institutions are gradually harmonized with those of the hegemon: trade law, communications standards, defense coordination, and cultural diplomacy all reoriented toward the new center of gravity. The above will scare many living on the Peninsula. To think that such a stable, secure (I mean people still leave wallets and phones on tables when they go out to smoke), could transform into a war zone is hard to believe. Yet, the possibility is more than evident on the other side of the Eurasian continent. To imagine South Korea as Ukraine is shocking to say the least, but the potential is there and hard to deny. And so, it circles back to those late-night bars in Seoul — the things people only say when the lights are low and the last bottle’s half empty. It’s not that no one knows what’s coming; it’s that no one wants to say it out loud. South Korea’s calm — the clean streets, the phones left on café tables, the endless routines — all of it runs on a kind of uneasy balance that everyone senses could shift. In the daylight, it feels easier to joke about it, to call it someone else’s problem. After a few drinks, when the laughter fades, there’s a quiet understanding that the peace here isn’t permanent. It’s borrowed time, and everyone in the know, is well aware of that fact. If you like this post, please support me by sharing it on social media or buying me a coffee!

The 26th World Knowledge Forum was held in Seoul from 9-11 September. Let’s call it the WKF. The WKF is an annual event on Seoul’s conference schedule. In fact, I’m underplaying it. It’s a prime event. If you know the Seoul conference circuit, you know the quality of this designation. George W. Bush, Nicolas Sarkozy, Therea May, Bill Gates, John Hennessy, Larry Ellison, and George Soros - virtually every target of an Alex Jones conspiracy alert - has spoken there. And this year, it was Justin Trudeau’s turn. The 23rd Prime Minister of Canada and Liberal Party leader who was dumped as the world around him changed, fittingly spoke on “Leadership and Resilience in a Time of Transition”. I didn’t watch it as I’m not a sadomasochist, but it was probably less on leadership in his corruption riddled government, and more on resilience cos that speaker’s circuit payment would’ve really complemented his parliamentary and ministerial retirement benefits. You’d think someone at the WKF would ask the question: “Why are we having a privileged ponce who fell into the prime ministership talk about leadership and resilience?” Nobody asked. So, I guess it was down to the panels to bring up the vibe. Now, I wasn’t invited and couldn’t afford the $2000 registration fee, but some of the videos are on YouTube, so let’s take a look at what I thought was a promising panel: Surviving Great Power Turmoil in Northeast Asia. Unfortunately, in the end, it said more about Korea than great power turmoil. “Surviving Great Power Turmoil in Northeast Asia”, was hosted by former South Korean Ambassador to the U.S., Ahn Hoyoung; and included three speakers: Andrew Kim, a former Assistant Director and head of the Koreas Desk at the CIA; Michael Reiterer, Former EU Ambassador to South Korea; and Suzuki Kazuto, a professor at the University of Tokyo. The first thing to note is the speakers themselves. With all due respect, the choice of speakers to discuss surviving great power turmoil in Northeast Asia could probably have been better - and this says a lot about Korea rather than the speakers themselves. The format consisted of four retired or near-retired men. Each with a resume and a professional standing that lets them pass the Korean respectability register at the 9.5/10 level. Now this is often a problem at South Korea’s conferences. Speakers are chosen so that on paper, they make the organizer shine. It’s all about respectability and showing off. I’ve asked around about this. The selection of speakers often follows an order: (1) friend of the organizer; (2) colleague of the organizer who invited the organizer to a previous conference in their country; (3) prestigious title; and (4) local availability - so that the first three can be paid. Needless to say, speakers are not chosen for their knowledge, their reputation as being unorthodox and provocative, their oratory flourish, and definitely not for their willingness to criticize. Know a mumbling, stumbling f%$K from Yale, Harvard, or Princeton? Put _him_ on a panel because that makes us look good (and I say him because for some reason it always is). The biggest problem about this approach is that international relations dies of boredom on the stage. Four very distinguished, well-dressed, highly presentable dignitaries with hardly a word to challenge convention or criticize the failures that brought us to the current situation. This was ‘milk and bread’ boring, or shall we say ‘kimchi and rice’ run-of-the-mill? I swear, even the presenters looked bored. Can’t somebody give them a coffee - in fact when you get to that stage of your career, you may need an Irish Coffee to get really riled up. Very, very, very Irish. The question of the panel was “How can we survive amid the law-of-the-jungle dynamics shaping Northeast Asia?”. In response, we got monologues on Europe; waffle about Kim, Xi, and Putin; and some carefully crafted words to avoid giving out too much information - all interspersed by inane roundabout questions. Now, yes this sounds overly critical, but look at the cuts to the audience - they’re half-asleep. When you have speakers who are so embedded in the system, you're really not going to get any insight or ideas about the real problems we face. With all due respect, our esteemed former ambassador of Europe railed on about the challenges of China and Russia, and reverted back to his tenure talking points (something many ex-ambassadors tend to do) on how Korea must position itself firmly on one side. States must be part of a “coalition of the willing” to help reform and strengthen the existing order. I can imagine a few South Koreans in the audience smirking. There’s a certain degree of arrogance in handing out advice when you’ve been part of a system that has led to an inexorable decline. Now it would be unfair of me to be critical and not offer any advice. Well, organizers of future conferences - spice it up a bit!!! * **Get speakers known for their unorthodoxy**. All those start-up sponsors and industry execs in the audience want to hear what is really happening, not the sludgy talking points of ten years ago. * **Change the format**. Four dignified suited men on a stage looking bored as f%&K? Change it to a debate; a townhall with audience participation; use tech with questions being shot off over the backdrop; use lights that excite rather than dull and calm. Push for passion and emotion, so that speakers can speak off the cuff and from the heart. * **Let the light shine in**. Now I’m not often considered to be woke or even vaguely less than a grumpy old anti-social recluse, but FFS - get some diversity!!! We want youth, socio-economic, gender, and national diversity when talking about the future. To talk about “surviving” great power turmoil you line up three great powers and a sycophantic supplicant? Why not get in someone from a state that can argue back? Why not someone from a relevant middle power or non-state actor? I mean the topic is Northeast Asia… Pardon the French, but WTF is Europe doing there? Regardless of my insignificant and overly cynical views, everyone put their hands together at the end. They probably knew that they could get a breath of fresh air and a coffee (did I mention my cynicism?). Next post, we’ll take a look at what Henry Hagard, John Mearsheimer and Robin Niblett have to say about “the Future of the Global Geo _economic_ Order”. It reminds me of a joke: An international relations professor, a think-tanker, and a diplomat walk into an economics bar. They turn around and walk out. 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U.S. alternative media is awash with stories on Israel and Gaza, Ukraine and Russia, and now Iran and Venezuela. There’s influence operations, assassinations, drug imports, illegal killings, imminent nuclear war, and the collapse of NATO, the E.U., the U.N, and even the U.S. But where’s the Korean Peninsula? Where’s the fire ‘n’ fury? Why is Korea missing from U.S. alternative media? Think about it. When was the last time you heard anyone talk about South Korea on the “non-mainstream” or alternative media circuit? Tucker Carlson, Jimmy Dore, Candace Owens, Glenn Greenwald, Alex Jones—the loudest megaphones of the populist wave—never mention it. Even when mentioned by highly intelligent guests on the slightly depressing, doom-scroller delight of the Judge Napolitano show, it is in passing and often with a highly nuanced perspective (and routinely misunderstood from a Korean policy perspective). It seems Korea doesn’t currently fit the narrative machinery. There’s no moral panic, no globalist conspiracy, no race war, no easy villain. In the recent American imagination, Korea exists in two registers: the Samsung factory floor and the North Korean missile launch. Everything in between barely registers. Here lies the problem. > When there is a crisis on the Korea Peninsula, it will be too late. South Korea has missed the alternative media train. In the next crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Seoul’s voice will be silent. It will be drowned out by a bevy of monotonous regulars with little to add, while others with very little knowledge of Korea and the region spin their views on what should be done. The problem—Seoul’s outreach runs on an old public diplomacy script: influence government and shape public opinion. To influence government, Seoul hires lobbyists, fund think-tank programs, sponsor op-eds, send exchange students, and hope the people at every think-tank you paid off say something nice. Sometimes it went a little too far, but on the whole, it worked. It was a Beltway ritual—civilized, expensive, _but_ increasingly irrelevant. Winning arguments in seminar rooms with large-forearmed ex-CIA stalwarts and snivelling, sycophantic scholars pushing policy for Korea Foundation pennies no longer cuts the mustard. The audiences that once shaped Washington’s foreign policy consensus have splintered, and influence now flows through fragmented digital networks rather than the Georgetown circuit. To shape public opinion, Seoul promotes cultural exchange, student programs, K-pop concerts, pushes glossy tourism ads, supports food festivals, and film weeks. It builds goodwill, not arguments. The goal isn’t to persuade but to charm—to make South Korea seem familiar, safe, and worth listening to. It’s soft, elegant, and slow—exactly the opposite of how influence now spreads. Unfortunately, soft power—BTS, Squid Game, kimchi gastrodiplomacy, K-beauty—isn’t political power. It makes people hum your songs, and eat your food, but not defend your interests. Seoul’s diplomats are confusing admiration for influence. Influencing government decisions and shaping public opinion are usually seen as separate goals. But alternative media now sits between them. Podcasts, YouTube shows, and online influencers translate elite policy debates into everyday language, while also pushing popular emotions back into politics. It is the bridge between policy and perception—less formal than lobbying, more immediate than soft power. Those who understand this middle ground don’t just spread messages; they shape how both governments and publics see the world. It was the alternative media that gave Donald Trump the election. The end result was shaped far away from the think-tanks and the lobbyists. The end result was shaped in podcasts recorded from suburban basements; on channels that soar with two researchers, two techies, and a “camera guy” but reach ten million viewers a night; or on tried and true, one-on-one reliable and engaging conversations, like 1950s talk radio with a digital spin. These are the digital back alleys and information super-highways where alt media influence happens. The irony is rich: every South Korean knows how influential alternative media policy channels can be—like probably influential enough to convince a sitting president to undertake a coup! It’s a curious mismatch: a country that conquered Gen-Z culture through K-pop and has peaceful subways cos everyone is watching some schlepper talk on YouTube, somehow hasn’t learned to itself, weaponize attention. There are reasons for Seoul’s restraint, of course. Korean bureaucrats are cautious by training and allergic to controversy. The phrase “media influencer” still triggers visions of national embarrassment rather than strategic leverage. Seoul fears the taint of manipulation—and it should. But the United States today is a media jungle, not a rules-based ecosystem. The genteel approach—white papers, policy dialogues, and photo-ops, no longer works. It will also get worse. The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) has been hollowed out (or at least applied loosely when so desired). The Department of Justice has narrowed its focus to “adversary states.” South Korea is an ally, which _should_ make it less visible. Israel knows this. So do the Gulf states. They buy influence not just in think-tanks but also in influencer networks and the platforms they inhabit. They shape the margins where official scrutiny doesn’t reach. Now, Korea doesn’t need to imitate Israel’s over-the-top influencer campaigns, but it needs to understand the principle: influence now operates through personality, not policy. If you can’t brief them, befriend them. That means cultivating Korean-American podcasters, military veterans, and diaspora pundits who can talk the language of populist grievance without sounding like bureaucrats. It means funding independent-looking YouTube channels that unpack Asian geopolitics in the idiom of contrarian media—fast cuts, suspicion of elites, emotional hooks. It means buying airtime, sponsoring segments, and planting storylines that travel through the shadow ecosystem where political moods are born. Does that sound manipulative? It is. That’s what everyone else is doing. If mishandled, such strategies risk producing dissonance or confusion. Yet in an attention-driven information environment, even dissonance implies visibility. Seoul’s persistent concern with misinterpretation obscures a deeper vulnerability: invisibility. Contemporary media logics privilege performative boldness rather than factual precision. States that project assertively shape discourse; those that communicate cautiously are confined to the margins of it. The United States, and in particular Trump, run on media attention. The gatekeepers have changed, but the stakes haven’t. In that marketplace, Korea can either remain the quiet ally everyone forgets and has no voice when global does turn to a crisis prone peninsula—or learn to play the algorithm like everyone else. The next season of Tucker, Jimmy, Alex, or Candace should be filmed live from the blue huts of the DMZ. Then perhaps when those huts are _really_ needed for peace talks, Seoul’s voice in Washington will be louder. If you like this post, please support me by sharing it on social media or buying me a coffee!

Commentary on the withdrawal of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) is often framed through a South Korean lens: sovereignty, security, and the management of North–South relations. Would Seoul be left vulnerable? Would Washington’s retreat embolden Pyongyang or Beijing? The strategic conversation is quietly shifting. In recent conversations with U.S. analysts, I was shocked at their interests in “leaving Korea to Koreans”. The rationale for withdrawal is no longer political fatigue or alliance friction, but geography, vulnerability, strategic cost, and maritime logic — a recognition that the defense of Korea has again become an expensive deviation from America’s natural strategic posture. In the 1940s, most American strategists regarded the Korean Peninsula as an indefensible appendage of the Asian mainland — a distant liability, not an asset. Korea, they believed, belonged to the 19th century: a relic of coaling stations and gunboat diplomacy, not an arena for a maritime power in the age of air and naval warfare. The United States’ strength lay in the Pacific Ocean and its chain of defensible islands stretching from Japan to the Philippines. The Asian continent — with its armies, supply lines, and land wars — offered only entanglement. Only with Cold War expansionism did this calculation change: Washington accepted continental exposure not because geography improved, but because ideology (and perhaps stupidity) demanded it. Before 1950 the U.S. strategic perimeter ran along the first island chain, excluding Korea. Secretary of State Dean Acheson drew it deliberately that way — a line that reflected sea power and restraint. The Korean War overturned this logic. Containment required commitment; credibility demanded demonstration. The peninsula became a symbol of U.S. resolve, defended not for its intrinsic value but because retreat was _politically_ impossible. America’s forward posture on the Asian mainland, once seen as reckless, became doctrine. Cold War expansionism created institutions that survived their rationale: bilateral commands, integrated logistics, and permanent bases. Geography did not change, but withdrawal became unthinkable. The longer the U.S. stayed, the more its presence justified itself. The alliance became less a response to a threat and more a habit of power. Korea ceased to be a “forgotten war” and became a “permanent outpost” — a continental garrison inside a fundamentally maritime grand strategy. Significantly, USFK became a “tripwire”. Think about it - a tripwire! Who wants to be part of a tripwire - a device or instrument designed to be expendable in anticipation of an immediate reaction. For certain, no individual soldier wants to be a tripwire! For China, Korea’s value has always been spatial and defensive. It provides depth and denial — a buffer between China’s heartland and maritime intrusion. From the Ming to the People’s Republic, the peninsula’s strategic purpose has remained constant: prevent invasion from the sea, especially through a foreign-controlled Korea. Beijing’s policy today remains true to that logic: pressure Pyongyang to avoid collapse, tolerate its provocations, and prevent the emergence of a U.S.-aligned, unified Korea that could extend American presence to the Yalu River. To China, a divided peninsula is uncomfortable but manageable. After the Cold War, some in the United States started to rediscover their maritime strategic heritage. The Indo-Pacific concept — the centerpiece of U.S. strategic thinking — can be seen as an attempt to encircle China. But it also can be seen as a strategy that once again privileges sea power, logistics corridors, and coalition-based access rather than continental occupation. Within this schema, Korea sits awkwardly. It is a land position within a naval theater, a static commitment that limits mobility. As Washington pivots to distributed deterrence — through Guam, Japan, and the Philippines — Korea’s geography looks less like a shield and more like a liability. Modern warfare has inverted the value of forward bases. Precision long-range strike systems, hypersonic missiles, and anti-access/area-denial networks mean that what was once an advantage — proximity — has become a vulnerability. Every base within 1,000 kilometers of China’s coastline now sits inside its missile envelope. The logistics and airfields that make deterrence credible are also the first targets in conflict. The vulnerability extends beyond the physical. Cyber operations can paralyze command systems, while political coercion can curtail host-nation permissions. The cost of defending a base rises exponentially as the adversary’s reach grows. The paradox is clear: every reinforcement increases exposure. Strategy has thus evolved toward dispersion, mobility, and resilience — smaller nodes, shared access, and maritime-based logistics that can move faster than the missiles aimed at them. Fixed continental bases, particularly on exposed territory, are increasingly seen not as pillars of deterrence but as hostages to geography. Korea stands out as the exemplar to this maxim. For some, this shift has revived an idea once dismissed as fantasy: a neutral and eventually unified Korea. Within certain U.S. and regional foresight circles, the argument has been turned on its head. They argue that division, militarization of the peninsula, and the U.S. defense of South Korea, is a structural vulnerability for the U.S., which actually serves China’s interests. They argue that a unified Korea — whatever its political character — would on the other hand, be an enduring irritant to China. Unification would unleash a deep current of nationalism and self-assertion that no regime type could fully contain. A Korea that is whole would also be restless: proud of its autonomy, wary of great-power influence. It would be potentially antagonistic towards China. A future unified Korean state would contain 52 million citizens with knowledge and expectations of government responsiveness, and 26 million citizens with a degree of resentment and dissatisfaction towards those that kept them relatively behind their southern cousins. To China, this prospect — an independent, populous, and industrial neighbor with historical grievances and global ambition — poses a more persistent challenge than any cluster of vulnerable U.S. bases within missile range. For Washington, by contrast, remaining on the peninsula locks it into a geography it no longer needs to hold: exposed to strike, constrained by host-nation politics, and bound to a continental posture that runs counter to its maritime future. A neutral, unified Korea would transform the problem. It would remove the buffer that both powers fear losing, while defusing the trigger that both currently sustain. The peninsula could evolve into a stabilizing hinge — a state trading with all, aligning with none, maintaining sovereignty not through deterrence by presence but deterrence by position. Such foresight recognizes that the U.S.–Korea alliance, however successful, is a transitional structure — a bridge between Cold War expansionism and a new equilibrium shaped by geography, not ideology. Seen this way, Korea is less a fortress to be held than a hinge to be managed. It remains critical precisely because it cannot be ignored: it connects continental power to maritime access, and any shift in its alignment ripples across the region. Its strategic value now lies in its connectivity — infrastructure, supply chains, deterrence networks — not in the static presence of foreign troops. Geography endures; politics changes. The Cold War turned Korea into a continental outpost of an oceanic empire. Today, precision weapons, regional multipolarity, and alliance fatigue make it redundant. The challenge for both Washington and Seoul is to evolve the alliance before geography makes it obsolete. A managed withdrawal from Korea would not be capitulation but strategic foresight: the deliberate exporting of risk and instability back toward China’s frontier, leaving Beijing to manage the unpredictable consequences of a unified, assertive Korea. The core argument is that departure would not diminish American power; but would redirect the region’s friction to where it properly belongs. If you like this post, please support me by sharing it on social media or buying me a coffee!

Washington’s build-up toward possible military action in Venezuela and Iran has attracted concern that the attacks are part of an irreversible decline. For its distant middle power partners, this raises a question: must middle powers fall when their patron does? Paul Kennedy’s _The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers_ traces how great powers expand, overextend, and decline. His analysis rests on five principles that fit contemporary America: uneven economic growth, the nexus between wealth and power, the dangers of overextension, the lag between economic and military capacity, and the decisive role of productive strength in war. Middle powers also experience these forces—but with one crucial addition: the constraints and opportunities of strategic alliances with a great power patron. Australia and South Korea share similarities in economic size, military capacity, alliance structures, and strategic weights—the former as a strategic rear area or logistical base of operations, and the latter as a strategic pivot. As some authors have argued, they can be thought of as the northern and southern anchor points of the Indo-Pacific. They are both clear beneficiaries of the U.S.-led international order. Australia’s prosperity came through successive natural resource export booms coupled with a conducive international environment resulting from close relationships with first, the U.K., and later the U.S. South Korea’s ascent from the ashes of war to industrial powerhouse was achieved under protection within a global trading order built by and sustained by the U.S. Venezuela and Iran lie far from the immediate interests of Canberra or Seoul (also far from any direct threat to Washington!). Yet, as allies of the United States, they will be called on to play a role. They will soon face the test of how to best respond as the old locomotive behind the international order from which they benefited, steams toward a rickety bridge. How will Canberra and Seoul react? **Australia and Korea in Paul Kennedy’s shadow** Kennedy’s criteria to assess decline in great powers include uneven economic growth, the nexus between wealth and power, the dangers of overextension, the lag between economic and military capacity, and the decisive role of productive strength in war. This applies equally to middle powers. Australia and South Korea are in different stages of decline. Kennedy begins with the reality that global growth is uneven—some states rise faster than others, reshaping the hierarchy of power. Australia’s economy has grown steadily in nominal terms, but structurally it has become narrower: dominated by resource exports and increasingly dependent on China’s demand. Its once-diverse industrial base has atrophied. South Korea, meanwhile, remains dynamic but faces its own headwinds: slowing demographics, heavy reliance on semiconductor exports, and intensifying technological competition from both the U.S. and China. Both economies are exposed to external cycles, but while Australia’s vulnerability is commodity-driven, Korea’s is technology-driven—two different symptoms of a similar relative slowdown. Kennedy’s second criterion is the linkage between economic capacity and strategic weight. For Australia, wealth no longer translates cleanly into power: its defense industry is limited, and much of its national wealth is held in financial and resource sectors with little military utility. South Korea, in contrast, still converts wealth into hard power more effectively, sustaining one of the world’s largest standing militaries and an advanced defense industry (with highly significant sales to Australia). Yet its strategic autonomy remains constrained by alliance dependency and the risk of entanglement. Both countries are discovering that prosperity does not automatically yield leverage when security policy is outsourced. Third is overextension. The classic trap of stretching commitments beyond means—is evident in both middle powers, though in different forms. Australia’s alliance entanglements and its embrace of AUKUS have committed it to a high-cost technological and strategic agenda that exceeds its industrial base. South Korea, on the other hand, is overextended in security geography: tied to defending the peninsula while drawn into global supply-chain politics and Indo-Pacific alignments. In both cases, strategic ambition is racing ahead of sustainable resources, echoing Kennedy’s warning that overreach precedes decline. Fourth, Kennedy observed that a lag often appears between economic vitality and military reach. Australia, even as it enjoyed decades of growth, underinvested in defense manufacturing and regional diplomacy, leaving it strategically hollow just as its economy began to slow. Now it seeks to build capability precisely as fiscal and demographic limits set in. South Korea exhibits the reverse: it built military power early but now struggles to maintain growth rates that can sustain that level of armament and technological edge. Each is caught on opposite sides of the same temporal lag between wealth and force. Finally, Kennedy saw productive capacity—the ability to mobilize industrial strength—as the decisive measure of resilience. Australia’s industrial base has been hollowed out; its supply chains are long and foreign-controlled. In a prolonged crisis, its endurance would depend almost entirely on allies. Its submarines will even more than likely not be fully independent. South Korea still retains formidable productive strength, but its wartime resilience would be threatened by its geographic exposure and dependence on maritime trade routes. Now imagine Australia and South Korea as two carriages hitched to that old locomotive charging down the tracks. Australia is the comfortable carriage near the engine, warmed by the illusion that proximity equals control. It has grown accustomed to the rhythm of the train, believing that loyalty keeps it safe. South Korea rides farther back — the carriage built later, hitched to the train by necessity, not sentiment. Its passengers are alert to every jolt, aware that a derailment up front could send shockwaves down the train. Both are pulled by the same engine, but only one seems to notice the strain in the tracks ahead. **The alliance variable** In the way their alliances were devised, negotiated, and sustained, Australia and South Korea have had fundamentally different relationships to the U.S. Australia’s alliance with the United States was born out of cultural alignment as much as existential necessity. The ANZUS Treaty of 1951 formalized what was already an instinctive connection — an English-speaking settler society seeking security through racial, linguistic, and ideological familiarity. The stickling point in negotiations was the inclusion of other states. The U.S. wanted more, Australia wanted less. South Korea’s alliance, by contrast, was forged in blood and occupation. As a continental-maritime pivot at the edge of Eurasia, control over the Korean Peninsula gave the U.S. an advantage in the emerging Cold War. The 1953 Mutual Defense Treaty was not an act of voluntary alignment but a survival pact concluded under wartime dependency. The sticking point in negotiations was how much autonomy South Korea would retain over its own defense and military forces, especially regarding U.S. operational control and the geographical scope and conditions of the American security guarantee. For Australia, the alliance has always been pre-emptive rather than reactive, binding Australia to U.S. strategic priorities well beyond its region. Canberra has often acted as an auxiliary power, deploying forces to distant American wars — Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan — less to address direct threats than to maintain credibility in Washington. The alliance thus functions as a form of externalized identity politics: a guarantee that Australia remains inside the “Anglosphere” even as Asia grows around it. For South Korea, U.S. troops remained not as guests but as guarantors of national existence, and the alliance became institutionalized through direct command arrangements. It was structural and coercive: the Combined Forces Command ensured that, in any major conflict, operational control passed to an American general. This created both security and constraint — a shield that deterred invasion but limited sovereign maneuver. When South Korea deployed to distant American wars — Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan — it did so in transaction for specific benefits. Over time, these divergent origins have produced distinct alliance psychologies. Australia’s relationship with the U.S. is unquestioning but elective — a habit of loyalty maintained by belief and reinforced through cultural intimacy. South Korea’s is uneasy but inescapable — a bond maintained by fear and proximity rather than affection. Canberra talks of “interoperability” and “shared values,” while Seoul speaks of “extended deterrence” and “conditions-based transfers.” As the locomotive approaches a rickety bridge — a metaphor for the uncertain future of U.S. power — the two middle powers confront different instincts. For Australia, the alliance has fused with national identity: to question it is to question who Australians are. For South Korea, the alliance remains transactional — negotiable, conditional, and rooted in circumstance. Identity is hard to change; transactions can be rewritten. So Australia clings tighter as the bridge groans, while South Korea studies the gaps and calculates its next move. One carriage rides on belief, the other on calculation. **When middle powers fall** Some hold on to the fanciful notion that middle powers can somehow band together and that this will solve their ails. There is no middle power revival - just pressing questions. Will Australia once again march in lockstep, convinced that presence equals influence, mistaking obedience for relevance? Will South Korea continue to abstain, choosing stability and economic pragmatism over ideological alignment? Or could Australia and South Korea begin the slow, quiet process of switching sides — not through open defection, but through diplomatic drift, commercial pragmatism, and strategic fatigue? The real story of decline for middle powers is not collapse but conversion: the steady realization that alliance habits built in another century no longer guarantee safety in this one. Australia risks becoming a relic — a carriage welded to a locomotive that no longer runs as it once did. South Korea risks disengagement— a carriage wholly detached from the locomotives that run the show. Both will have to decide whether to keep riding the old locomotive off the end of the bridge or attach themselves to a new locomotive and start laying tracks and building bridges that can carry their load. If you like this post, please support me by sharing it on social media or buying me a coffee!

Just last month in New York, South Korea’s Foreign Minister Cho Hyun met with Seyed Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister. The meeting, held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, came at a delicate moment. The UN Security Council had just rejected a resolution to maintain the easing of sanctions under the 2015 nuclear deal, setting the stage for those sanctions to snap back into place. When the votes were counted, China, Russia, Pakistan, and Algeria stood with Iran. The U.S., U.K., and France led the opposition. South Korea—alongside Guyana—abstained. That abstention was not the product of indecision or lack of interest. It was a deliberate choice. It’s one of the hundreds of minor choices that add to the transaction cost of the U.S. alliance relationship. The situation raises a question: At what point do alliance transaction costs become impossible to sustain? There is currently a significant build-up of U.S. forces in the Middle East, including vessels, aircraft, munitions, and refuelling assets. Speculation is that Israel will soon attack Iran, which will in turn, require U.S. participation. Nobody in the White House can see it, but another war in the Middle East could be the point where alliance transaction costs become impossible to sustain. Another war in the Middle East may actually end up impacting America’s position in East Asia. If it weren’t so serious, you’d think it was a joke. Attacks on peace negotiators, a one-sided 20-point peace plan, and - the return of Tony Blair! During the last week, U.S. forces were noisily repositioned off the coast of Venezuela. A thousand top-level Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps personnel were called in for an urgent meeting with the “Minister for War”. The President gave a pointless rambling speech, and U.S. forces were quietly repositioned to the Middle East. The week has been like a cheap-ass B-movie script caught on late night TV after a night on the piss. We just need Chuck Norris infomercials. Yet, the scary thing is, it also fits an all too convenient pattern: Washington presenting Iran as a proliferating threat, while linking it to a Western Hemisphere adversary to justify action on two fronts at once. Add the revolving frame of human rights, democratic suppression, nuclear proliferation, and maybe even throw in chemical weapons and a regional minority to create shades of Iraq 2003 (not to mention Tony Blair) and we have the perfect script for the next forever war. There are three ways this can turn out: success, failure, and somewhere in between. Each way, the end result is era defining. * **Success?** This has been brilliantly planned for decades. American interests secure control of Venezuela and Iran, creating leverage over global oil markets. The U.S. emerges as the indispensable guarantor of energy stability; destabilizes the Russian economy and forces Moscow to negotiate with Ukraine; and reminds China and Europe of their dependence on U.S. naval power. * **Failure**? “Grand plans” rarely deliver the stability they promise. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Sudan began with confident assertions of strategy and ended with disorder, fatigue, and failure. Venezuela rallies support from Latin and South America, Iran secures support from Russia and China. The U.S. expends its credibility, resources, and reputation until internal division ends support. Israel collapses and the U.S. turns inwards and retreats from across the globe. * **Somewhere in between?** For the next seven or so years, as U.S. administrations come and go, war continues - an ongoing ghoulish quagmire of death marked by wealth transfers from the periphery to the center, and from the bottom to the top. The U.S. retreats from some places, but establishes a permanent presence in others. Each scenario has that end of empire feel to it. We are living in what can fairly be called the end of the American century. U.S. power remains formidable, but it is no longer unchallengeable. Its ability to dictate outcomes in distant regions has eroded. Each new attempt to reassert control—whether by invading, sanctioning, or threatening—exposes the limits of U.S. leverage. This risk is that at the end of empire, discerning the difference between hope and fear, sacrifice and profiteering, and egoism and narcissism gets harder and harder. For South Korea, this is not a game of grand strategy but a matter of calculation. Oil shocks are not theoretical. They hit immediately, raising input costs for industry, squeezing households, and undermining growth. The Trump administration has to date been responsible for threatening to cut off and preventing easy access to two major oil suppliers. A broader conflict in the Middle East will require China, Japan, and South Korea’s refiners to scramble to secure alternative supplies at higher prices. Conflict in the Middle East will be devastating. For South Korea, the alliance transaction costs of another Middle Eastern war are measured not only in oil prices and supply shocks, but also in credibility, autonomy, and strategic risk. Seoul’s diplomacy in the wider Middle East region has been successful, marked by pragmatic caution, careful balancing between great-power rivalries, and an ability to sustain constructive ties even amid volatile regional shifts. Nowhere is this clearer than in the deployment of the Akh Unit to the United Arab Emirates, where South Korean troops have quietly trained Emirati forces and deepened security cooperation since 2011. That presence, linked to Seoul’s multibillion-dollar nuclear reactor deal, illustrates how diplomacy and defense can reinforce each other. Yet this very success underscores the challenge ahead: maintaining space for independent initiative while avoiding entanglement in Washington’s grand strategies. For Seoul, the lesson is clear—measured diplomacy in the Middle East is not just about oil or trade; it is about preserving the strategic autonomy necessary to navigate the uncertainties of a fragmenting global order. Every time Washington embarks on a distant conflict, Seoul is forced to calculate how much to follow, how much to resist, and how much it can afford to be seen as complicit. Each calculation consumes scarce political capital at home and abroad. Another U.S. war in the Middle East would not just stretch American forces thin; it would force South Korea into an impossible balancing act between its security guarantor and its own survival. In that sense, Seoul’s abstention at the UN was not just caution. Another forever war in the Middle East will not just sap U.S. power. It will make America’s alliances in East Asia, starting with South Korea, harder to sustain. If you like this post, please support me by sharing it on social media or buying me a coffee!

This week, South Korean authorities expressed concern regarding the potential impact of anti-China protests during APEC. Anti-China sentiment is today a regular feature at political demonstrations in Seoul and has grown substantially with the growth of extreme right sentiment on social media. Both Beijing and Seoul are concerned. Some American analysts have taken comfort in South Korea’s growing anti-China sentiment, seeing opportunities to sit Seoul firmly beside Tokyo, Manila, and Canberra on the anti-China bandwagon. This interpretation is not only shallow—it is well wrong. Anti-China sentiment in South Korea is real, and it’s growing, but it should not be read as a simple alignment with U.S. strategy. Indeed, anti-China protests may actually mark South Korea’s steady turn to China. To understand why, decision-makers need to both know South Korea and its history. Reading diplomatic cables, opinion polls, and three day visits won’t cut it. The utility of diplomatic reporting isn’t what it used to be; opinion polls in South Korea are, to be frank, pretty dodgy; and cosmopolitan gatekeepers at conferences will tell you what they want you to know. South Korea is one of the world’s most patriotic and nationalist societies. It’s shaped by colonial rule, division, and constant foreign pressure. Koreans tie national identity to sovereignty, resilience, and collective pride, whether it’s football, k-pop, national dress, shipping, language, or dance. There’s a constant, seething, bubbling, nationalist sentiment that envelopes everything - and after young males finish compulsory military service, times that by ten for the next few years (until they realize how hard it is to get a job and buy a house). Then there’s history. In the 1980s, 1990s, and even into the 2000s, South Korea was home to fierce anti-American protests. Some were violent, others symbolic, but they were consistent enough to cause real anxiety in Washington. The American media often portrayed these protests as signs of a fraying alliance. Yet, what they truly reflected was something much deeper: a nationalist backlash against the perceived dominance of a foreign power over Korea’s politics, culture, and society. The protests were not about rejecting the United States wholesale. They were about resisting the dominance of a foreign power in a fiercely nationalist society. Fast forward to today, and the pattern is strikingly familiar. The focus has shifted from Washington to Beijing. China has become the bogeyman of South Korea’s political fringes. Anti-China protests are not expressions of pro-Americanism—they are expressions of Korean nationalism. This distinction matters. South Korea is one of the most nationalist and patriotic societies in the world. Whether expressed through mass football chants, flag-waving demonstrations, or consumer boycotts, Korean nationalism has always been less about _alignment with_ a foreign power than about _resistance to_ a foreign power. In the 1980s and 1990s, and up to the 2000s, that meant resistance to America. Since the 2020s, it increasingly means resistance to China. Why China? Because China’s presence in Korea is growing. From tourists flocking into Seoul and Jeju on visa-free entry schemes, to the entanglement of Korean businesses in Chinese supply chains, to the cultural and political spillover effects of Beijing’s rise, China is now more relevant to Korea’s future than ever before. For Koreans who feel their nation’s autonomy is being constrained by outside powers, Beijing has become the obvious target. Anti-China protests are thus not symptoms of ROKUS alliance cohesion, but of nationalist unease with a rising, nearby hegemon. Take this to the next level. As China gets more and more important to Korea, and there is more and more benefit (and America is harder and harder to get along with), the protests will continue, but the protesters will be more on the fringe. The danger for Washington is to misread these protests as strategic alignment. American analysts comfort themselves with survey data showing high anti-China sentiment among young Koreans and assume that translates into an automatic strengthening of the ROKUS alliance. But that is a category error. High anti-China sentiment does not equal low anti-American sentiment. It equals high nationalist sentiment. The target shifts depending on who appears dominant. This means two things. First, the protests will not go away. Just as anti-American protests flared up intermittently over decades—peaking at moments of political crisis, or after tragic incidents—they will continue to do so against China. The protests are an outlet for resentment of foreign dominance, and in a society as politically mobilized and nationalist as South Korea’s, such outlets will remain powerful. Second, the fact that the target has shifted should not reassure Washington. Quite the opposite. It should raise alarm bells. In the past, the bogeyman was America, because America was the dominant outside power. Now the bogeyman is China. That shift reflects not that Korea is “choosing America,” but that China is becoming more prominent, more important, and more inescapable in Korea’s daily life. > When Koreans chant against China, they are acknowledging—however reluctantly—that Beijing’s influence is pervasive. From a strategic perspective, this is what American analysts should worry about. South Korea is not being drawn into a neat “anti-China coalition.” Instead, it is grappling with a complex, uncomfortable reality: China is too big, too close, and too important to ignore. Korean businesses profit from friendlier trade conditions and geographic proximity. Korean universities and tourist industries benefit from Chinese students and travelers. Politicians may rail against Beijing, but they must also accommodate it. The mainstream of Korean society is pragmatic. It will continue to profit from China, even as a nationalist fringe shouts slogans against it. The lesson of the past is clear. Anti-American protests did not unravel the alliance, nor did they bind Koreans permanently to Washington’s worldview. They were eruptions of nationalism in response to perceived dominance. Anti-China protests today are the same. They are not signs of a durable strategic shift, but of an episodic nationalist response. Washington analysts who see these protests as evidence of alliance strength misunderstand the dynamics of Korean politics. The truth is harder to swallow: the real story is not about anti-China protests, but about China’s growing centrality to South Korea. If Beijing were irrelevant, there would be nothing to protest. The protests are proof of relevance, not irrelevance. And in a country as fiercely patriotic as South Korea, that relevance will continue to provoke both intermittent backlash and deepening dependence. Washington should take no comfort in Korean flags being waved against China. They are _not_ signs of loyalty to the United States. They are signs that China, not America, is now the dominant “other” against which Korean nationalism defines itself. That should be a far more sobering thought than the easy narrative of alliance solidarity. If you like this post, please support me by sharing it on social media or buying me a coffee!

A long time ago, in a university far, far away, I spent late evenings reading dusty and dated international relations texts. In some of those texts, there were pencilled messages passed between students over decades, Things like: “The CIA stuck pages 27 and 28 together”; and “This text helped me. There’s no toilet paper on Chifley L3” or “The professor who assigned this text never read it”. Looking through similar dusty and dated international relations texts here in Seoul, I’ve not seen a single pencilled message marking the passage of time. Maybe here lies the failure in South Korea’s foreign policy - no creativity? This week there was hope for a meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un at the bookends of APEC during 31 October to 1 November. You gotta wonder though. Did anyone really think there’d be any purpose? Is this the limit of imagination in South Korea’s foreign policy? Really, we need more pencilled messages in South Korea’s foreign policy! Let me explain… First, the Korean Peninsula is an incredibly stale and fetid diplomatic sore that will not be solved by yet another summit. For a quarter of a century, South Korea has poured immense energy into staging high-profile summits with North Korea, each heralded as a “breakthrough” and framed as the dawn of a new era on the peninsula. Yet the results are painfully clear: nothing fundamental has changed. North Korea remains a nuclear-armed state, inter-Korean economic projects have withered, and hostility continues to flare across the DMZ. These summits, with their photo ops and carefully scripted declarations, serve more as theatre than diplomacy. They substitute spectacle for substance, allowing leaders to claim statesmanship without addressing the structural realities that keep the two Koreas apart. The parade of summits since 2000 demonstrates the futility of expecting creativity or lasting progress from rituals designed primarily to recycle old promises under fresh headlines. The only summit that carried genuine purpose was the first one in June 2000. It was the culmination of Kim Dae-jung’s Sunshine Policy, a genuinely new and innovative _idea_ that broke with decades of sterile deterrence and hostility. **It was an idea - a new idea**. For the first time, a South Korean leader openly and successfully argued that engagement, rather than containment, might transform the peninsula’s dynamics. The summit was not simply a meeting—it was the symbolic anchor of a strategy that reimagined inter-Korean relations, marrying humanitarian outreach with economic cooperation. Every summit that followed became a pale imitation. Instead of launching new frameworks or bold departures, they recycled the same tired formulas of joint declarations, family reunions, and vague commitments to peace. Without the originality and daring that underpinned the first encounter, subsequent summits devolved into ritualistic pageantry: photo opportunities without policy substance, a carousel of handshakes that neither reduced nuclear tensions nor shifted the structural balance of hostility. In hindsight, the 2000 summit stands out not because it solved anything, but because it at least embodied an innovative, fresh strategic concept—something absent from the hollow theatre that followed. Second, Trump is just about the last person on earth who a sane person would turn to in order to secure progress on solving problems on the Korean Peninsula. His summits with Kim Jong-un were not rooted in strategy, but in pure travelling snake oil salesman showmanship—staged for television ratings and domestic political points rather than substantive policy outcomes. The Singapore and Hanoi meetings generated plenty of headlines and historic photographs, yet they left the nuclear issue as unresolved as ever, while giving Pyongyang an unprecedented degree of international legitimacy at no real cost. Unlike the 2000 summit, which grew from a carefully considered policy shift, Trump’s meetings had no underlying framework or follow-through, ensuring their collapse into empty spectacle. AND on top of it all, he started the whole f*ckup with his fire ‘n’ fury. He half-solved a problem he himself started. Third, even if you did decide to turn to Trump for help, he’s busy - and will be until he needs a solid distraction. Trump will be swamped with Ukraine and Russia; killing tuna fishermen off the coast of Venezuela; supporting Israeli genocide in Gaza; and likely, by the end of the year, bombing Iran—leaving no real bandwidth for Korea. The only time he’ll bother is if it offers a quick shakedown for cash or a flashy distraction from his other failures. Any talk of peace or denuclearisation will be window dressing. For Trump, Korea is just another stage prop in the endless grift. The lesson is simple. Without “fire and fury,” the Korean Peninsula fades into the background. Trump thrives on crises that demand bold declarations and theatrical gestures. Korea today offers none of that. The region is stable enough to be ignored, yet volatile enough to remain unsolved. If a meeting occurs after APEC, it will be a spectacle without consequence—a hollow echo of past theatrics. Jean Baudrillard will be rolling in his grave as we have another copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of real diplomacy. To imagine otherwise is to misunderstand the brutal arithmetic of Trump’s attention. Korea will only matter again when the Peninsula itself generates crisis, noise, and danger. Until then, the world should not expect serious attention from Washington. The conclusion practically writes itself. South Korea cannot keep waiting for outsiders to solve its problems, because outsiders are either indifferent, incompetent, or opportunistic. The endless parade of summits shows that the United States cannot deliver, and that North Korea will not change because of handshakes and photo ops. Creativity, the very thing missing from the pencilled margins of Seoul’s diplomatic texts, is the only way forward. New approaches must be crafted at home, not imported from abroad or staged for cameras in Singapore hotel lobbies. What Korea needs is not another recycled summit, but the courage to scribble new ideas into the blank margins of its foreign policy—to risk embarrassment, to try what has not been tried, to look past Washington and Pyongyang and sketch its own solutions. Only then can it escape the stale cycle of spectacle and disappointment. When I was last home, I went back to the same library shelves and read through the pencilled notes. Students were still creatively updating conversations that started in the 1960s. Without such pencilled notes, South Korea’s diplomacy will remain as lifeless as the textbooks in its libraries—carefully preserved, but no capacity to read between or imagine a world beyond the lines. If you like this post, please support me by sharing it on social media or buying me a coffee!

Donald Trump’s recent statement that Ukraine could “WIN all of Ukraine back” signals a remarkable departure from his earlier skepticism. For years, he questioned NATO, disparaged Kyiv, and suggested that European wars were not America’s problem. Now, eight months into his presidency, he is publicly voicing confidence in Ukraine’s battlefield prospects and NATO’s role in sustaining them. This carries direct implications for U.S. allies - particularly South Korea. There are three broad reasons why South Korea is in a particularly difficult position. First, the neocons that are rapidly filling the intellectual and policy vacuum of the Trump Administration sustain a sense of bottled anger towards South Korea and its lack of support under the Biden Administration. Second, South Korea’s continuing economic and security dependence on the U.S. leaves it as “low-hanging fruit” to a president that loves to punch down. Third, but more remotely, in Trump’s egocentric brain-fart logic, the notion that Putin was able to draw in North Korean support, but the U.S. couldn’t draw in South Korean support, is a slap - not in the face, but in a more painful part of the male anatomy. Each of these reasons should concern Seoul. The first reason lies in Washington itself. The neocons who are quickly consolidating influence within Trump’s administration never forgave South Korea’s hedging under Biden. Seoul gave humanitarian aid; tightened export controls; ~~provided~~ sold artillery shells indirectly through the U.S; and it expanded its arms sales to European states—but it refused to donate lethal arms directly to Ukraine. South Korea suffered less blowback and profited more than the neocons. It was more neocon than the neocons. In certain quarters, this has been rhetorically expressed as “freeloading”. Now, with Trump embracing a narrative of Ukrainian victory, these voices will argue that the only way to demonstrate a revitalized coalition is to close the gaps left under Biden. South Korea will sit near the top of that list: a democratic ally with a powerful arms industry, yet one that has so far refused to cross the line. In their eyes, it is time for Seoul to be forced into line. The second reason is South Korea’s structural vulnerability. Trump has always preferred to target allies that can be bent easily under pressure. South Korea fits this pattern perfectly. Economically, Seoul depends heavily on access to the U.S. market. Tariffs, export restrictions, or revived trade disputes could quickly inflict pain. Militarily, the country is inseparable from the U.S. alliance system: tens of thousands of American troops remain stationed on the peninsula, and Washington provides the extended deterrence guarantee against Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal. This dependency makes South Korea low-hanging fruit. Trump does not need to wrestle with the complexities of NATO’s internal politics or the domestic resistance of larger European states. By squeezing Seoul, he can claim a quick victory: another ally forced to shoulder the burden of Ukraine, another demonstration of his ability to bend the international order to his will. Another negotiating coin in his purse for the next time he talks with Putin. The third reason is less about policy and more about Trump’s peculiar worldview. North Korea has already provided military support to Russia. For Trump, this creates a crude but powerful contrast: if Putin can pull Pyongyang into his war effort, why can’t Washington pull Seoul? In Trump’s mind, this is not just a question of strategy—it is a question of ego. The idea that the U.S. president cannot extract from Seoul what Putin has extracted from Pyongyang becomes, for him, an intolerable insult. The refusal to directly arm Ukraine, let alone send troops, is not merely a slap in the face, but in a more painful part of the male anatomy. Such a perception, however irrational, increases the likelihood that Trump will escalate demands beyond what Biden ever attempted. AND escalation is the name of the game. Whether South Korea ever actually comes close to directly arming or sending troops to Ukraine is not the issue. In just floating the suggestion in an awkwardly worded un-diplomatic social media post with random capital letters and pre-school level sign-offs, Trump will have in one instant cornered Seoul in the next negotiations on how much investment they’re undertaking in the U.S. and how much more money they’re going to pay for U.S. troops in South Korea. Taken together, these three factors create a precarious situation. Neocon resentment primes Washington’s intellectual climate for harsher demands. South Korea’s economic and military dependence makes it a tempting and convenient target. Trump’s own ego ensures that Moscow’s success with Pyongyang will be used as leverage to shame Seoul into compliance. If Trump’s confidence in Ukrainian victory hardens into policy (and this is in no way certain), Seoul will face enormous pressure to provide lethal arms directly to Ukraine. Refusal will be framed as betrayal, damaging Korea’s reputation with both the U.S. and Europe and undermining its standing as a reliable supplier to NATO states. Compliance will trigger retaliation from Moscow, further tightening the Russia–North Korea axis and worsening security on the peninsula. The warning is simple: South Korea is positioned as low-hanging fruit for Trump’s Ukraine strategy. His rhetoric should not be dismissed as passing bravado. It must be watched carefully, because if his words solidify into demands, Seoul may soon find itself trapped in a contest it cannot win. The choice will be to go down with the sinking boat, or swim to the distant shore. If you like this post, please support me by sharing it on social media or buying me a coffee!

Every Australian kid grows up knowing what to do when caught in a rip. When the weight of the Pacific crashes onto the beach and funnels back through a narrow channel, it drags everything with it out to sea. One moment you’re standing firm on the sandbar, the next your feet are swept away and you’re being pulled toward Vanuatu. In that moment you face three choices: fight the current head-on; surrender and let it carry you wherever it wants; or ride with it just long enough to slip free, before circling back to shore. During the Biden Administration and now under the second Trump Administration, South Korea’s strategists have had their feet washed off the strategic sandbar and are caught in a rip. The rip South Korea faces is the looming prospect of a Taiwan contingency. The prevailing current is Washington’s demand that allies fall into line should conflict erupt. Given its geography, economic dependence on China, and its ever-troublesome neighbor to the north, South Korea has long played the role of the cautious child with floaties, splashing along the shoreline while others ventured deeper. Now, in a poor swimmer’s nightmare, the Biden and Trump administrations have tossed South Korea straight into the center of the rip. The full force of U.S. expectations is dragging it out to sea. Should South Korea swim _against_ the rip; let the rip decide its fate; or swim _with_ the rip to escape its full force, before circling back to shore? **Swimming against the rip**. For decades, there’s been activists who tried to swim directly against the rip—trade unionists, extreme leftists, and a handful of intellectuals who framed the alliance as the root of subordination and insecurity. They paddled hard, arms thrashing against the weight of the ocean, insisting that decoupling from Washington or pivoting toward Pyongyang or Beijing could deliver true autonomy. But like swimmers fighting the ocean, their strokes exhausted them. National security zealotry, tides of institutional dependence, elite consensus, and U.S. leverage was too strong. Instead of escaping the rip, those who swim against it are left politically stranded—marginalized in mainstream discourse, dismissed as unrealistic, and ultimately too tired to mount serious resistance when the next wave of alliance orthodoxy crashed ashore. Don’t swim against the rip, you’ll drown. **Letting fate decide.** The mainstream consensus in South Korea is that Seoul’s interests and Washington’s are not just aligned, but identical. Whatever the U.S. position, it becomes the Korean position—no questions asked. This mindset is the product of epistemic capture. Epistemic capture occurs when a policy community so thoroughly internalizes the worldview, language, and priorities of a dominant partner that it loses the ability to generate independent perspectives. Unlike simple influence, which still leaves room for negotiation, capture predetermines the entire framework of debate: the categories of thought, the assumptions about threats and allies, even the very definition of “rational” strategy all mirror the stronger partner’s outlook. In South Korea, epistemic capture has been cemented by decades of alliance management, educational exchanges, youth programs, and institutional dependency on U.S. security thinking. To comment on strategy is to depend on think tanks, corporate partners, academia, or government funding—most of which come from entities unwilling to back anyone who strays too far from the alliance line. The result is a strategic community that rarely asks whether Taiwan is vital to Korea’s survival. They debate only the modalities of support, never the premise. Compliance is achieved without coercion, narrowing the scope of imagination before genuine debate can even begin. The danger is that this consensus comes at a moment of profound upheaval. U.S. primacy is eroding, Washington’s interests in the region are declining, China’s role as a cornerstone of the future regional and multilateral order is expanding, Japan is rearming, and middle powers from India to Indonesia are reassessing their strategies. Even the U.S.–ROK alliance is no longer stable; American politics now treats alliances as transactional, subject to tariffs, troop withdrawals, or demands for cash. To bet everything on alliance solidarity in such a moment is a high-risk strategy. After years of sidestepping the U.S.–China confrontation, South Korea now finds itself in the center—indeed, on the frontline. It’s as if Seoul showed up late to the party, already drunker than everyone else, and picked a fight with the biggest man in the room. Should war break out over Taiwan, South Korea would face massive Chinese retaliation—economic, cyber, and potentially military. Deterrence against North Korea would collapse overnight. In the face of a nuclear threat from the North or a wider conflict with China, U.S. assurances are meaningless. Korea, as it exists today, would cease to exist. Think Ukraine, add Gaza, and multiply it by ten. And yet, these risks are barely discussed in Korean policy circles. The epistemic capture is so complete that letting the rip wash the country out to sea feels like the only choice. **Swimming with the rip.** Beneath the mainstream consensus—and largely invisible to most U.S. analysts—are a number of South Korean strategists who choose to swim with the rip to escape its full force, before circling back to shore. They understand that outright resistance is futile: the institutional current of the alliance is too strong, and the cost of open defiance too high. Yet they also recognize the danger of blind compliance. By moving with the current, they conserve their energy, adopting the language of alliance solidarity and nodding along with Washington’s Taiwan framing, all the while waiting for the chance to angle sideways and reassert Korea’s priorities. They stress Korea’s role in supporting U.S. forces from the peninsula and frame Seoul as an enduring, existential threat to China through the instability of a collapsed or insecure North Korea. All the while, they are biding their time. Whoever emerges dominant in the region—Washington or Beijing—it is better for Korea to be aligned with the winner. This is tactical navigation: an effort to avoid drowning while still seeking a path back to strategic ground that serves Korea’s own interests, rather than merely reinforcing America’s. In the end, South Korea’s dilemma is not whether it can outswim the rip, but whether it even recognizes that it is caught in one. The choice between fighting, surrendering, or navigating tactically will determine not just its role in a Taiwan contingency, but the very survival of its sovereignty as a middle power in an unraveling order. For South Korea’s strategists, to swim blindly against the current is suicide, to drift passively is submission, and to swim with the rip requires foresight and courage that few in Seoul have yet shown. Debate on the topic is not readily welcomed. The tragedy is that by the time South Korea’s strategic community seriously debates the risk, the shoreline will have already disappeared from sight. If you like this post, please support me by sharing it on social media or buying me a coffee!

The Lee Administration seems hopeful that there’s purpose in securing a summit with North Korea. Let’s call it a Sunshine Policy sequel. Now, to be fair, sequels are not always bad. But it pays to remember, once you go over the third sequel, it gets much harder to maintain audience interest. Recognizing that life imitates art (and that my conceptualization of art derives from 1980s action films). Let’s look at two Hollywood blockbuster sequels and see if we can gain any insight into the trajectory of the next sequel. The original Sunshine Policy was Kim Dae-jung’s (1998–2003) masterpiece. It was a cinematic success from nothing. He came up with the idea (or at least that’s what is widely thought), wrote the script, played a huge role in its direction, and of course, played the starring role. Essentially, Kim was to the Sunshine Policy what Sylvester Stallone (the King of All Sequels) was to _Rocky._ AND what a script, improbable but inspiring: a democracy extending warmth to its hostile sibling. Kim’s 2000 summit with Kim Jong-il was his title fight — full of drama, optimism, and an Oscar-worthy ending with the Nobel Peace Prize. The storyline was simple and compelling: engage, cooperate, reduce tensions. Like Rocky’s training montage, images of family reunions and economic projects gave audiences a reason to believe. It was undoubtedly a success, but it left the story hanging. We all knew there had to be a sequel. Critics pointed to flaws — the financial inducements for the summit, the unresolved nuclear question — but the original had heart and we were willing to watch the next installment. So we watched Roh Moo-hyun (2003–2008) and Sunshine Policy II - the uninspiring equivalent of _Rocky II ._ As with many sequels, it lacked freshness. It was a continuation rather than a reinvention. Roh promised expanded cooperation and greater autonomy from U.S. influence, but North Korea’s 2006 nuclear test undercut the script. The film had spectacle, but not coherence. The 2007 summit with Kim Jong-il was meant as the climactic rematch, but viewers were split: some saw persistence, others saw repetition and diminishing returns. After conservative presidents shelved the franchise, Moon Jae-in (2017–2022) staged a revival. Much like Rocky III, there was a new, younger and more seemingly dangerous rival (Kim Jong-un as Clubber Lang), and a new training partner (Donald Trump as Apollo Creed). Moon’s diplomacy in 2018 — the Olympics, summits with Kim Jong-un, and trilogues with Donald Trump — played like _Rocky III._ The imagery was powerful. Moon and Kim walking hand-in-hand across the DMZ was his training montage, rekindling nostalgia for the franchise. For a moment, the public believed in the comeback. But as with _Rocky III,_ the revival was short on narrative depth. The idea of being able to rekindle the same narrative and just move the characters around stretched credulity. Talks collapsed at Hanoi in 2019. The revival delivered spectacle, but no enduring resolution. Now comes Lee Jae-myung (2025– ). If the analogy holds, his Sunshine Policy would be _Rocky IV._ Now Rocky IV is unique in sequels. It went one past the routine accepted franchise sequel number and challenged expectations. It essentially transformed the storyline from “underdog faces and overcomes a challenge” to “national hero takes on the evil empire”. It brought the gung-ho patriotism of the Cold War to each pizza-eating, coke-slurping, boxing wannabe who sits in the corner of every Pizza Hut on all-you-can-eat night listening to Eye of the Tiger on his walkman. It gave the franchise a new frame and narrative. Rocky defeats Ivan Drago, symbolically toppling the Soviet foe. An awesome spectacle, pushing the Rocky series into new fields. But here reality diverges. Lee hasn’t yet offered a new frame or narrative reinvention. Instead of a dramatic Cold War or patriotic reimagining, so far we’ve got tired dialogue about dialogue, weak gestures toward engagement, and little public enthusiasm. Where _Rocky IV_ was bold, cinematic, and absurdly over the top, Lee’s sequel is muted, formulaic, and uninspired. And this is the crux: life does imitate art - just not always the art you hope for. The Sunshine Policy was never really _Rocky._ The Sunshine Policy has no fresh frames. It has recycled scripts. Summit. Summit. Summit. Ad Nauseam. Next sequel - oh, wait… let’s do another summit! Each new attempt at revival promises narrative breakthroughs but delivers diminishing returns. Public interest wanes. Optimism fades. Creativity is dead. What remains is fatigue, disbelief, and cynicism. If we are honest, the Sunshine Policy has never resembled _Rocky_. It’s always resembled _Death Wish._ The _Death Wish_ series began in the 1970s as a gritty commentary on urban violence. By the 1980s and 1990s, it had collapsed into increasingly unbelievable sequels: Charles Bronson, aging and implausible, gunning down endless waves of criminals. Each installment promised intensity, but the plots grew thinner, the creativity weaker, the audiences smaller. The _Death Wish_ series began in 1974 as a gritty commentary on urban violence. Set in decaying New York, the original felt raw and unsettling, with Charles Bronson—then in his fifties—believable as an ordinary man turned vigilante. Its modest budget suited the film’s realism and moral ambiguity, making it both provocative and memorable. By _Death Wish II_ (1982), the series was already slipping. Shifted to Los Angeles, it relied on exploitation and shock, while Bronson, now in his sixties, looked less like an everyman. _Death Wish 3_ (1985) abandoned any subtlety altogether, offering cartoonish gangs, endless shootouts, and an aging star mowing down criminals in what played more like parody than thriller. The final entries sealed the decline. _Death Wish 4_ (1987) looked like a TV movie, with simplistic villains and a weary Bronson at sixty-six. _Death Wish V_ (1994), filmed cheaply in Canada with Bronson at seventy-three, was a lifeless, embarassing finale. What began as a tense social critique ended as hollow pulp—overstretched, implausible, and drained of both creativity and audience. That is the Sunshine Policy’s trajectory. Kim’s original carried conviction, but each continuation — Roh’s, Moon’s, and now Lee’s — has felt less believable, less effective, and less connected to reality. North Korea’s nuclear advances and hardened posture have made engagement look ever more detached from the strategic context. What began as hopeful realism has dwindled into hollow repetition. Comparisons to Rocky are flattering, but misleading. Rocky has persistence and adaptability; its sequels reinvented themselves for new audiences, even decades later. Now, they’re not great by any means - but they still draw a crowd. The Sunshine Policy does not. Its sequels are now stale and unconvincing, weighed down by repetition rather than lifted by reinvention. The harsh truth is that the Sunshine Policy belongs in the _Death Wish_ category: a franchise that began with incredible grit but descended into formula, sustained more by habit than creativity. Lee Jae-myung’s attempts so far do not signal a bold new chapter, but rather confirm the fatigue. Life sometimes imitates art, but here it has followed the wrong script — not _Rocky’s_ enduring fight, but _Death Wish’s_ implausible decline.

This post is a shout out to those who subscribed to Junotane on Substack in response to several queries on why the site was shut down and whether there is a way to access the materials. I shut it down for several reasons. The one reason I can relate here is that I loathe social interaction on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter (X), Substack Notes, BlueSky and other social media - I’m just not cut out for building subscriber numbers or payments. I am at heart a grumpy, anti-social, irreverent academic who teeters on the edge of moving to a remote fishing village but for want of regular access to decent pizza. To allow access to the materials, I’ve set up a simpler, easier (less algorithmically social) platform. The new website includes _most_ of the previous posts. There is no longer a paywall. You can visit https://junotane.com/pages/subscribe to subscribe or unsubscribe; download the RSS Feed; or just check back every once in a while ~ which is pretty much how often I’ll be posting new material. Lastly, please be aware that any accounts purporting to be Junotane on social media or Substack are _not_ me. I’ve been informed that after shutting down the accounts, the name has been re-registered and used to contact people for phishing. If you have any questions or want to verify contact, send me a message. Stay well and don’t forget to check out the new website at https://junotane.com.

John Mearsheimer makes a lot of sense to me. His work is easy to follow and his ability to communicate to an audience unparalleled. But when talking about the Korean Peninsula, he tends to leave a lot out. In a recent podcast (I actually looked for which one it was, but he does so many, I can’t find it!), he reiterated the foundational principle of the structural realist worldview: weaker states prefer to ally with distant great powers rather than nearby ones. This logic, he argued, explains South Korea’s consistent preference for alliance with the United States over accommodation with China. Put simply, geography matters. Nearby powers are threats; distant powers are useful hedges. This is not irrational behavior—it’s a structural imperative of international politics. But here's the problem: that framework assumes that Korean leaders see the world in the same way American and European realists do. It presumes a universal mindset grounded in European experiences and strategic traditions, and it maps those directly onto East Asia. It’s a tidy model, and it works well for explaining much of the world. But it only scratches the surface of how Korean leaders actually make strategic choices and it misses one very large problem: South Korea’s foreign policy decision-makers operate on two distinct levels. The outer, more visible layer of South Korean strategy is built on imported structural realism. It’s a legacy of U.S. influence since 1945; the fact that most academics and commentators are trained in the U.S; and the fact that to be an academic or even government official, the benefits (funding and advancement) largely depends on supporting the U.S. It’s the epitome of epistemic capture. From the American perspective, Korea is a textbook case for alliance with a distant hegemon. U.S. strategists assume that proximity equals threat. The logic runs like this: China and Japan are too close, too strong, and historically too willing to intervene in Korean affairs. The United States, on the other hand, is far away—powerful enough to deter aggressors, but too distant to impose direct territorial control. This mirrors Britain’s role in Europe as an offshore balancer. In European history, smaller continental states often sought Britain’s help to counter nearby threats like France or Prussia. Mearsheimer’s thinking grows directly out of this tradition. In the American telling, Korea’s alliance with the U.S. is the rational outcome of structural geography. And at the surface level, it seems to work. Korean officials often frame their policies in these terms—emphasizing deterrence, interoperability, and shared security objectives with Washington. They speak the language of U.S. strategic doctrine because doing so keeps the alliance functional; keeps Washington reassured; and ensures the individuals involved funding and advancement. But this is not the whole story. In fact, it’s not even the most important layer. Beneath the imported realist language lies a much older and more resilient operating system: the Korean tradition of managing hierarchy and asymmetry. For centuries, Korea has existed between greater powers—China to the west, Japan to the east, and the steppe empires to the north. Its survival strategy was not based on offshore balancing; there was no “Britain” in East Asia. Instead, the goal was to navigate hierarchical relationships without losing autonomy. During the Joseon Dynasty, this meant a carefully managed tributary relationship with Ming (and later Qing) China—ritualized deference in return for non-interference in domestic governance. This was not submission; it was strategic insulation. The practice, known as _sadae_ (“serving the great”) diplomacy, allowed Korea to avoid direct military conflict with China while preserving internal sovereignty. In parallel, _kyorin_ (“neighborly relations”) diplomacy managed ties with Japan and other neighbors. This tradition instilled instincts very different from those embedded in European balance-of-power theory. Where the European realist sees proximity as a permanent threat to be countered, the Korean realist often sees proximity as an enduring reality to be accommodated, managed, and carefully shaped. That deep layer still influences decision-making today. Korean leaders know that China is not just a potential adversary—it is a neighbor, an economic partner, and a cultural presence that cannot be wished away. The goal is not permanent alignment against China, but managed coexistence. These two levels—deep cultural-historical realism and shallow imported structural realism—do not always align. From the U.S. perspective, China’s rise demands containment, and the Korean Peninsula is a strategic platform for that effort. From Korea’s deeper perspective, China’s rise demands caution, hedging, and channels for dialogue. This tension was on display during the 2017 THAAD missile defense dispute. To the United States, deploying THAAD was a straightforward deterrent against North Korea. To China, it was a move in a larger containment strategy. For Korea, it was a trap—alienating Beijing without decisively improving national security. The Moon Jae-in administration’s “Three No’s” policy toward China (no additional THAAD, no missile defense integration, no trilateral alliance with the U.S. and Japan) was not a rejection of the U.S. alliance—it was a deep-layer response to the risks of antagonizing a proximate power. Washington saw hesitation; Seoul saw prudence. The shallow layer—structural realism as taught in America’s school of international relations—frames Korea’s public alliance language. But it is the deep layer that ultimately shapes Korea’s strategic limits and red lines. American policymakers often misread this. They assume that because Korean officials use familiar realist vocabulary, they share identical threat perceptions and strategic priorities. Particularly when they’re flying in for three days of meetings with a cosmopiltan epistemic elite that knows what needs to be said. I was once adminished by one such fly-in fly-out senior academic who in justifying his stance on Korea’s foreign policy noted “I have great friends in Korea”. Such people may have “great friends” in Korea, but most assuredly don’t have a clue about what the concept of “friend” even means in Korean society. For those who really know Korea, it’s easy to understand that Korean leaders are operating in two modes at once: * Outward-facing mode: speaking in U.S.-derived strategic terms to maintain alliance cohesion and American security guarantees. * Inward-facing mode: navigating the long-term imperative of surviving between giants without being absorbed into their orbit. This duality is not a sign of duplicity. It’s a survival mechanism—one that predates the U.S. alliance by centuries. Structural realism assumes universality: given certain geographic facts, all rational states will make the same choices. This works well when explaining the behavior of European states in the 18th or 19th centuries. But it can become culturally myopic when applied wholesale to East Asia. It’s even possible to argue that the very fundamentals of structural realism, that the interaction between states occurs in an anarchic system, is not necessarily true for states further down the international ranking of power. There is order, there are rules, there are regulations and norms—it’s just that they are _always_ set by the most powerful state. For a non-great power, anarchy doesn’t exist, but hierarchy always exists. Rationality is not free-floating—it is shaped by historical experience and strategic culture. Korea’s rationality is not identical to Britain’s or Poland’s. A country whose historical security was built on managing the most powerful nearby state will not automatically embrace a distant power’s containment strategy as its own. The question is not whether Korea is rational. It is: whose rationality is it using? If South Korea’s foreign policy operates on these two levels, then American policymakers must stop assuming the shallow layer tells the whole story. When Washington pressures Seoul to take harder positions against China, it is asking Korea to override its deep layer in favor of the shallow one. Sometimes Korea will comply—especially when North Korea’s provocations sharpen the case for U.S. protection. But in the long run, Korea will revert to its historical habit: hedging, balancing, and avoiding full commitment to either giant. U.S. officials may see this as wavering. In reality, it is consistency—consistency with a centuries-old strategic tradition that has kept Korea intact despite its precarious location. South Korea’s alliance with the United States fits neatly into the surface logic of structural realism, and Mearsheimer’s distant-ally preference explains only part of the picture. But the deeper, older layer of Korean strategic thought operates on a different wavelength—one that values managed proximity over outright opposition, and which sees survival not in permanent alignment but in perpetual calibration. Ignoring that deep layer is not just an analytical error—it is a strategic blind spot. To truly understand Korea’s choices, Washington must see beyond the language it taught Seoul, and start listening to the instincts Seoul has inherited from a much longer history.

Canada, Brazil, China and the entire mockery of a policy shows that tariffs can be reimposed with a tweet and agreements can evaporate overnight.

Public opinion on Palestine is changing but the fear of U.S. retribution; reactive rather than proactive attitudes; and foreign policy tradition suggests Seoul's pragmatic dance will last.

These days, neutral analysis is both rare and undervalued. You ain’t making no friends, money, or social media hits.

Trump's tariffs on Brazil will increase the efforts of Yoon’s allies and supporters to secure Trump Administration support.

The problems plaguing South Korean conservatism today are not minor defects. They are structural, generational, and existential.

The BRICS??? The idea of South Korea joining BRICS is absurd! South Korea is a U.S. ally and a beneficiary of the U.S.-led liberal-international order... right?

President Lee Jae-myung has dispatched special envoys to the EU, France, UK and India, and now Poland, Vietnam, Australia, and Germany. What a f#@king waste of time!