Why global anarchy demands a governance upgrade
Eugene Lee
The year 2026 has arrived not with a whisper, but with a bang that has shaken the foundations of the international order. Only days into the new year, the world is reeling from the removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from their residence in Caracas. As Maduro sits in a New York prison cell facing charges including narco-terrorism, the global community is left to grapple with a blunt reality: international relations is not a courtroom, but a theater of anarchy.
This event is a masterclass in Realpolitik. Will it be Cuba, Colombia, Iran or even Greenland next I don’t know, but it is a reminder that in a world without a global sovereign, states, particularly superpowers, will do whatever they deem necessary to secure their interests. While the rhetoric of "justice" and "rule of law" will fill the airwaves, for me the underlying arithmetic is simpler - Venezuela holds the largest proven oil reserves on the planet. In an era of shifting alliances and energy insecurity, those reserves are a gravity well that no superpower can ignore. I can only imagine the polite, sweating tension as President Lee met President Xi in Beijing, both having Venezuela in the back of their minds while toasting to “regional stability”.
The situation is far from over, but for a mid-sized power like South Korea, the lesson is chillingly clear. The guardrails haven't just been removed; they’ve been sold for scrap. The "Trump factor" and his preference for transactional diplomacy over traditional alliances and systemic global volatility are here to stay. It is no longer a temporary storm to be weathered, it is the new climate. In such a world, staying agile and assertive is not just a strategy — it is a requirement for survival.
However, agility cannot be the sole burden of the president. No leader, no matter how capable, can navigate this level of global volatility on their own. To survive 2026, the presidency requires a team of experts — ministers and advisors who possess not just loyalty, but high-level technical competence and strategic foresight. Looking at recent televised cabinet meetings, however, the "team of experts" seems more like a collection of administrators struggling with the basics of management. One could applaud President Lee’s demanding approach, but on the other hand, it is hard to conceive how bad the ministers are if they still need to be schooled on what to do and how. The administration appoints leaders to over three hundred state and quasi-public entities. If the highest levels of the cabinet display a lack of strategic depth, we must ask how far this incompetence extends through the veins of our public institutions.
Nowhere was this lack of "imaginative competence" more visible than in the recent National Assembly hearing regarding Coupang’s massive user data breach. The hearing, which addressed the theft of personal data for millions of users due to systemic security failures, devolved into a tragicomedy of errors. The executive in question, despite living and operating in Korea, could not express himself in the local tongue. This linguistic gap meant that critical questions of national security and consumer privacy were lost in a fog of incomprehension. It was a perfect microcosm of our leadership crisis: a high-stakes environment where the "experts" literally cannot speak the same language as the problems they are meant to solve.
This brings me back to the wellspring of our national talent: the education system. For decades, the pursuit of education abroad has been seen as the ultimate credential for Korean leadership. We have spent billions sending our brightest minds to Western institutions, hoping they would return with a secret for success. Instead, we find that these imported credentials often lack the "indigenous" grit and localized creative skill required to lead within the Korean context. It is time to stop outsourcing our intellectual development. We must prioritize and improve education within our own borders by encouraging domestic institutions that welcome critical thinking, disruption and deep local wisdom.
Some pundits suggest a "return to the past," advocating for a revival of rigid hierarchies. I see that as a path to national doom. Then there is the New Public Management (NPM) approach, touting business-like efficiency in public service, but after a decade of use it has fallen short of expectations, especially in the provinces. We need more followers of a new tradition. We need patriotic leaders who can synthesize global trends with local realities, and especially those who are in touch with people and be able to work with the center.
Then there is AI. So far, its global boom is allowing Samsung and SK Hynix to rake in billions while making things more expensive for average citizens and deepening social inequality. Without competent leadership to steer this digital transformation, AI will only serve to automate our existing incompetence.
The tone of my critique is undeniably sharp, but it is born of a desire for the very change the President envisioned during his campaign. He ran on a platform of structural reform and merit-based competence, with a vision of a more agile, modern Korea. As we face the anarchy of 2026, that vision has yet to materialize into a functional reality. If Korea is to survive this year, we must stop training our students to pass tests and start teaching them how to lead. The era of the manager who merely follows a script is over. The era of the leader must begin, or we will find ourselves as victims of the very anarchy we are currently watching from afar.
Eugene Lee (mreulee@gmail.com) is a lecturing professor at the Graduate School of Governance at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul. Specializing in international relations and governance, his research and teaching focus is on national and regional security, international development, government policies, and Northeast and Central Asia. The views expressed in this article are his own.