Sad China: The Chinese Dream of the Frontier
by Song Jae-yoon, Professor of History, McMaster University, Canada
Dear Masters,
I read about Conservative’s Ideas in American Politics.
I want to share with “Peace through strength”.
Have Happy Holidays and Happy New Years.
—Hwa Chong
Editor’s Note: Politics are not a part of dojang culture. However, in Kangdukwon taekwondo as espoused by GGM Chong, geopolitics are indeed an important element in the development of senior students, who are expected to advance from the elementary level of foot soldiers who fight with their hands and feet to the higher level of generals who assess situations strategically in global terms. Readers are therefore urged to see past personalities and politics to grasp the macrocosmic dynamics of geopolitics to avoid conflict altogether with a policy of ‘Peace through Strength’ in the same way that we train so that we may never have to use our strength against others.
In 2017, Trump posted a photo of himself shaking hands with President Reagan on his Facebook account. This shows the continuity of the American conservative movement from the Reagan era to the Trump era. /Facebook
The era of Trump 2.0 is approaching. The world is asking again because a unique figure like Trump has seized the supreme power of the United States, which has the world’s strongest military and economic power. Who is Trump? What kind of person is he? Is he a bumbling Don Quixote? Is he a vacillating Hamlet? These are natural questions to ask because great power is concentrated in him, but it is impossible to properly understand America’s rapidly changing global strategy through an individual psychological analysis of Trump alone.
In order to respond wisely to the Trump 2.0 era, we should not be obsessed with the person of Trump, but should pay attention to the platform, policies, and value orientation of the American conservatives who created the Trump administration. In particular, as citizens of the Republic of Korea, who have achieved prosperity and development under the protection of the ROK-US alliance for over 70 years, shouldn’t we put aside sensational gossip and provocative speculation and explore America’s vision and strategy in the Trump 2.0 era?
To understand Trump, you have to look at the policies of his first term.
A conservative South Korean commentator with over 500,000 YouTube subscribers introduced foreign media reports predicting Harris’s victory on November 5, the day of the US presidential election, and argued that “if Trump is elected, South Korea, Taiwan, and Ukraine will face security crises,” and that “a Trump victory will be a victory for the world’s dictators.”
It is an unrealistic extreme view that Trump, who advocates America First, will abandon traditional alliances and neglect world peace for short-term national interests, and compromise with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, but this may be appealing to those who have been exposed to biased anti-Trump reports from the mainstream American media for a long time. However, if you really want to know Trump’s world strategy, you should look back at the military and foreign policy of the first Trump administration rather than examining his appearance or words and actions.
According to Robert O’Brien, the National Security Advisor of the first Trump administration, Trump has consistently pursued “peace through strength” in terms of military and diplomacy. While domestic and international media have been flooded with predictions that Trump’s impulsive actions could threaten world peace, the Trump administration has never waged a new war or expanded an existing one. Contrary to popular belief, the Trump administration was the first administration since the Carter administration (1977-1981) not to wage war.
Trump has consistently pursued a strategy of “winning without fighting,” and as a result, the Trump administration achieved at least four significant diplomatic achievements in the last 16 months of its first term. First, through US mediation, Israel signed the Abraham Accords between September 2020 and January 2021, normalizing diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. Second, through US mediation, Serbia and Kosovo normalized economic relations between the two countries. Third, under US pressure, Egypt and major Gulf states ended their disputes with Qatar and lifted their blockades of the United Arab Emirates. Fourth, through active negotiations with the Taliban, the Trump administration minimized the number of American casualties in its last year. Robert O’brien, “The Return of Peace Through Strength,” Foreign Affairs, 2024. 6. 18)
“Peace through strength”: Trump continues Reagan’s military and diplomatic line
Trump’s diplomatic line is based on the most important military and diplomatic principle that American conservatives have preached for the past 40 years. That principle is “peace through strength.” This one-liner from the Roman Emperor Hadrian (76-138) contains the basic principle of national defense that applies to the East and the West, past and present. “Peace through strength” resonates with the wisdom of “The Art of War” that “the best way is to subdue the enemy’s army without fighting (不戰而屈人之兵, 善之善者也).”
It is self-evident that no country can maintain peace if it is overwhelmed by the military power of an enemy country. Even a powerful country must continue to strengthen its military power and defend its territory without any gaps in order to prevent war. As was the case in the past, this principle cannot help but be more important as military technology develops. This is because a large-scale massacre war by a modern country will plunge all parties into the swamp of defeat, regardless of victory or defeat.
In the 250-year history of the U.S. Constitution, many presidents have taken that very principle as their motto. George Washington (1732-1799) said, “If you want peace, always prepare for war,” and Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) said, “Speak softly but carry a big stick.” In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) followed the very principle of “peace through strength” and significantly increased the defense budget from 5.2% of GDP in 1980 to 6-7% of GDP for eight years, strengthening the military. As a result, the Reagan administration was able to achieve the world-historical feat of collapsing the “evil empire” Soviet Union without firing a single shot.
Trump, who praises Reagan as the best president in American constitutional history, declared in his speech at the UN General Assembly in September 2020 that “America will fulfill its destiny as a ‘pacemaker,’ but it will be peace through strength.” This is evidence that the Trump administration has explicitly inherited the military and diplomatic line of the Reagan era. Reagan defined the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” and expressed his religious belief and political conviction to the American people that “we win, they lose.” Trump, who has inherited Reagan’s spirit, is making a head-on confrontation with China the mission of the era.
The principle of “peace through strength” was expressed as a strategy to strengthen military power in the first Trump administration. In fact, the Trump administration significantly increased the defense budget and spurred military reform. It is widely known that the Trump administration took active measures to strengthen military power by reviving the military-industrial complex, raising soldiers’ salaries three times, and establishing the United States Space Force.
Trump seems to be sticking to that principle even now. In a phone call with President Yoon Seok-yeol on November 8, he specifically asked for help from Korea’s shipbuilding industry among its various industries. During the Reagan administration, the US Navy had 592 warships, but as of 2024, that number has decreased to less than 300. That’s why Trump planned to increase the number of warships to 355 by 2032 in 2017, but he lost power and was unable to properly implement the policy (O’brien, thesis above). When he returns to the White House in January next year, it is expected that he will ask for help from Korea’s shipbuilding industry to strengthen the US naval power.
The Resurgence of American Conservatism: From Reagan to Trump
Since the 2016 presidential election, Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again (MAGA),” was actually Reagan’s motto. Trump has revived the so-called “Reagan Revolution” strategy of national reform and has called for rebuilding American society, which is currently facing crisis and chaos.
With the 60th presidential election in 2023 just one year away, conservative forces in the United States have published “Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” through the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., in order to secure the Republican Party’s return to power. This policy book, which discusses conservative forces’ strategies for taking power and governing methods in detail in five areas, including administrative organization, military strategy, social welfare, economic policy, and independent regulatory agencies, is a massive volume of over 920 pages and begins with a recollection of the “Reagan Revolution.”
In the late 1970s, when Jimmy Carter (1924-) was in power, American conservatives were gripped by a sense of crisis that American society was facing a total crisis and heading toward collapse. In the 1970s, the United States was mired in a swamp of “stagflation” in which prices were soaring despite a recession due to the oil shock that caused oil prices to soar, and factory areas were shrinking day by day as the industrial base was shrinking. In the cultural and academic fields, revisionism gained ground, destroying Americans’ historical pride, and the counter-culture movement threatened traditional values.
The anti-war protests and the “liberal revolution” that swept through American society at the time completely destroyed the historical pride, patriotism, and Christian values of Americans who had been living traditional lives. In particular, the shocking scene of the “fall of Saigon” in Vietnam, which was broadcast to every home across the United States on April 30, 1975, seemed like a signal flare announcing the fall of the superpower called the United States and the rise of communism. There was a widespread ideological fear among American conservatives that the American-led liberal international order might collapse after being defeated by the communist bloc led by the Soviet Union. As families were torn apart, schools and churches collapsed, and village communities collapsed, crime rates soared throughout American society. At the time, the Carter administration tried to eradicate poverty and build a social safety net, but the government sector only grew larger, and the low-income class fell into even more extreme poverty while remaining dependent on the government.
To today’s American conservatives, the current crisis in American society is strikingly similar to the situation in America in the late 1970s. In their eyes, the political correctness movement and wokism that have swept American society for the past decade or so are nothing more than a rerun of the hippie anti-social movement that was widespread in the 1960s or the “radical chic” that was popular in the 1970s. (“Radical chic” here refers to the tendency of the wealthy elite to agree with radical leftist claims without any conviction or logic of their own, just as if they were buying fashion products. In Korean, it would be something like the false consciousness of the Gangnam left.)
As in the late 1970s, middle-class families in America today are struggling financially due to inflation, the poor are trapped in poverty, the number of deaths from fentanyl abuse is increasing by the day, and the youth are suffering from serious identity confusion due to the spread of transgenderism and pornography. The reality that China, which is rising at a frightening pace, is threatening the American industrial base with cheap manufactured goods and is waging a political warfare that is both subtle and aggressively destroying the United States from within is also reminiscent of the ideological, military, and political threats that the Soviet Union posed to the United States in the past. (Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise)
Trump’s Secret to Victory: Read Minds and Tell the Truth
In the 1980 US presidential election, the 70-year-old Reagan, who was nominated as the Republican candidate, actively preached to conservative voters who were tired of the counter-culture counterattack and wanted fundamental change, the US’s world-historical contribution to leading the Allied forces to victory in World War II, blocking communism, and maintaining the liberal international order. As the eight-year “Reagan Revolution” era came to an end, the communist regimes in Eastern Europe soon collapsed one after another, and at the end of December 1991, the Soviet Union was officially dissolved. It was the moment when the US completely won the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, which seemed like it would last forever. Through the Reagan Revolution, American conservatives were able to regain national pride and historical self-esteem, as well as traditional values and a Christian worldview. In the long-awaited 1990s, they finally spoke of the victory of American-style liberal democracy and the “end of history.”
Entering the 2010s, Americans had almost lost the messianic hope that had excited them in the 1990s. American conservatives, who remember the glory of the 1980s, diligently carried out social movements to regain power ahead of the 2024 presidential election. They dreamed of the emergence of a hero who could revive conservative values like Reagan in 1980. The policy book they published clearly presented a vision for rebuilding America. Their vision was established as a platform to revive the broken family, restore sound common sense, rebuild civic self-government, restore traditional values, and expand personal freedom. Trump accurately grasped the values of such American conservatives and displayed excellent showmanship to play the role of “Reagan in the 1980s” in the 2024 presidential election.
The United States has been maintaining and managing the liberal international order as the world’s policeman for 70 to 80 years, with military bases in over 140 countries around the world. Although they do not say it out loud, many Americans have great pride in their country, which has fulfilled the historic mission of maintaining world peace since World War II. Americans who grew up in small towns, attending church and hearing the Bible, have lived their entire lives praying every night and calling on the name of Jesus as a habit. However, at some point, they have faced a world where it is difficult to even speak out about their religious beliefs. What is it like when parents are afraid to even talk about or convey traditional views on the opposite sex and sexual ethics to their children? In the wake of this presidential election, conservative forces in small cities have become politicized as much as leftist groups preaching freedom of transgenderism and workism.
Trump regained power on their support. He publicly defended the suppressed pride, wounded religious beliefs, and uneasy family values of Americans driven by cultural anxiety, and declared that he would protect common sense and freedom, and he fired direct and blunt verbal arrows at the other side. As a result, ordinary American citizens with traditional values who had to hide their identity due to cultural Marxism gave him enthusiastic support and encouragement. This is because Trump accurately read their minds and honestly told them the truth about what they felt.
Looking at the lineage of American conservatism from Reagan to Trump, it seems clear that Trump’s America First policy is not a strategy to reduce or give up America’s international status and role as the world’s policeman and peace mediator. Trump’s military diplomacy strategy can be said to be a strategy to more effectively blockade China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran by further strengthening ties with traditional allies. The phrase “America First is not American Alone,” which high-ranking officials in the first Trump administration recited like a mantra, eloquently speaks to this point.
In military terms, Trumpism is not a return to diplomatic isolationism, but rather a reaffirmation of the military self-reliance line pursued by the Reagan administration in the 1980s. Just as Reagan brought down the evil empire of the Soviet Union under the banner of freedom, Trump has taken up the baton of freedom and has predicted a confrontation with totalitarian China, which tramples on the freedom and human rights of its citizens. It is impossible to predict the Trump 2.0 era without looking at the flow of American conservatism from Reagan to Trump.
The return to the Reagan era is not just Trump’s personal idea, but the general public opinion of the American conservatives who created the Trump 2.0 era. The American society that recreated Trump’s power is now yearning for a hero like Reagan, who fundamentally healed the United States from the brink of collapse in the 1980s and rebuilt it as the world’s strongest country. It is unclear whether Trump can play Reagan’s role. However, in order to establish an effective policy toward the United States, any country’s leader should try to read the minds of ordinary American citizens who brought Trump back. <Continued>
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Source: Chosun.com of 2024.11.23.