The next South Korean President, or let’s just call it now—Lee Jae-myung, will inherit more than a fractured domestic landscape. They’ll inherit Donald Trump. Lee will be dealing with a man who runs U.S. diplomacy on podcast and social media vibes, Fox News soundbites, and showmanship.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the U.S. (Biden Administration), NATO, and European governments worked tirelessly to rally support from democratic allies around the world.
Trump just said out loud what had been true for seventy years: The alliance was always for sale. It was always a transaction. The challenge now is ensuring that it is a valuable transaction - and this is where Trump will fail.
The Trump administration's decision to substantially reduce tariffs on Chinese imports marks a shift in what started out not as coherent trade policy but as macho bluster. That macho bluster became all but weak and sterile with China, but is still biting and bullying with South Korea.
Anti-American sentiment in South Korea has always lingered just beneath the surface — a low hum that occasionally roars to life when diplomatic friction exposes the asymmetries in the alliance.
Significance. South Korea’s launch of its second military reconnaissance satellite on board the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket marks a critical step in its longstanding objective of building a more autonomous defense posture.
As Seoul prepares to engage with Trump for his trademark “package deal” tariff negotiations, there is growing concern that Japan will ultimately walk away with a better deal.
Japan’s ambitious “One Theater” proposal—to integrate U.S. allies across East Asia into a single unified operational command—is generating buzz in Tokyo and cautious interest in Washington. But in Seoul, the response is far more skeptical. And for good reason.
Washington under Biden, and now under Trump, are placing increased emphasis on “strategic flexibility” - the ability to deploy U.S. forces based in Korea to respond to regional or global contingencies.
It’s at this point of time in a Trump Administration that every foreign policy analyst, everyone schooled under the conventions of liberal democratic international relations, wonders wtf is going on.
