At the beginning of November, after a tour spent collecting tributes and flattery across East Asia, Donald Trump left behind a region that has been further destabilized by his ignorance and impulsive behavior.
The one-year trade truce between the United States and China dominated media coverage of the last leg of his itinerary, which took in the South Korean city of Gyeongju and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. The brief lull in hostilities between the two powers will not address their growing economic and military rivalry.
The territorial and military ambitions of regional players such as the two Korean states and Japan are compounding the grim outlook for the region. Each player is seeking to secure its place in a shifting landscape, balanced between an old superpower in decline and a new one on the rise.
Just as North Korea was never a satellite state of the USSR or China, having always followed an agenda of its own, South Korea is not — or at any rate no longer is — a neo-colony of the United States. As such, it is developing new strategies and military capacities for the emerging world order.
At the summit on November 1, South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, publicly asked Trump to provide fuel for nuclear submarines that his government plans to build, and to authorize Seoul to enrich and reprocess spent uranium rods. Lee justified the request by noting that Seoul’s existing diesel submarines fall short in tracking North Korean and Chinese vessels. This unprecedented remark explicitly linked Seoul’s naval capabilities to US strategic interests in the region, while signaling a gradual attempt to reduce its economic ties with China, its largest trade partner.
Just as North Korea was never a satellite state of the USSR or China, South Korea is not a neo-colony of the United States.
The following day, Trump gave his approval for South Korea to build nuclear submarines on the condition that it does so at a Philadelphia shipyard owned by…
Auteur: Kap Seol
