[10th EAI Academy] ② Changes in the Global Order Initiated by the United States and Korea's Response

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBcOlf3B7ok

■ Jeon Jae-sung_Director of EAI, Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Seoul National University.

Video Transcript

I watched the video of the last lecture by Chairman Ha Young-sun. He provided an excellent macro-level and historical overview of the changing world order. Today, I would like to take a more analytical approach and discuss how the current international order is changing, particularly in relation to U.S. foreign policy. I have prepared a PowerPoint presentation, but it is quite lengthy. We might cover all of it, or we might have to skip some parts. I will focus on what I consider the most important points within the time we have.

A Conceptual Approach to Changes in the International Order

While the narrow focus is on U.S. foreign policy, the broader topic is how the entire international order is changing. I will touch on theoretical aspects, current events, and as was discussed in the last session, variables like artificial intelligence and new technologies. This is the table of contents, and I plan to divide the talk into a few parts. I hope you find it engaging. The first part concerns the international order. There are many discussions these days in seminars and academic conferences about the changes in the international order. I am also writing on this topic, and the English paper included in your readings is one I recently finished. It hasn't been published yet—it will be if things go well, but we'll have to wait and see. The fundamental question I want to start with is this: when we speak of the 'international order,' what exactly is the concept of 'order'?

We often use the word 'order.' It's a noun. We say that a certain order is changing. We commonly think of 'order'—for example, the U.S.-led liberal international order that is said to be changing—as a state or an entity. We typically frame this as a shift from Order A to Order B, or from a hegemonic order to a multipolar order. This leads to binary debates about whether the order has changed or been maintained. While these discussions are productive, we need to think more philosophically about what exactly is changing when we use this language to describe a changing international order. In English, the word is 'order,' of course.

'Order' is not just a noun; it can also be a verb. When a certain state encounters unexpected or routine external circumstances, the dynamic, verb-like situation of maintaining that order while adapting can also be described as 'to order.' This is why we also speak of 'ordering.' Does it more accurately capture reality to think of the current situation as a self-contained order exploding or collapsing from internal contradictions and moving toward a new Order A or B? Or could it be that the very act of reifying order when we say it is changing might misrepresent a reality that is itself in flux? I would define a state of affairs as 'ordered' when its process of change exhibits certain characteristics, which I will discuss later, such as predictability, adaptability, and resilience. It is a situation where, when faced with new circumstances, the flow and process maintain the adaptability needed to preserve the original aspects of that order, and again

when that flow is highly resilient, returning to its original state, we can consider order to be maintained. What I mean is, we often hear talk about the U.S.-led order ending and giving way to multipolarity, or the U.S.-led unipolar hegemonic system ending and a bipolar system emerging. This sparks debates: Are we truly entering a bipolar system? Has it become a multipolar system? While these are interesting questions, I have recently begun to wonder if this is the right conceptual language to use. And some international relations theorists have raised this same point. Our cognitive framework generally tends to reify everything. I will discuss more concrete matters later, but this is the theoretical preamble. Our way of thinking, particularly the classical physics mindset, assumes that if you keep breaking things down, you will eventually find the smallest solid particle that constitutes the universe. But as 20th-century physics advanced, it turned out that this is not the case.

As we traced the smallest fundamental unit of matter in the universe, it turned out not to be the smallest grain, but a quantum state that sometimes appears as a wave and sometimes as a particle. Depending on the observer's method of observation, an existing amorphous relationship is reified—it becomes an entity only when we observe it, and its state before observation cannot be defined. As this perspective came to be seen as a more realistic observation, most social sciences today have come to follow a physics model. When we think according to the classical physics model—and it does align well with our observations in the world of our everyday experience—we tend to think of 'order' as some kind of entity. Consequently, the debate is framed as a transition between states with some boundary in between. But it might not be like that. I want to first suggest that 'order' is a holistic, fluid, and changing process, and it may be more important to examine how that process is changing.

In this sense, international order is not a fixed state but rather a process that actors are continuously creating. It is being created, but this doesn't mean all orders are indistinguishable. While it is constantly changing, wouldn't it be better to call it a 'transition of order' when it crosses a certain threshold and moves into a different kind of process? In that sense, for example, it is difficult to say that the U.S.-led order existed until 2026 and a bipolar order began in 2027. This is not only because the process of change takes a long time, but also because 'order' does not signify a noun-like change from one entity to another.

This brings us to peace studies. Scholars like Johan Galtung argue that peace is not a state but a dynamic process. When we say we want to achieve peace or create a peaceful world, we tend to think of peace as a state, a destination to be reached. But Galtung, an elder scholar who founded Norwegian peace studies, argues that humans cannot live in a perfectly peaceful era. By nature, conflict is inevitable whenever two or more people gather, so we end up fighting. He defines a peaceful condition as one that possesses mechanisms to resolve those conflicts through peaceful means, rather than violence, even when they arise. It's a dynamic process.

Similarly, in the case of order, someone like Hedley Bull would argue that while international politics is anarchic—a basic organizing principle where violence and war can erupt at any time—it can be considered 'ordered' if a process is created through which problems are resolved peacefully and economic relations are conducted predictably according to market mechanisms. This holds true even if the content and quality of each 'order' may differ. In this sense, a more appropriate question might be to reframe our thinking about the ordering process and ask what it means for the order to be changing today. Since this is a highly dynamic process, a better question might be: how much resilience does the existing order have to adapt when problems arise? For example, we currently have a U.S.-led order, which was established after 1945.

And as I will discuss shortly, the core of that order is a hegemonic order. A great deal has happened over the past 30 years to maintain it. When we periodize this era, the post-World War II order was created in 1945 and began with the Cold War. Then, in December 1991, the Soviet Union broke apart into 15 republics. This marked the beginning of the so-called post-Cold War era. It is not clear when this era ended, as that too is a process. However, around 2022, not only was the European security landscape shattered by a full-scale interstate war, but—as I sometimes mention in my lectures—the year 2022 will be remembered for the war in Ukraine and the launch of ChatGPT in December.

I believe it will become an important dividing line in human history. In that sense, the post-Cold War era that began in 1991 is undergoing a major transformation as of 2022. Does this mean a completely different order began in 2023? Not necessarily. If the U.S.-led hegemonic order successfully adapts and maintains its fundamental character—though in a significantly altered form—it continues. I will define that fundamental character later with analytical concepts. In any case, if the system is being maintained, then the many absurd events we are seeing in the Trump era, such as the war with Iran, could be defined as a dynamic process occurring as the hegemonic system attempts to restore its resilience. So, let's examine that process.

In the literature of IR, international politics, and social theory—especially in the work of figures like Norbert Elias, who developed sociological theories focusing on process over state—this is a topic that requires its own dedicated discussion. So, let's begin by problematizing the concept of order. I have started with this somewhat difficult discussion to encourage you, when you talk about the international political order, to think beyond reifying it as something fixed—to move past the underlying meta-theoretical, or, to use more difficult terms, the ontological or metaphysical realism.

Three Layers of International Order

Next, let's turn to international relations theory. When we consider a term in international relations, we can talk about several layers of order. For example, the English School of international relations, as specialists will know, distinguishes between primary and secondary institutions. A primary institution is something like the sovereign state system. It is very fundamental. Then, secondary institutions include things like war or law. The 8 billion people living on Earth today have created some kind of political order.

And we are currently creating a sovereign state order divided into 200 countries. There are very fundamental primary institutions like this, and then there are more superficial orders built upon them. I have written in my book and spoken about how the international order can be viewed in three stages, which is a similar idea. Although there are slight differences if we go into detail, the first is what I call the 'organizing principle,' which is the most basic principle of how to organize those 8 billion people.

Right now, the sovereign state system is the main principle. So, the 8 billion people are divided into 200 countries, and all of these countries are formally equal. It's a very strange system where every country has one vote in the UN General Assembly. Regardless of national power, all countries are created with equal sovereign formal authority, but in reality, it is very hierarchical. The historical background of how this came to be is very long and complex, a topic mainly dealt with in historical sociology. In any case, the sovereign state system is the most fundamental. So, one layer is the organizing principle, which is the very basic rule about who the legitimate actors are in a social configuration and how those legitimate actors mutually recognize each other. Second, on top of that organizing principle, we can talk about the operational principle that moves the social system. As I wrote in the paper, the 'operating principle' is a discussion much more about the mode of operation.

The representative examples are the hegemonic system and the balance of power system. For a sovereign state system to be maintained, there must be order. But in a sovereign state system, all countries have military power and can use it at any time. Even if international law regulates it, it's meaningless. Even now, if the United States starts a war, it starts a war. There's a lot of talk about how if Prime Minister Netanyahu goes to New York, the mayor should arrest him for ICC violations, but that's very unlikely to happen. So, even though there is international law,

in reality, the sovereign power of the state is much more important in international politics, and its manifestation as military power is even more so. This is why international politics is often described as a theater of war or a jungle. Why isn't war breaking out? Is it because international law is preventing it? That's not the case. The reason war hasn't broken out is because there is a hegemonic power, the most powerful country, that can prevent situations that could lead to war in advance, or militarily punish those who start a war, and the fear of this prevents war. That can be called the global system, and the United States has maintained it for the past 80 years. But because we are so used to it, we think of the hegemonic operating principle as if it were the organizing principle, but in fact, it is not. The operating principle that is completely opposite to this is great power politics. Great power politics, as we'll see later, involves multiple great powers. There could be two, or there could be three. The great powers fight among themselves, and they can also form blocs.

Then it would be sphere of influence politics. However, if these great powers are considerate of each other, it could become a great power concert system, or they could fight indiscriminately. But when they are not confident of winning a fight, that's when a balance emerges. A balance is created. Then peace comes. Not complete peace, but we can say that stability, which is distinct from peace, is achieved. The purpose of a balance of power system is to maintain stability. That's the operating principle. It's still the same sovereign state system, but it needs to be operated, and for that, there can be various forms of operating principles regarding how basic military power is used. And if that hegemonic system is based on liberal principles, there could be another operating principle called liberalism.

When a liberal operating principle and a hegemonic system are combined, we can see it as a liberal hegemonic system. A hegemon can be one country, or several countries can do it together. There can be a dual hegemony or a collective hegemony. In that sense, the structure of power distribution itself is not the operating principle. Unipolar, bipolar, or multipolar—the 'pole' refers to a country that is overwhelmingly strong, and this is a classification based on the power distribution structure of these countries. This is a classification, not a principle.

Even in a multipolar system, it can be a balance of power system or a hegemonic one. In that sense, different operating principles can emerge depending on the conditions of each polar system. The basic feeling is that the operating principle is built on the same sovereign state organizing principle but operates in a somewhat different way. And there would be institutional arrangements that realize each operating principle. It could be international law, mainly international organizations, or alliances, or economic systems—these are the institutional mechanisms that actually move it. Let's stop at these three levels. Let's divide it into three. When we talk about order, let's divide the layers of order into three. When we do that, the change in the international order that we are experiencing in 2026—everyone says the international order is rapidly changing. Which of these three layers is said to be changing?

In fact, it differs from person to person. Some people don't make these distinctions and just vaguely say that the peaceful era centered on the United States is turning into an era of war, which is not wrong. However, it is very important to grasp the changes in order more accurately. Most of the changes in the international order being discussed today are occurring at the institutional level. Changes in alliances, the shift from free trade to protectionism, the incapacitation of the UN, or the supplementation of the WTO—these all refer to changes in the institutional configuration.

However, the question of whether this signifies a change in the hegemonic operating principle can be answered with a maybe. Some may think that the U.S. hegemonic system is collapsing and we are moving towards a great power system. But we cannot conclude that the end of the hegemonic system will immediately lead to a great power system. As the hegemonic system undergoes an adaptive process through events, it will transition to the next order's process when it reaches a limit where it can no longer function. The really important question is whether the hegemonic operating principle is moving towards a post-hegemonic operating principle.

We can also consider whether the sovereign state system is ending and moving to another system, for example, an imperial system. An empire is a system that does not recognize the sovereignty of other states. It does not recognize the formal equality of sovereignty. If there is an empire, the surrounding countries lose their sovereignty. It is divided into an imperial center and a periphery, but the imperial center is not necessarily stronger than the hegemon of a sovereign state system. For example, in the relationship between Ming China and Joseon, or Qing China and Joseon in the pre-modern era, and the relationship between the United States and Korea now, who has stronger influence over the Korean Peninsula?

At first glance, one might think that the Ming, which was an imperial system, was stronger. However, it is difficult to conclude that Joseon was much more constrained when considering specific constraints on domestic politics or foreign policy, and the range of choices. Although there were formal constraints such as investiture and tribute, it does not mean that the present is completely free. I say this in the sense that the formal sovereignty of the sovereign state system does not guarantee substantive autonomy. Therefore, we need to consider whether a change in the organizing principle is also occurring.

Some people say that the sovereign state system is changing into an imperial order. In the case of Russia, one of the many reasons Putin started the war is Putin's original imperial ambition. As the U.S. order declines, he is trying to restore the peripheral influence that the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire originally had, and the method is one that does not recognize the sovereignty of neighboring countries.

This goes beyond the sovereign state system. What Putin wants can be seen as a change in the organizing principle. Whether that is possible is a separate issue, and when the U.S.-led order is shaken, the institutional composition, the operating principle, and even the organizing principle can also be shaken. Although the possibility is low and it is not normal, when we talk about the change in the international order, we need to think about what kind of change we are talking about on at least three levels. That change is not a replacement of entities but a matter of crossing a threshold in a dynamic process.

The Concept and Role of Hegemony

This is about hegemony. The word hegemony was used by Antonio Gramsci. It means rule by consent, and a power system that can appease the resistance of other countries and draw their consent, even if there is a coercive part, was called hegemony. This has been brought into international politics, and an era with political leadership that guides and regulates the international community or order, rather than simple coercion, can be called hegemony. In more difficult terms, a state that voluntarily provides the minimum public goods necessary to maintain order in an anarchic international situation can be called a hegemon.

A hegemon plays many roles necessary for maintaining order. A country with the ability and will to do so becomes a hegemonic power, which is very difficult. Playing the role of a hegemon requires a lot of resources. It must prevent wars around the world, and even if a war breaks out, it must prevent a winner from emerging and becoming a regional power that can challenge the United States. It must also act as the world's policeman, managing the entire world in peacetime. In the economic sector, it must have the economic power to create institutions for the market to function well and to act as the lender of last resort. In addition, after World War II, it had to open the U.S. market and provide ODA to revive the economies of developing countries.

In addition to simple capability, it also needs legitimacy, so it must have a model domestic order and soft power. Historically, since the emergence of modern sovereign states around 1500, hegemonic powers have appeared in the order of Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Great Britain, and the United States. Not in the sense of a hegemon that is so powerful that it coerces other countries and dominates the international order, but if we consider countries with the ability and will to provide the public goods necessary for maintaining the international order, with other countries consenting from their hearts and recognizing that country's leadership, there are not many. Just the previous Great Britain and now the United States, but Great Britain colonized, and the United States also has a significant coercive aspect.

Therefore, the hegemonic state, rule by consent, and provision of public goods is not a normative discussion. It is not that it is a good country because it did those things, but that it has the management ability to maintain order. That management could be very bad management, but it was not disorderly. Just as there is great inequality in domestic politics' democracy within human order, it may prevent the direct exercise of some violence, but the order cannot be said to be a good order.

A relative comparison is possible, but it is important to know what the existence of a hegemonic power means in terms of operating principles. And hegemonic leadership, the political practice of wanting to exercise the ability of a hegemon, is important. Practice theory is much discussed in international relations theory these days. Practice is not simple action, but habitual or purposeful action that has meaning within it. When there is leadership for the practice of a hegemon wanting to maintain the system, it is called hegemonic leadership. What I also tried to write in the paper is that the hegemonic order will have to come because the power of the United States is weakening.

Is American hegemony declining? Is the United States in decline? This is linked to whether the hegemonic order is breaking down and the next order is coming, but it's not that the hegemonic order is good. The hegemonic order or hegemonic system should be seen as an entity in which much more complex discussions are mutually constituted. There is the hegemonic state as a leader, but the hegemonic system should be seen as an institutionalized relational structure that connects the allied countries that supported it, partner countries, neutral countries, and rival countries. There is a theory of relationalism in international relations theory.

It has been much talked about in the 21st century. It is much easier to think that there are states and the relationship between those states is international politics. However, the state did not exist from the beginning. The state is created as the international political relationship is created, so the existence of the state itself was generated within the changing international relations of the past. Therefore, it is necessary to see the mutually constitutive relationship between the actor, the state, and the relationship, international relations. If international politics is that there are states and the relationship between those states is international relations, it is very easy to understand.

But when did the state exist and who created it? International relations created it. As the military and economic relations that constitute international relations from the pre-modern to the modern era merged, the territorial state of the absolute monarchy emerged victorious among the competing units within it and was reborn as the state. It is difficult to see the hegemonic system as something created by the hegemon. The various situations after World War II that led to the emergence of the hegemonic system, that is, the experience of World Wars I and II and the desire to never experience such a huge war again, and the creation of a new order to prevent the collapse of the world economy and the outbreak of war in the interwar period, led the United States to take on a hegemonic role, and the process of defining itself as a hegemon and making its people think of contributing to the hegemonic project is a very closely constituted process.

Therefore, the hegemonic system was not only importantly shaped by the role of the hegemon that created it, but also by the importance of many other countries or other relationships that made it possible. In this context, there are various reasons why the power of the United States has weakened. If the United States suddenly weakens, does the hegemonic system end? If the United States withdraws and China emerges to replace it, taking its place exactly, and other countries agree to this,

and if China's political practice is not authoritarian but a practice that can gain the consent of other countries, surpassing the United States in a good sense, then the hegemonic system will be maintained in the same way. Only the hegemonic state has changed, and the allied countries that support it or the logic within it remain the same. However, the possibility of that is not high. Therefore, we need to ask differently whether the decline of the United States is the same as the collapse of the hegemonic system in terms of operating principles.

In other words, even if the power of the United States has weakened, the hegemonic system that the United States maintains may continue for longer. We need to ask differently whether the weakening of the United States, the incomprehensible and abnormal behavior and strategic contradictions of the Trump administration, and the many problems that are hard to watch signify the end of the hegemonic system. But we are not really asking that. Is it just that the United States is weakening and China is rising?

Strategic Public Goods and the Hegemonic System

In that sense, the question of what is changing needs to be much more precise. In that sense, let's create the term hegemonic system. Let's think about whether the hegemonic system can really be maintained. Let's move on to the next question. The hegemonic system is a process of creating an international order with a hegemonic operating principle, and it can be redefined as a hegemony as an adaptive institution. All orders must have public goods.

This is an Adam Smith-like story. Even if the market and individual economic actors act for their private interests, a self-regulating market is completed by an invisible hand. Even so, to maintain this, you should not defeat your opponent with violence during economic exchange activities. Therefore, public power to maintain security, national defense to protect against foreign invasion, and public goods such as roads and currency that everyone needs but no one produces are necessary. Public goods refer to goods that are non-rivalrous and non-excludable.

This is a concept created by Samuel Henry in 1952, which means that private activities cannot be maintained without something public. A little bit of public goods must be embedded to maintain order. International politics is the same; we are living in an order that is predictable and maintained even in the face of shocks. But now there is a feeling that that order is being shaken. There is a thought that the order we have lived in may no longer be maintained. War prevention may not be possible, and we may not be able to engage in free trade even if we want to. I went to a corporate lecture today, and most companies have become very sensitive to geopolitical variables. In the past...

Even for shipping routes, in the past, prices were set by calculating costs without considering the geopolitical situation of the cost of passing through Hormuz or having to detour due to a blockade, but completely unexpected problems are erupting. Such problems may erupt more. If everything we have vaguely thought of as public goods, from shipping routes to internet cables and GPS, becomes private property—the opposite of public goods is private property. Between public goods and private goods, there are concepts like club goods or quasi-public goods.

This is an economic concept, and it is different from domestic politics. In international politics, public goods are needed to maintain order, but pure public goods cannot exist. This is because the hegemonic state excludes some or makes them compete according to its own interests. In that sense, most are quasi-public goods, and this is very strategic. So, in the paper, I wrote 'strategic public goods.' When a hegemonic state provides public goods for its own interests, but they have a public good-like character that allows for the strategic adjustment of the logic of exclusion and competition, it can be called strategic public goods. This depends on the ability of the hegemonic state. A hegemonic system basically requires a hegemonic state, which can be one country or several countries.

There is a center of hegemony, and when that center provides the basic public goods to maintain the hegemonic system, it can be called a hegemonic system. Then how should we view the international order related to the decline of the United States that we are experiencing in the Trump era? First, conditions are needed to become a hegemonic state. There are several conditions, but material capability, political will to become a hegemonic state, a strategy to provide strategic public goods, domestic political support, international recognition, and such a history must be in place. The United States met these conditions from the late 19th century to 1945 and became a hegemonic state. If we substitute China, can China become a hegemonic state now?

China is well aware of this and is making various efforts to become a hegemonic state. However, it does not currently meet all the conditions, and China itself is taking a very long-term approach. On the other hand, there are many hegemonic benefits that the United States gains as a hegemonic state, derived from its structural power. These include the reserve currency, rule-making power, agenda-setting power, the power to influence international institutions, and centrality in networks. In the recent discussion of the weaponization of interdependence, when talking about chokepoint leverage, having control of the center of a network gives you enormous power. The SWIFT system and the Strait of Hormuz are the same. Iran has gained power by using the network center of the waterway. In addition, due to externalities, there is also political influence over allied countries and resource mobilization capabilities.

Thus, the hegemonic system requires a very complex logic of hegemony. But if you ask whether this hegemonic order was unilaterally created by the great powers, the answer is no. According to Turiuner's paper, the hegemonic system created after World War II is a system that was created over a long period of time through the consent of subordinate states and the raising of issues when the hegemonic state did something wrong.

In that sense, we call the period from 1945 to the present the 80-year order, but it is not that those 80 years have maintained the same entity as a single hegemonic order without problems. Like the Nixon administration's 1969 doctrine in the 1970s, the U.S. hegemonic order has had its ups and downs, and the debate over the decline of U.S. hegemony is the fourth or fifth of its kind. Despite going through numerous twists and turns, the hegemonic system has been maintained as a relatively adaptive and resilient institution. Therefore, this was not created by the hegemonic state alone, but an order in which the contributions of other subordinate states, especially allied countries, were very important. In that sense, when you listen to many of President Trump's remarks, he talks as if the current order was all created by the United States, that the United States bore all the costs, and that especially the allied countries took advantage of the United States.

When I hear such words, I feel sorry. Did we rely too much on the United States? But that's not true. It may be about half true, but the United States has gained a lot, and a significant portion of the cost of creating the order was borne by allied countries and other countries. That's how the foundation for the United States to become what it is today was laid. The Brazilian scholar Trinora sees the system as having been created through the role of weaker states resisting great powers to change norms, enhancing their bargaining power and solidarity as a community, and establishing and providing standards. This means it is not a system that the United States created and imposed all by itself.

In that sense, just because the power of the United States weakens, other countries that have a common stake in this hegemonic system cannot say, 'Since the United States has weakened, let's quickly move to another system.' This is not simply due to institutional inertia. If you study neoliberalism, scholars like Coase explain that it is because of the inertia of institutions or the benefits that institutions bring, but that is not necessarily the case. Some talk about the demand side for regimes, but we need to talk about the hegemonic system as a much more co-produced product.

Looking at the history of the hegemonic system, the cohesion or resilience of that system varies depending on the era. Now is the era with the highest intensity and the highest dynamic density. It is also true that the international order feels as dense and normative as the domestic order. If you become a diplomat, you may feel that there are more behavioral constraints than in domestic politics because there are so many normative orders. You may feel that you learned that international politics is anarchic, but there are too many institutions and constraints. But this is because we are not a great power.

Trump, a great power, ignores all constraints, but there is no sanctioning power against this. The dual nature of institutions, the position of the great powers that created the institutions and the position felt by the countries that follow the institutions are completely different. The U.S.-led order has become that dense. From Portugal, the Netherlands, Great Britain, to the United States, public goods have always existed, but in the past, public goods were very loose and scarce. Now, strategic public goods have become much denser.

Changes in Demand for Strategic Public Goods and the Hegemonic System

You should now have some understanding of what a hegemonic system is. Now we need to talk a little more about public goods as a separate axis. Does the public good needed to maintain order always stay the same over time? Are the quantity and quality of public goods needed in 1950 the same as today? No, they are not. For example, let's consider climate change. If we continue on this path, it is almost certain that humanity will perish. The basic public goods for maintaining order include the leadership to bring about international cooperation to stop climate change. This has become not only a matter of order but the most important public good to prevent human extinction. In 1950, climate change was probably starting slowly, but not to the extent that it created a demand for public goods. As times have changed, the elements that create disorder have continuously increased.

Behind this increase is the fact that the interaction of 8 billion people has become much denser. The last 30 years is what we call the 'Transitional Epoch,' a very geopolitical term. We use the fall of the Soviet Union as a benchmark, but geologists or cultural scholars would perceive the last 30 years differently.

Our preconceptions are fixed that way because we study international politics, but the last 30 years was a time when the power distribution structure changed from bipolar to unipolar and the U.S. hegemonic system began. This was partly a hegemonic project, but it was also an era of globalization. The world became very dense. Globalization has several aspects, including the neoliberal economic aspect and technological development. In any case, as a result, governance issues have become much more complex. The last 30 years was an era of globalization, but not an era where global governance was created. The entropic elements of disorder that emerged from this have surged, so the demand for public goods needed by the hegemonic power to maintain order has greatly increased. The United States has too much to do. In the past, the hegemonic power blocked the Soviet Union during the Cold War, cooperated with allies to protect the military order, protected the market order, and helped poor countries. But now, there are too many things to do, such as terrorism, COVID, and AI. The demand for international public goods has increased to a level that the United States alone cannot handle, but has the U.S. supply capacity increased accordingly? It has not, and there is no country that can. The change in the demand for strategic public goods over time is a very important change when looking at the current hegemonic system.

Order is constantly changing, and when it can no longer adapt to changing circumstances, the order will collapse. In that case, we need to know what the changed situation is, and what the logic of the system that maintains the systemic order and the source of its resilience are. Our health is the same. Doctors judge our health status through indicators such as blood pressure. For example, if blood pressure exceeds 150, it is considered high blood pressure and medicine is prescribed, but up to 149 is considered fine. However, if it exceeds 130, resilience has already begun to decrease, so it should be actively managed. It would be nice to have such a doctor, but it is realistically difficult. Health does not just follow indicators.

It's a similar context. It is difficult to say exactly how much the United States has to weaken for the hegemonic order to collapse, or how much the demand for public goods has to exceed for it to be no longer sustainable. The trend will be maintained, but sometimes it will cross the boundary, and sometimes it will do well and cross back over, so there will be constant fluctuations. Then, eventually, when everyone confirms that 'this is not it, this hegemonic system cannot be maintained,' a change in the operating principle will occur. The process of change in the institutional composition that the United States is currently experiencing can be seen as a readjustment process to maintain the hegemonic operating principle, and the important question is whether this will succeed.

The Dual Pressures of Hegemonic System Change

Let's look at two variables of hegemonic system change. One is the supply-side pressure, that is, the pressure on capability. Has the United States really become weaker than before? We use the word 'decline' too much, but what exactly is decline? It's a very abstract term. But there is one pressure on the capability side, and the gap with the second-ranked country is bound to narrow.

The weakening of the United States and the rise of China are two different issues. There may be trends within the U.S. that make its decline inevitable. However, the fact that China happened to rise at the same time, causing American decline and a power transition to occur simultaneously, is a historical coincidence. The decline of the U.S. was not caused by China's rise. While it is true that America's relative capabilities have diminished, its absolute decline and its relative decline are entirely different matters. If the U.S. had become progressively poorer but China had not risen, we would not be discussing hegemonic decline. Hegemony is a relative game, not an absolute game.

On the other hand, demand-side pressures have increased significantly. To discuss changes in the hegemonic system, we must ask what kind of international order we will be experiencing in 2026. Is the international order changing because the U.S. has weakened and made strategic mistakes? The two key questions to ask are how the hegemon's material capabilities are changing and what the demand for strategic public goods looks like. This constitutes a dual pressure. A weakening of capabilities is one factor, but we must also examine how the changing demand for strategic public goods is altering the existing institutional configuration, whether this configuration is effectively coping with such demand, and whether roles and institutional power relations can be maintained. Institutions will try to adapt. For instance, in the case of alliances, they will attempt institutional adaptations such as demanding allies pay a larger share of the costs previously borne by the U.S. Although terms like forming a redistributive coalition are abstract, if adaptation proves inadequate and the gap between supply and demand widens, the system will eventually shift toward an alternative operating principle. If adaptation is successful, the operating principle will restabilize, with only the institutional content changing, and a different form of hegemonic operating principle will take hold.

Is the international order changing because the U.S. has weakened and made strategic mistakes? The two key questions to ask are how the hegemon's material capabilities are changing and what the demand for strategic public goods looks like. This constitutes a dual pressure. A weakening of capabilities is one factor, but we must also examine how the changing demand for strategic public goods is altering the existing institutional configuration, whether this configuration is effectively coping with such demand, and whether roles and institutional power relations can be maintained. Institutions will try to adapt. For instance, in the case of alliances, they will attempt institutional adaptations such as demanding allies pay a larger share of the costs previously borne by the U.S. Although terms like forming a redistributive coalition are abstract, if adaptation proves inadequate and the gap between supply and demand widens, the system will eventually shift toward an alternative operating principle. If adaptation is successful, the operating principle will restabilize, with only the institutional content changing, and a different form of hegemonic operating principle will take hold.

The U.S. will attempt institutional adaptations, such as demanding that allies pay more of the defense burden it once shouldered, or forming a redistributive coalition. While these are abstract terms, we can trace a causal relationship: if adaptation is insufficient and the gap between supply and demand continues to grow, the system will eventually move toward an alternative operating principle. If adaptation is successful, the operating principle will restabilize, with only the institutional content changing, and a different form of hegemonic operating principle will once again take hold.

The situation we are experiencing now is one where the organizing principle—the sovereign state system—has remained unchanged throughout this entire process. Therefore, the current situation in American international politics can be seen as having entered a new phase where the links of the existing institutional configuration have been altered. However, we cannot yet know which direction it will take. Many people say we are moving toward a balance-of-power cooperative system, but we need to look at this more analytically and empirically.

From this perspective, we face the question of the true meaning of hegemonic decline. Is the weakening of the United States more important, or is the increase in demand more critical? This is a question of which of the two pressures I mentioned earlier we should pay more attention to. While both are important, the surge in demand is the phenomenon that requires greater focus. Until now, international politics has been in an era where one country could possess the power to maintain the international order. In other words, it was an era where a single state could suffice. Of course, in the future, such a powerful country may no longer exist. But in the past, factors like national power, territory, population, success in the industrial revolution, and nuclear possession defined the basic character of the international political arena that could produce a hegemonic state. The last 30 years have shown that no single country on Earth, no matter how strong, is powerful enough to meet the current demand.

Of course, I could be wrong. The Republic of Korea could become so powerful that it solves all problems. But that seems nearly impossible. Therefore, of these two pressures, while the weakening of the U.S. is a factor in the changing international order, the explosive increase in the demand for strategic public goods may be a far more important variable. From this viewpoint, when we discuss the future order, the question arises: will China become the hegemonic state? A common theme in lectures is to call the U.S.-China competition a hegemonic competition.

This is based on the premise that the country that wins a hegemonic competition can become the hegemon. However, the reason it is now difficult for the U.S. to be a single-state hegemon is less about a lack of capability and more about the overwhelming increase in demand. Because the demand for public goods has grown, if China wins this competition, it must be able to meet this demand to become a hegemonic state. But it will be difficult for China to meet that demand just by defeating the U.S. In that sense, the winner of this contest cannot become the hegemon. Therefore, it cannot be called a hegemonic competition; it may be a competition for the number one spot.

But does this mean the hegemonic system is collapsing? No, it does not. I will skip over the details of public goods for now. There can be various forms of goods and services. What the U.S. provides is not only physical resources but also the strategies and institutions to maintain them. The concept includes both tangible and intangible public good services. Currently, the U.S. lacks the economic and military power to provide them. According to a CNN news report yesterday, the U.S. has used up 80% of its THAAD interceptor missiles. It has also expended over 50% of its Patriot missiles. If a war breaks out somewhere other than Iran, how many incoming threats could the U.S. intercept with its remaining missiles? Moreover, it is using missiles that cost tens of millions of dollars to shoot down drones worth tens of thousands. If a crisis erupts in Taiwan and China launches a massive attack, interceptor missiles would be needed to defend it, but it is becoming very difficult for the U.S. to help.

What about South Korea? There is also talk that by the time THAAD could be used to intercept North Korean missiles, it would already be an all-out war, making it almost meaningless. If North Korean nuclear missiles are launched, they must be intercepted, but the U.S. has no resources available to help. This is the dilemma of simultaneity, an occasion that has shown the U.S. lacks the capability to conduct operations in two or more theaters. Originally, a hegemonic power was defined as one that could manage at least two theaters, or 1.5 theaters (actively intervening in one while providing rear support to another). Even during the Cold War, there were three main theaters—Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Now, even in a single theater,

despite it being an air and sea conflict without the deployment of ground troops, stockpiles are being depleted. This shows that America's military hegemony is in a very precarious state. As China and Russia are realizing themselves, the current war is not just a battle of weapons but also a battle of weapon production capacity and supply chains. It is a war that demonstrates how difficult it is to conduct warfare, as the importance of alliances, cutting-edge weapons, and multi-domain (including sea, air, land, cyber, space, and AI) operations becomes increasingly apparent. I've digressed a bit, but anyway, where did that story come from?

The Nature and Limits of the U.S.-Led Order

So, the point is that it has become very difficult for the U.S. to maintain these strategic public goods on its own. We need to look at the history of how the demand for these strategic public goods has expanded over time. The idea is to examine the changing international order in conjunction with this expansion of demand. We can divide the U.S.-led order from the Cold War to the present into two sides. One is the U.S.-led liberal order. Because it has the word 'liberal' attached, some people have a normative perception that it is a good order. Especially in domestic political disputes, conservatives, in their emphasis on military strength, tend to stress the importance of alliances and the U.S.-led order, which often extends to the logic that the liberal order is also normatively correct. Conversely,

the progressive camp places more emphasis on the hierarchical nature of the U.S.-ROK relationship, viewing it as a situation where political autonomy was compromised in exchange for a security umbrella. Both points are valid. The U.S. enabled its allies to survive by providing security support, but at the same time, there was an element of weakening their strategic autonomy. While security was a rationale for maintaining alliances, it is impossible to have both security and strategic autonomy simultaneously. In any asymmetric alliance, gaining security inevitably leads to a compromise of autonomy. Since 1945, the order brought by the U.S. and the core of the goods and services provided within that order have necessarily been a strategic and selective club good. The countries that were not excluded and could utilize these benefits with less rivalry, mainly the allies, were the beneficiaries of the liberal

international order. Excluded countries might find the liberal international order unfair. A country like China during the Cold War was also a beneficiary of the liberal economic order, as it was able to grow economically within the U.S.-led system. However, from China's perspective, the U.S. logic of exclusion—its strategy of preventing other countries from exercising regional leadership if they were not U.S. allies—must have seemed very unfair. Therefore, the liberal international order, despite its name, has both oppressive and positive aspects. For any order, we must look at both its normative evaluation and the internal logic required for its maintenance. The Cold War order was a highly exclusive club good provided only to the free world, the camp of liberal democratic countries led by the U.S., and even within it, there was a high degree of hierarchy. However, because there was a common enemy,

it was an era of very high internal cohesion. What about the 30 years of the post-Cold War era? It was a very interesting period. I once spoke with a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State who told me that the unipolar system was a curse for the United States. He spoke of how much the U.S. had been damaged during the last 30 years when it was the only strongest country in the world, and how many internal problems had arisen during this time. This was not so much because the U.S. did something wrong, but because for the past 30 years, the U.S. had to take on tasks that it could not handle alone.

It was a combination of there being only one great power, American hubris that it could do everything, and the buck-passing of surrounding countries that expected the U.S. to do it all. This was unprecedented in human history. I write a column called 'East Asia Research,' and in my last column, I cited a book titled 'Regime Change.' It was written by two New York Times reporters based on interviews with over a thousand people about the Trump era. It's an English book, and while I haven't read it all, I did read the international politics section. There's an episode at the very end where these reporters, who wrote the book critically, interviewed Trump several times.

In the final interview, despite their fundamentally adversarial relationship, Trump opened up, and this is in the book. He said he was the most powerful person to have ever existed in history. He proudly stated that no one, not Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Stalin, or Mao, had as much power as he did as an individual. He then said a historian had written the note he was now handing to them, which the two reporters received. Later, they found out the note was written by the caddy of a professional golfer who played a lot with Trump. This caddy was a history enthusiast. In normal circumstances, this would be rather odd. But for him to speak so freely reveals so much about Trump's personal view of power, or

how he sees international politics. It shows just how strong a country the United States is. Individuals feel it, and indeed, if you look at national power indicators and compare them to ancient Rome, Spain, or the British Empire on which the sun never set, around the year 2000, U.S. military spending accounted for 50% of the world's total. The U.S. alone spent half of the world's military budget, and its R&D spending was 80%. This was military power capable of sustaining an empire. It was the most powerful country in human history, but we confused being that powerful with having the ability to maintain order. I used to think that way too. Until the Trump era, I thought the 30 years of the post-Cold War period showed that the strongest country could impose order, that this was hegemony, and so a state that provides order is a hegemonic state. But going through the Trump era, I changed my concept to think of a hegemon as a state that can meet the demand for public goods. However, not many people think this way.

During the 30 years of the post-Cold War era, the public goods provided by the U.S. became closer to pure public goods rather than strategic club goods. The U.S. spent its national power for the entire world population of 8 billion. If you look at military interventions like the Bosnian crisis and the Syrian crisis, or economic aid (ODA), the U.S. did many things that were not so critical to its national interests. The U.S. itself had an overconfidence in the capabilities a hegemonic state could possess, and while the war on terror was unavoidable in some respects, it should have been restrained. After experiencing those 30 years, Trump's thinking was that what we had done for 30 years was to provide pure public goods, a departure from strategic public goods. The cost was enormous. Was there any return for that enormous cost? There was no return. The return was the decline of American manufacturing, the decline of the American middle class, social problems like fentanyl, immigration influx, the weakening of the American market, and manufacturing hollowing out. This

is what happened. So if you look at the U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS), the U.S. repudiates all the strategies that came before it. If you read it carefully, it's not a repudiation of the 1980s, but of the last 30 years. The ideal president for Trump is Reagan. Like Reagan, who pursued peace through strength in the 1980s, the reference point Trump had in mind was the kind of hegemony that maintained American power by creating public goods together with Cold War allies. But to blame the failures of those 30 years on Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton is difficult, because we were experiencing that international political structure for the first time. Just as President Trump felt he was the most powerful person in history, everyone thought that the U.S. of the last 30 years was the greatest country in history, and that humanity would be unified.

People thought that the first power capable of uniting the 8 billion people of humanity had emerged. It is still possible to do so now. For example, a single political system can be established if its borders can be militarily defended. A territorial state is a unit defined by the territory it can defend. The U.S., currently the world's strongest military power, is strong enough to defend the Earth from aliens. The aliens might be stronger, but the world has achieved a degree of integration where, if something happens, the U.S. can dispatch troops or send supersonic transports to geographically manage any place on the globe within a day. Not to mention communications.

This means that the material foundation for 8 billion people to become a single political unit has been created. In this situation, influenced too much by the last 30 years, a backlash is occurring in American politics against the maintenance of U.S. hegemony as a provider of pure public goods. The American people are beginning to see it as an unbearable cost. The question then is whether the U.S. will abandon this hegemony. This is about the surge in demand.

People thought the first power capable of uniting humanity's 8 billion people had emerged. It is still possible to do so now. For example, a single political system is established if it can militarily defend its borders. A territorial state is a unit defined by the territory it can defend. The U.S., currently the world's strongest military power, has enough military strength to defend the Earth from aliens. The aliens might be stronger, but the world has achieved a degree of integration where, if something happens, the U.S. can dispatch troops or send supersonic transports to geographically manage any place on the globe within a day.

Not to mention communications, the material foundation for 8 billion people to become a single political unit has been created. A backlash is occurring in American politics against the maintenance of U.S. hegemony as a provider of pure public goods over the last 30 years. The American people perceive this as an unbearable cost. However, it is questionable whether the U.S. will abandon its hegemony. This is about the surge in demand.

This is about the impossibility of single-state hegemony. It has indeed become impossible. But will the U.S. give up its hegemonic position? It is unlikely to, because there is too much structural power and systemic interest at stake. Even if President Trump listens to the voices of extremist factions like the MAGA movement, which advocate 'let's stop working for the world,' if the U.S. were to step back, it would lose a great deal: the enormous privilege of the reserve currency, the ability to secure bases by maintaining alliances, political influence, and economic benefits. Its influence in supply chains is also linked to providing security. As we will discuss later, why do Asian countries

entertain Trump? While Europe is in conflict with Trump, we face an enormous security threat from China, so there is a very strong security perception that we must engage in a kind of transaction in return for that security provision. Therefore, it is difficult for us to become like Europe. Europe can achieve strategic autonomy in 10 years if it tries, because the military threat from China is not significant, and its main concern is Russia. In this respect, the U.S. knows this. Despite arguments from factions like the MAGA movement, the U.S. is still the world's number one superpower. However, it stands at a crossroads: will it become a 'superpower without hegemony' or a 'superpower with hegemony'? Mainstream U.S. strategists, including President Trump, have no intention of giving up hegemony to remain just the world's strongest power. This is because if they give up hegemony, it is very likely they will not be able to maintain their status as the strongest power. They would no longer be able to receive help from allies, and the

privileges that come with it would disappear, and their status as the reserve currency could be jeopardized. There is talk that if the U.S. had not been the reserve currency nation during the 2008 economic crisis, it would have had to seek an IMF bailout. Policymakers know that the moment they lose the reserve currency, nuclear monopoly, and institutional agenda-setting power, and are no longer recognized as a hegemonic state, they could lose their status as the strongest power. Therefore, they must overcome the proposition of 'the impossibility of single-state hegemony' through hegemonic readjustment. This is the problem the U.S. faces. However, it is not certain whether the U.S. accurately recognizes this. Listening to academic papers or statements by policymakers in the U.S., there is a lot of rhetorical emphasis on the importance of alliances and cooperation with allies.

The Future Hegemonic System and the Outlook for Great Power Politics

They talk that way on an issue-by-issue basis, such as security or the economy, but it is questionable whether the U.S. has awakened to the level of needing to share hegemonic authority—that is, moving from 'burden-sharing' to 'power-sharing.' While the U.S. has weakened, I am not sure if it has truly felt to its core that single-state hegemony is impossible. Assuming the hegemonic system is maintained, I have considered a few alternatives that could be sustained by reorganizing institutions within a hegemonic operating principle. The first is the 'unilateral hegemony' we have had so far. The second is the 'hegemonic coalition' that President Trump is trying to create.

This is a hegemonic coalition that distributes the burden to allies and partners, but strategic authority remains concentrated in the central state—a U.S.-centric form with some 'burden-sharing.' However, it is doubtful whether that will be sufficient. The third is 'collective hegemony.' This is a form that shares the burdens and authority among the coalition members. I don't know how many countries it would be. There are the Biden administration's 'Summit for Democracy,' the D10, and the G7, but it could be a reorganization of these. It could be the U.S., China, and Japan, and there are even papers arguing that the U.S. and China could form a hegemonic coalition. This is called 'dual hegemony,' and it suggests that, in effect, the U.S. and China are already sharing hegemony on an issue-by-issue basis. This is true now, but it is more likely to happen in the future.

This means that a significant portion of strategic authority would be jointly shared. For a 'hegemonic coalition' to be sustainable, it must inevitably move in that direction. For 'collective hegemony' to be realized, the U.S. must actively show a considerable degree of flexibility, different from the past. Can it really do that? Alternatively, we could move toward 'post-hegemonic multiple governance.' This is a very difficult concept. It is an ideal form where the entire system functions without great power politics or a hegemonic coalition. It is, in fact, very difficult to achieve a governance system managed like a single state in a democracy.

When all of this fails, the system moves to a 'great power system.' This is the form we experienced before the hegemonic system, in 19th and 18th century Europe. While the 19th century can be seen as a period of British hegemony, it can also be viewed as a bipolar system between Britain and Russia or a great power concert system. The five-power hegemonic coalition of Prussia, Austria, and France later included Italy, becoming six. The 19th century was a system where a concert system, British hegemonic system, and Anglo-Russian bipolar system coexisted complexly, and it is difficult to see it as a purely hegemonic system.

Although Britain espoused liberalism in the economic sphere, such as with the Corn Laws, in terms of population and military power (mainly naval), it only played the role of a balancer without a continental land army alliance, so the concert system can be seen as stronger. In the approximately 400 years since the 17th century, which began with the Peace of Westphalia, the period of hegemony was only 80 years, and the rest was a balance of power. In fact, although the balance of power and hegemony overlap to some extent, hegemony in its full sense was a very short period. Therefore, if U.S. hegemony ends and we move to a great power-centric system, we will be very perplexed, though what that system will be is a topic for further discussion.

However, in some ways, this is a 'return to normal.' This is because the hegemonic system was very exceptional. I will elaborate further. The common view among scholars these days is that there can be various forms of great power politics after hegemony. So I will skip this part. There are certainly triggers that could lead to a post-hegemonic era. It could happen at any time, and especially the strategic failures of the U.S. during the Trump era could very well play a role in accelerating the collapse of the hegemonic system, despite the U.S. being the strongest power. America's strategic mistakes are evident in many areas, such as its failure to fully utilize its resources, its attitude of ignoring the opinions of allies, and its creation of conditions that enabled China's strengthening. In China, there is even talk that President Trump is a figure who is helping to build up China.

To that extent, Trump may later be evaluated as having been an opportunity for China. Does this mean that the U.S. has completely lost its resources as the strongest power? It is true that it is depleting them. Where does Trump's power come from? The reason many countries respect the U.S. even when Trump repeatedly makes strategic failures, like the Iran conflict, is because of the power the U.S. possesses—its military and economic strength. This is not something Trump created; he is eating away at the resources the U.S. has accumulated over time. However, a point may come when those resources fall below a critical threshold and no longer function.

However, it is difficult to see this as a problem solely of President Trump. As I will discuss later, this process of strategic readjustment is very difficult, so there are mutually contradictory aspects. Alliances are important, but there is also a need to pressure allies to strengthen their roles. Allies should be treated well, but they also need to be dealt with much more firmly than in the past. This is the same for the Biden administration. It is a matter of how it is done, but there is also a view that it is actually difficult to achieve without a Trump-like approach. Figures like Wess Mitchell hold such a view.

American Declinism and Strategic Readjustment

Before moving on, in that sense, the 'U.S. decline thesis' must be viewed in a complex way. There is the aspect of absolute capability decline mentioned earlier, and also the aspect of relative capability decline, i.e., falling behind in the competition with China. The decline in hegemonic will, especially the decline in the will of the American people, is very significant. This is a very important variable. There are also strategic failures, but I believe the biggest reason for U.S. decline is the demand-side decline due to the expansion of demand for public goods. The last 30 years were that important. That was the theoretical discussion up to this point. The idea was to analytically examine what order is, at what level we should view the current changes in order, that this level is the change in the hegemonic operating principle, and how we should view the causes and processes of whether that operating principle is truly changing. Now, let's talk about the reality of the various strategies that are actually taking place. Usually, discussions of U.S. foreign policy start from here.

The Reality and Challenges of U.S. Foreign Policy

There are many details, but it would be difficult for me to cover everything. For the purpose of our lecture, first, there was the Biden administration's grand strategy of 'managed competition,' and the Trump era is important. What is President Trump trying to do? The last National Security Strategy report came out on December 5 of last year. That document is about grand strategy, but this document, called a 'brand strategy,' is not very grand-strategic. It only says that grand strategy is about reprioritizing strategies, but it lacks specific details on how it is actually reprioritizing. There are various stories, such as a 'peripheral sphere of influence strategy' to protect the periphery, a 'balance of power concept' to compete well with China, and management of allies, but when you put it all together, there is no clear picture of where the U.S. is trying to go.

In that sense, it fails to serve as a concrete guideline. It is a document that, upon reading, gives no clue that the U.S. will go to Venezuela or start a war with Iran. We are in an era of a 'grand strategy vacuum,' without a grand strategic guideline to direct specific policies. It is unknown whether this will continue. But from this perspective, current U.S. foreign policy can be seen as being in the initial stage of various experiments to maintain its status as a hegemonic power amidst the absolute and relative decline of U.S. national power, the unprecedented changes in the international political environment, and the changing situation of strategic public goods. We will have to wait and see how long it will last. It could end sooner than expected. The American people could decide, 'This is absolutely not working. Let's just go back to being a normal great power. Let's make everything a club good and only go with the countries the U.S. really needs.'

It could go that way. This could correspond to 'withdrawal.' Conversely, it could move toward a much more expanded form of hegemonic strategy while readjusting its hegemonic strategy. In that sense, the time frame for America's hegemonic adaptation and the intensity and depth of the changes are something we will have to watch for much longer. Currently, U.S. foreign policy has the Trump variable, and the individual named Trump is an enormous variable. It is difficult to talk about all of that. There is also the international political variable of U.S. hegemony. When we consider all of this, the set of options the U.S. has are the individual policy items that emerge from its hegemonic readjustment strategy. These are the things the U.S. must do now: what to do with the U.S.-China economic relationship, how to revive the U.S. domestic economy, how to set up relationships with allies, how much of a burden to demand from allies, how to maintain a technological super-gap in new technology fields, how to regulate the technological hegemony competition, and so on.

These are very essential questions. The bigger problem is that the answers to these individual questions conflict with each other in the process of solving them. Trying to solve one problem creates a problem in another, and they cannot be solved all at once. It is a process of tackling them one by one, starting with the most urgent. To make allies or other countries understand this—for allies to help the U.S. even while having their arms twisted—they need to be able to understand the framework of the grand strategy that the U.S. presents.

They need to understand and have a big picture of 'if we help with this, this will be the result in the end.' There have been such cases in the past. As mentioned in the book 'Intermittent Unilateralism,' whenever the U.S. faced difficulties with its hegemony, such as the Plaza Accord in the mid-1980s or the Nixon Doctrine, it sometimes seemed to impose sacrifices on its allies or shift responsibility to them. However, the allies thought that since the U.S. was running the hegemonic enterprise with its own money, it was understandable that it would be difficult, and they actively helped because they recognized that 'it's tough now, but we have to help. But the cost of helping now is much cheaper than the cost of the problems that would arise without the U.S. Helping the U.S. is a much better deal.' Now, there is not much confidence in the U.S. in that regard.

There is no certainty that if we really help, the U.S. will return to its former self, caring for its allies, and once again mustering its strength to protect other nations for the sake of liberal principles, market economies, the spread of liberal democracy, and stable peace. What we have learned now is that it is different, and it is more about playing a role in moving toward collective hegemony. In other words, the U.S. can be the leader that maintains a hegemonic coalition. Without the U.S., it is difficult for the hegemonic system to be maintained at present. If the hegemonic system is to be maintained in the future, the U.S. is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one. In the past, it was a necessary and sufficient condition, but now, while the U.S. must be there, its presence alone does not make a hegemonic system. It requires the U.S. plus the help of many allies and a hegemonic coalition. If the U.S. does well and takes the lead in creating a hegemonic coalition and shows a willingness to share power, the likelihood that allies will endure the pain may increase slightly.

If President Trump were saying this now, many allies would feel reassured and help the U.S. But Trump is not saying that. He says that in the future, it will be unconditionally U.S.-centric, and allies should do what they need to do and do what we ask them to do. He also says they must help in wars that I start without warning. This may be rhetoric for domestic consumption, but from an ally's perspective, it is a very difficult part. No matter how much the U.S. tries to support its allies, there are actually very difficult parts. There is a figure named Wess Mitchell, who served as an Assistant Secretary of State in the Bush administration and the first Trump term. In a recent paper, he described the Trump strategy as a 'consolidation strategy.'

This person is a policy researcher and scholar who also wrote a book called 'The Gray Zone.' This is one of the papers that best rationalizes the Trump strategy. It is also in your reading materials. When you read it, it shows you, 'Wow, you can view Trump this favorably.' It shows that although it seems Trump would never do this, and it doesn't seem like he would think this way, if you were to view him in the best possible light, you would have to read it with this kind of thinking. After reading it, you get the sense that people like this are forming a strategic community that is shaping the hegemonic readjustment strategy as the mainstream of Trumpism or the Republican Party. Trump should follow the content of this consensus-based strategic community, but it's not clear if he will. However, we should see it as an argument that if he does, the U.S. hegemonic readjustment strategy will succeed. It is very interesting content to read. You can fully understand it by just skimming through it.

From that perspective, looking at the NSS or these wars, there are many problems, but the red line at the bottom is that Trump's whims and policy clashes themselves may be clear evidence of how urgent and difficult it is for the U.S. to execute a strategy of remaking its hegemony. And the domestic political pressure, the pressure to pursue America First, and the pressure to revive the economy—the demands of the era that Trump must bear are difficult tasks that perhaps no one but Trump could even handle.

The moment this task fails, not only will the U.S. lose the hegemonic war with China, but it may also fail to produce the public goods needed to sustain humanity. The nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia might not prevent nuclear proliferation, AI regulation might fail, and climate change could become more destructive. The moment the U.S. neglects the things it must do, if a problem arises in any one of them—a nuclear war, the emergence of autonomous AGI or super AI, or the failure to address climate change—there will be no 22nd century. You might die of old age, but a public bad could strike before that, so the current system is very important. In that sense, although I only talked about the hegemonic operating principle and the great power operating principle, this sense of crisis is the next model: the global democracy model.

The 8 billion people of the world may demand a change in the organizing principle. To survive, humanity must create its own organizing principle, and since states cannot be trusted, we must create a governance that transcends the state. For example, environmental activists or nuclear abolitionists are creating a global public sphere with the idea that public bads cannot be managed by state sovereignty or regional interests. This is not directly related to the current slide, but such demands may increase in the future.

The U.S.-China competition is no longer the answer. Winning or doing well in it cannot solve the problem of saving humanity, so if the hegemonic system fails, a great power system is of course more difficult, and there may be a demand to move toward a global governance system. Normatively, as an international relations scholar, what kind of world would you like to see in the future? That the U.S. system should be maintained. This is not the answer either. That the U.S. should do well and get along with its allies. That is not necessarily the answer either, because China and Russia will resist. Then, if a great power multipolar system emerges to escape U.S. pressure, will that create some room for us?

From the narrow perspective of Korean interests, it might, but before we are Koreans, we are human beings, and we must survive as inhabitants of Earth. As one of the people of Earth, the global governance we want may have to be something completely new, for the preservation of humanity. To do that, we must ultimately reset the relationship between humans and nature. We may have to move toward a governance that resets the relationship between humans and nature, where nature is not an object of exploitation, and where we restrain human interests and desires so that we can continue to be accepted on this planet.

Technological Variables and the Future of the International Order

There is no central point for the forces demanding this. It would have to be global civil society, but that is a different story. The following content discusses another variable that will determine the future order in this situation: the technology variable. As I mentioned last Monday, EAI has many projects, and among them, AI projects are gradually increasing. I plan to introduce the AI Global website later, which deals with how we should view the changes brought about by artificial intelligence.

I talk with many artificial intelligence engineers and engineering professionals, and the development of AI is only at the very, very beginning stage. We should consider it as not even having started yet. So it is too early to talk about the changes that the U.S.-China competition or artificial intelligence will bring. Also, a linear causal relationship where AI development is the independent variable and international change is the dependent variable does not hold. For example, if AI develops, unemployment will increase, national competitiveness will be ruined, free trade will collapse, and wars between nations will be fought by robots—it will bring about changes in a form where the causal relationships are impossible to grasp. Because it is a general-purpose technology, some compare it to industrialization, some to the invention of fire, and some to the invention of language. The change is so enormous that it is difficult to gauge.

In international politics, AI is a change whose depth is difficult to fathom. We have to continue studying as we go, but it has that much potential and risk. As for the risk part, when AI was created as a language model in 2022, it appeared at a time when the post-Cold War era was ending—an era when geopolitical competition was becoming full-fledged, the U.S. unipolar hegemonic system was beginning to collapse, and all issues were becoming subordinate to security in international politics. Because the development of AI and the acceleration of U.S.-China competition or state-centric international politics have coincidentally overlapped, it will become increasingly difficult to regulate AI globally. AI will undoubtedly have a very high probability of becoming an object of competition between nations.

AI started with semiconductor export controls, then moved to critical mineral regulations, and then to a talent competition. There are now also export control procedures for models. According to a New York Times article yesterday, the U.S. government has almost finished creating a gatekeeper committee for the release of closed-source models. Anthropic and the latest models are said to be closed-source models that do not release their source code. A paper published the day before yesterday in Foreign Affairs stated that when China develops Mythos, a Mythos like Mun-shihak will have the ability to diagnose the problems of all existing cybersecurity, which, if reversed, means it will have the offensive capability to penetrate all cyber defenses.

When that is not regulated or is aligned with the interests of a specific government, AI cannot help but become a strategic asset of the state. Then, a very fierce competition will unfold, and when that competition reaches a certain level and reaches a level of mutually assured destruction, a compromise will be reached. The U.S. and China may make a grand bargain to prevent the military or cyber-attack use of AI, and then move to an NPT model that prevents other countries from developing AI. Because we are at the very beginning stages, it is difficult to gauge the changes in international politics that the technology variable will bring in the future. Right now, when we talk about not only AI but also many new technologies, we are talking about them in different forms, such as by field in international relations, technology, sociology, etc.

AI, the subject of research, is changing much faster than the researchers' pace of study. In the end, the era will be further strengthened by the human mind's inability to regulate the development of technology. In that sense, the question is how to view the U.S.'s strategy toward China. On the one hand, some see it as a fight that must be won against China, while on the other hand, some think that guardrails should be put in place and a rules-based competition should be well-managed.

There are several key issues that have emerged from there. Jake Sullivan, who was the National Security Advisor during the Biden administration and was featured in a recent Foreign Policy article, has recently created a YouTube channel and is fiercely attacking Trump. He can be said to be the Democratic Party's top strategist, and we can understand his thinking. The mission that the U.S. must undertake is not so different from that of the Trump administration. The U.S. leads in creating technology from nothing, especially in advanced technology from 0 to 1, but it lags far behind China in manufacturing capability, the ability to go from 1 to 100. And the national industrial policy support for that must come from financial support, and he is saying that although it is not the Chinese model, the role of the state is increasing.

In the U.S.-China competition, what the U.S. is thinking is to get ahead of China in any way possible. That fight is not about winning a weapons race or a war, or about living better than China, but is truly becoming a total fight. From critical minerals to talent, AI models, winning over allies, and relations with the third world Global South, it is becoming a very total fight. That is the core of Sullivan's story. Does the Trump administration fully understand the comprehensiveness of this fight and the need for a readjustment of its hegemonic policy? The answer is no.

The scholar Stephen Brooks, who visited recently, has published another article. He argues that the United States is struggling to deal with China because of Beijing's rare earth leverage. Immigrants are behind a significant portion of the weapons, new pharmaceuticals, and chemical substances produced in the U.S., and more than half of AI startup founders are immigrants. Elon Musk, for example, came from South Africa. This is an era that calls for a very proactive immigration policy, yet the United States is currently moving in the opposite direction. There are domestic political dynamics compelling this reverse course, driven by the imperative to block immigration and “save” Americans. Brooks's argument is that if the U.S. effectively teams up with its allies to pressure China, it can wield leverage far more powerful than China's rare earth leverage.

Two-thirds of China’s imports of intermediate goods for strategic sectors like electronics and IT come from U.S. allies. If these allies were to collectively decide to pressure China, they could inflict damage approximately 5 to 11 times greater than the leverage China holds over the U.S. with its minerals. In other words, the United States has the resources but does not know how to use them. Whether this is actually feasible is a separate question, but it highlights the expanding and comprehensive nature of the U.S.-China competition. The same applies to AI.

South Korea’s Strategic Position and Future Outlook

I will move on by simply noting that these discussions are happening. Finally, let's turn to the substance of South Korea's strategy. Like any country, South Korea's strategy has one pillar of self-strengthening—something akin to “Make Korea Greater.” The second is the alliance, a strategy of strengthening the alliance with the United States. The third is a third way, such as a coalition of middle powers. The paths of self-strengthening and alliance are very clear. The first thing we need to understand is that we must have our own forecast for how the international order will change. We need analysis and prediction to formulate a Plan A and a Plan B, and we must establish a framework of discourse that can maximize South Korea's interests—and even protect global interests—no matter which order materializes. To achieve this, the priority is to first analyze the current changes in the international order with great accuracy.

Ultimately, that is the role of scholars. It is crucial that our country's international relations scholars can accurately articulate a discourse for our government. Our government is desperate for such analysis; it truly wants to understand how international politics is evolving. The kind of general discussion I've offered is not very helpful. It is too academic; we need a discourse that policymakers can use immediately. This requires more scholars, think tanks, and policy researchers. The number of international relations scholars in our country is woefully inadequate for what our national interest requires. The number of bureaucrats who implement policy is also very small. Does the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have 2,000 people now? The number of diplomats per capita is extremely low. Compared to the growth in our national power, and despite the advances in our military, corporations, and cultural industries, the knowledge ecosystem needed to conduct international politics at a higher level is severely lacking. I believe there will be even fewer international relations scholars in the next generation. For various reasons, there are problems within academia, and the current international relations academic community does not have a vibrant atmosphere that combines academic and policy research. It is too academic. In this respect, the work of EAI is clearly important. Our country's policy research needs to become much more diverse. We must recognize the changes in the international order and find our role within them, which cannot be done arbitrarily. For instance, if there is a greater than 50% chance that the hegemonic system will be maintained, then the role of a middle power is to find policies that position it as a member of the hegemonic coalition, helping that system function in the most ideal way. The role of a middle power is to persuade the U.S. when it goes astray, to identify more issues with other countries in the coalition, and to have the creativity to forge new norms and institutional arrangements.

If the hegemonic system is over, with no chance of revival, and we are moving into an era of great power politics, then there is not much of a role for a middle power. In that case, we must truly adopt a damage minimization strategy, specifically a hedging strategy within a multipolar system. This means taking out multiple insurance policies, lowering public expectations by making it clear that some damage is inevitable, and setting the low goal of simply preventing war. If the path is neither of these and we must move toward a global-level effort to “save humanity,” then even if few presidents would do so, we must at least advance that discourse. The message would be: “This is not the time for us to be fighting. Disaster is imminent.” Have you seen the Netflix movie 'Don't Look Up'? A meteor is hurtling toward Earth, but everyone is busy with other things. It's the same as our current situation, where we are facing almost certain doom from climate change or other threats, yet we all act as if it's not coming and remain absorbed in maximizing our national interests. If there is a role for a middle power to create such a discourse, it could alter how other nations respond, even if it seems like a cry in the wilderness. Whether it's alliances or economic security, what's important is to secure our strategic position within the current operating principles, instead of just vaguely asserting that the international order is changing, the U.S. is declining, and we are moving toward a multipolar system.

I'll move on by just noting that these kinds of discussions are now taking place. Finally, on the substance of South Korea's strategy. Like any country, South Korea's strategy has one pillar of self-strengthening, which is something like “Make Korea Greater,” right? The second is the alliance: a strategy of strengthening the alliance with the United States. The third is a third way, like a coalition of middle powers. The paths of self-strengthening and alliance are very clear. But the first thing we need to know, going back to my initial point, is that we must have our own forecast for how the order is going to change, right? So, we first need analysis and prediction to have a Plan A and a Plan B, and we must establish our own framework of discourse to maximize South Korea's interests—and, going further, to protect global interests—no matter which order materializes. To do that, the priority is to analyze the current changes in the international order with great accuracy. Right?

That's ultimately the job of scholars. How accurately can our country's international relations scholars articulate a discourse for our government? And our government is really thirsty for that. They really want to know what's happening in international politics. But just talking about the things I've mentioned isn't very helpful. It's too academic, so we need to move toward a form of discourse that policymakers can use right away. To do that, we need scholars, we need think tanks, and we need more policy researchers. But—and this is a different topic—the number of international relations scholars in our country is woefully insufficient for what our national interest requires. The number of scholars we have, and the number of bureaucrats who implement policy, is also very small. Does the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have 2,000 people now? In terms of diplomats per capita, it's an extremely low level. So, our country, compared to the growth in its national power, has made strides in the military, business, and the culture industry, but the knowledge ecosystem, so to speak, for conducting international politics at a higher level is really lacking. And I think there will be even fewer international relations scholars in the next generation. For various reasons, there are many problems with academia, and if you ask whether the current international relations academic community has a very public, vibrant atmosphere that combines policy research, the answer is no. It's very, what should I say? Too academic. In that sense, the work of EAI is definitely important. Our country's policy research needs to become much more diverse. So, we need to recognize the changes in the international order, and within those changes, we have to find the role we should play. We can't just do that out of the blue, right? If there's a greater than 50% chance that the hegemonic system will be maintained, then the role of a middle power is to find policies that position it as a member of the hegemonic coalition, helping that system function in the most ideal way. Right? So, that means persuading the U.S. when it goes astray, identifying more issues with other countries in the coalition, and having the creativity to forge new norms and institutional arrangements. That's the role of a middle power. But what if the hegemonic system is over? If there's no chance of its revival and we're moving into an era of great power politics, then there's not much a middle power can do. In that case, we really have to go for a damage minimization strategy, a hedging strategy within a multipolar system. You take out multiple insurance policies, and after making it clear that we will ultimately take a hit, you drastically lower public expectations and set a low goal of just preventing war. If it's neither of these, and we have to go for a global-level “save humanity” effort like I mentioned before... well, there aren't many presidents who would do that, but we should at least put forward that kind of discourse. “This is not the time for us to be fighting. A disaster is right upon us.” Have you all seen that old Netflix movie, 'Don't Look Up'? The one with DiCaprio. A meteor is hurtling toward them, and it's certain they'll be destroyed soon, but everyone is busy with other things. It's a metaphor, of course. It's just like our situation now, where whether it's climate change or something else, destruction is almost certainly at our doorstep, but we all act as if it's not coming and focus on maximizing our national interests. In a situation like that, if there's a role for a middle power to create that kind of discourse, then even if it's a cry in the wilderness, the responses of other countries might differ. I'll talk more about that later, but... whether it's alliances or economic security, anyway, what's important is to secure our strategic position within the current operating principles, not just vaguely saying that the international order is changing, the U.S. is declining, and we're moving toward a multipolar system.

We must avoid the kind of discourse that suggests we must choose between being pro-China or pro-U.S. Thank you for attending on this hot summer day. I wish you good health and hope the rest of your schedule goes well.