By Lee Jong-eun
This month marks the Korean War's 72nd anniversary, a key defining event in the Cold War. Years ago, when I first read, "The Origins of the Korean War" written by U.S. historian Bruce Cumings, I was intrigued by his comparisons of U.S. Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
"Roosevelt's post-WWII foreign policy vision was like that of a corporate shareholder content to maintain a 51-percent majority share. So long as the U.S. remained the biggest shareholder, Roosevelt was willing to create a world order that guaranteed a significant share for the Soviet Union. In contrast, Truman's foreign policy was like that of a corporate owner determined to retain over 80 percent of his company's share. Even if it meant dividing the world into two ideological blocs, Truman was committed to ensuring at least that the 'free' bloc remained solidly under U.S. dominance."
Cumings' point was that while Roosevelt was willing to share the Korean Peninsula with the USSR under joint trusteeship, Truman prioritized ensuring that South Korea remained firmly under U.S. geopolitical hegemony. Ultimately, Truman's strategy prevailed, and an iron curtain was drawn over the Korean Peninsula, consolidating through the experiences of the Korean War.
Whether or not Cumings' historical descriptions are accurate, his comparison raises relevant questions even today, as many experts warn that the world faces risks of a new cold war. Could competing ideological powers share the world order? Or would dividing the world into clear geopolitical blocs contribute to a more stable coexistence?
One argument is that global stability requires an integrated world order where both liberal and non-liberal states share influences and privileges. A solution to the conflict between the "liberal order" and the non-liberal powers is to accommodate ideological diversity and balance within the world order. At the same time, liberal democracies would assert a greater share of influence over the international order to deter non-liberal member states from seriously distorting the order's core liberal features.
In the past century, Roosevelt invited the USSR to become a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, and Bill Clinton endorsed China becoming a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), elevating these non-liberal states in earlier eras to be global stakeholders.
Even recently, similar proposals have suggested offering potential revisionist powers opportunities for co-governance within the existing liberal world order. One proposal has suggested inviting Russia to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), while another proposal has suggested that China's membership in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) could allay China's suspicion toward the latter as an economic restraint against China's rise.
However, skepticism toward the strategy of integrating non-liberal states has also increased in recent years. Critics have warned that a heterogeneous international order is vulnerable to internal schisms. With Russia and China exercising veto powers in the U.N. Security Council, the U.N. has faced increasing criticism for being unable to take decisive actions on security crises in Northeast Asia, Syria and Ukraine.
Skeptics have also questioned the effectiveness of an international order mitigating the non-liberal behaviors of its member states. Rather, the non-liberal states could attempt to subvert the international institutions to "de-liberalize" the international order and eventually surpass the influences of liberal democracies. Subsequently, mutual distrust and incompatible aspirations among member states could unravel internal balance and restraints within a uniform global order.
An alternative argument advocates that "decoupling" the world into distinct ideological, geopolitical blocs would contribute more to international stability. By constructing cohesive partnerships based on "common values," participating states could reinforce mutual reassurances in collective deterrence against ideologically adversarial actors. Strategic clarity among adversarial geopolitical blocs could reduce ambiguities and uncertainties in international disputes. For example, suppose an "alliance of democracies" establishes more explicit differentiation between democracies vs. non-democracies?
Suppose defense of the "free and open Indo-Pacific" is enforced by countries that are, in fact, "free and open?" While such measures risk pressuring countries to take a side, advocates defend them as promoting greater predictability in the behaviors of individual states and multilateral institutions. Such cohesive geopolitical blocs could also improve the signaling of "red lines" of mutual restraint among adversarial powers.
A proposal for greater security cooperation between NATO, Japan and South Korea, for example, could enhance critical deterrence against revisionist geopolitical expansions in Europe and Asia. In turn, the Russia-China alignment could signal counter-deterrence against the West's overreach.
An important implication of a divided world, however, is that it would be a world "half-lost" for the liberal world order. Advocacies for strategic clarity and deterrence among contemporary liberal democracies reflect growing pessimism toward post-cold war efforts to integrate non-liberal regimes.
Subsequent proposals for restraining, even isolating the latter's global influence would likely provoke similar strategic entrenchment among non-liberal regimes, shrinking the boundary of the liberal world order. After three decades of post-cold war attempts at global integration, a decoupling would be a costly, cumbersome process, as evidenced by the impact of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War.
Should the West continue to engage with non-liberal regimes to prevent the emergence of a new iron curtain? Or should the West focus on restructuring a smaller, more cohesive liberal semi-world order? One legacy of the Korean War was that it might have irreversibly set the course of global geopolitics toward an "external balancing" between adversarial blocs rather than an "internal balancing" within a unified order.
Perhaps the window of decision-making is still open for today's liberal democracies. If so, the liberal democracies must confront the same old dilemma: risk a more integrated world vulnerable to fluctuations of different shades of color or risk a more divided world composed of clearer "red and blue" blocs.
Lee Jong-eun (jl4375a@student.american.edu), Ph.D. candidate, is an adjunct faculty member at the American University School of International Service. Prior to this, he has served as a South Korean Air Force intelligence officer. His research specialty includes U.S. foreign policy, South Korean politics and foreign policy, alliance management and East Asian regional security.
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"Roosevelt's post-WWII foreign policy vision was like that of a corporate shareholder content to maintain a 51-percent majority share. So long as the U.S. remained the biggest shareholder, Roosevelt was willing to create a world order that guaranteed a significant share for the Soviet Union. In contrast, Truman's foreign policy was like that of a corporate owner determined to retain over 80 percent of his company's share. Even if it meant dividing the world into two ideological blocs, Truman was committed to ensuring at least that the 'free' bloc remained solidly under U.S. dominance."
Cumings' point was that while Roosevelt was willing to share the Korean Peninsula with the USSR under joint trusteeship, Truman prioritized ensuring that South Korea remained firmly under U.S. geopolitical hegemony. Ultimately, Truman's strategy prevailed, and an iron curtain was drawn over the Korean Peninsula, consolidating through the experiences of the Korean War.
Whether or not Cumings' historical descriptions are accurate, his comparison raises relevant questions even today, as many experts warn that the world faces risks of a new cold war. Could competing ideological powers share the world order? Or would dividing the world into clear geopolitical blocs contribute to a more stable coexistence?
One argument is that global stability requires an integrated world order where both liberal and non-liberal states share influences and privileges. A solution to the conflict between the "liberal order" and the non-liberal powers is to accommodate ideological diversity and balance within the world order. At the same time, liberal democracies would assert a greater share of influence over the international order to deter non-liberal member states from seriously distorting the order's core liberal features.
In the past century, Roosevelt invited the USSR to become a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, and Bill Clinton endorsed China becoming a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), elevating these non-liberal states in earlier eras to be global stakeholders.
Even recently, similar proposals have suggested offering potential revisionist powers opportunities for co-governance within the existing liberal world order. One proposal has suggested inviting Russia to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), while another proposal has suggested that China's membership in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) could allay China's suspicion toward the latter as an economic restraint against China's rise.
However, skepticism toward the strategy of integrating non-liberal states has also increased in recent years. Critics have warned that a heterogeneous international order is vulnerable to internal schisms. With Russia and China exercising veto powers in the U.N. Security Council, the U.N. has faced increasing criticism for being unable to take decisive actions on security crises in Northeast Asia, Syria and Ukraine.
Skeptics have also questioned the effectiveness of an international order mitigating the non-liberal behaviors of its member states. Rather, the non-liberal states could attempt to subvert the international institutions to "de-liberalize" the international order and eventually surpass the influences of liberal democracies. Subsequently, mutual distrust and incompatible aspirations among member states could unravel internal balance and restraints within a uniform global order.
An alternative argument advocates that "decoupling" the world into distinct ideological, geopolitical blocs would contribute more to international stability. By constructing cohesive partnerships based on "common values," participating states could reinforce mutual reassurances in collective deterrence against ideologically adversarial actors. Strategic clarity among adversarial geopolitical blocs could reduce ambiguities and uncertainties in international disputes. For example, suppose an "alliance of democracies" establishes more explicit differentiation between democracies vs. non-democracies?
Suppose defense of the "free and open Indo-Pacific" is enforced by countries that are, in fact, "free and open?" While such measures risk pressuring countries to take a side, advocates defend them as promoting greater predictability in the behaviors of individual states and multilateral institutions. Such cohesive geopolitical blocs could also improve the signaling of "red lines" of mutual restraint among adversarial powers.
A proposal for greater security cooperation between NATO, Japan and South Korea, for example, could enhance critical deterrence against revisionist geopolitical expansions in Europe and Asia. In turn, the Russia-China alignment could signal counter-deterrence against the West's overreach.
An important implication of a divided world, however, is that it would be a world "half-lost" for the liberal world order. Advocacies for strategic clarity and deterrence among contemporary liberal democracies reflect growing pessimism toward post-cold war efforts to integrate non-liberal regimes.
Subsequent proposals for restraining, even isolating the latter's global influence would likely provoke similar strategic entrenchment among non-liberal regimes, shrinking the boundary of the liberal world order. After three decades of post-cold war attempts at global integration, a decoupling would be a costly, cumbersome process, as evidenced by the impact of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War.
Should the West continue to engage with non-liberal regimes to prevent the emergence of a new iron curtain? Or should the West focus on restructuring a smaller, more cohesive liberal semi-world order? One legacy of the Korean War was that it might have irreversibly set the course of global geopolitics toward an "external balancing" between adversarial blocs rather than an "internal balancing" within a unified order.
Perhaps the window of decision-making is still open for today's liberal democracies. If so, the liberal democracies must confront the same old dilemma: risk a more integrated world vulnerable to fluctuations of different shades of color or risk a more divided world composed of clearer "red and blue" blocs.
Lee Jong-eun (jl4375a@student.american.edu), Ph.D. candidate, is an adjunct faculty member at the American University School of International Service. Prior to this, he has served as a South Korean Air Force intelligence officer. His research specialty includes U.S. foreign policy, South Korean politics and foreign policy, alliance management and East Asian regional security.
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