The world still fears American retreat
Park Jung-won
The Middle East conflict is not yet over. The United States and Iran may be edging toward a diplomatic framework intended to halt the fighting, but the odds of renewed escalation remain high. Washington has continued limited strikes under the banner of self-defense, while Iran has responded with missile attacks on U.S. military facilities in Kuwait.
Yet the more important question is this: Why does the United States, still the world’s most powerful military power, appear so uncertain and hesitant? Why has Washington failed to decisively resolve the two central issues at the heart of this conflict — the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear ambitions?
Many observers explain this simply as the results of the impulsive and unpredictable personality of U.S. President Donald Trump. Certainly, Trump matters — but Trump himself is also a product of a deeper problem: The accumulated fatigue of a hegemonic power increasingly uncertain about the burdens and costs of maintaining the international order it once built and defended.
In “War and Change in World Politics,” Robert Gilpin warned long ago that hegemony is never cost-free. International public goods like freedom of navigation, financial stability, alliance systems and open trade routes survive only because someone bears the strategic burden. Over time, however, resistance inevitably grows within the hegemonic state itself. Questions emerge as people in those states ask, "Why must we continue paying the price for global order?"
To be fair, America’s allies have increased defense spending and security contributions in recent years. But after Iraq, Afghanistan and years of domestic polarization, strategic fatigue and isolationist sentiment have clearly taken root within American society. Trumpism did not arise in a vacuum.
The paradox remains unmistakable, though. The world still fears American retreat more than American power.
Hedley Bull argued in “The Anarchical Society” that although international society exists under conditions of anarchy, a certain degree of order has nonetheless been maintained through international law, shared norms, diplomatic practices and the stabilizing role of major powers. For all of America’s flaws, it remains difficult to deny that the United States is still the only country capable of managing the broader international order in any meaningful sense.
The Iran conflict has exposed how dangerous strategic miscalculation can become. Washington appears to have underestimated the Iranian regime and its capacity for endurance. As a result, the Strait of Hormuz was not addressed decisively enough in the early stages of the crisis, despite Tehran openly signaling for years that it viewed it as a strategic lever.
Former National Security Adviser John Bolton recently warned that if the principle of free navigation in Hormuz is weakened, the consequences will extend far beyond the Gulf. Other strategic waterways like the Strait of Malacca, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles could eventually face similar geopolitical pressures. In that sense, this is no longer simply a Middle Eastern crisis but rather a challenge to the international maritime order itself.
Why did Washington fail to respond more decisively in the early stages of the conflict? Why was the United States unable to develop a more coherent strategy for a risk that had long been discussed and anticipated? This was not merely a military failure. It exposed how strategic uncertainty and unclear priorities can produce costly mistakes, even for the world’s most powerful state.
The real issue now is not how quickly Trump can extricate himself from this conflict. The more serious question is whether the United States can afford to retreat without resolving the core problems of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear program. If Washington retreats without convincingly resolving the core issues, Russia, China, North Korea and Iran will see far more than a failed Middle Eastern policy. They will see a demonstration that the United States no longer possesses the will to defend the international order it has led and upheld for decades.
That is precisely why Trump now faces what may be the defining test of his political life. What is required at this moment is not more improvisation or transactional politics, but a clear willingness to restore order and demonstrate strategic resolve.
Of course the United States cannot bear every burden alone. America’s European and Asian allies must also recognize that Hormuz and freedom of navigation are not merely Middle Eastern concerns — they are central to the global economy and the international order itself. If Washington succeeds in restoring a basic degree of order, its allies must then assume a greater role in burden-sharing and strategic coordination. If Trump succeeds in carrying this process through to the end, history may remember him very differently from the way many regard him today.
For South Korea, however, the stakes could hardly be higher. The state of South Korean politics today is deeply troubling. North Korea has formally redefined inter-Korean relations as between hostile states, while military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow continues to deepen. A South Korea-operated cargo ship even suffered damage from a suspected Iranian missile attack. Enormous security issues such as wartime operational control transfer and “self-reliant defense” are too often reduced to applause lines and political slogans.
President Lee Jae Myung has repeatedly suggested that wartime operational control could be transferred to South Korea “as early as tomorrow.” He once warned against foreign actors targeting South Korean nationals overseas. “Mess with Koreans, ruin your and your families’ lives,” he wrote on social media in response to the growing number of Koreans falling victim to scam operations in Cambodia.
However, when confronted with an increasingly precarious international environment, that confidence becomes far harder to explain. If self-reliant defense is truly the goal, then defense against whom, with what capabilities and under what strategic framework? It is easy to invoke self-reliance when it serves domestic politics. It is far harder to spell out how it would actually work when the world becomes more dangerous.
International order does not sustain itself. It survives only through responsibility, sacrifice and strategic judgment. Today we seem increasingly surrounded by political slogans, emotional mobilization and easy certainties, while the language of responsibility grows ever fainter. That may be the most dangerous sign of all.
Park Jung-won (park_jungwon@hotmail.com), Ph.D. in law from the London School of Economics (LSE), is a professor of international law at Dankook University.