Forum Journal

As a result of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Joe Biden of the Democratic Party will take office for the upcoming four years. Although U.S. foreign policy is expected to be more stable and predictable in the Biden administration, it is likely that its foreign policy will produce a modified U.S. global leadership, which has the features of both Trump’s America First foreign policy and the global leader of the liberal international order. Meanwhile, it is anticipated that U.S.-China relations could be more manageable in the Biden administration than it did in the Trump presidency even if U.S.-China strategic competition will persist. To maintain the strategic balance between U.S. and China, South Korea needs to pursue the ‘principled diplomacy,’ aimed at advancing its national interests based on the principles of ‘openness, transparency, and inclusiveness.’

The American government’s broad ranging efforts targeting an array of challenges to US interests posed by the policies and behavior of the Chinese government developed through close collaboration between the Trump administration and both Democrats and Republicans in the Congress. Emerging erratically in the first year of the Trump administration in late 2017, the US government’s hardening against China later demonstrated momentum in gaining greater support in the United States. It reached a high point during the heat of the 2020 presidential election campaign as the most important foreign policy issue in the campaign. South Korea has shown more angst over its vulnerability to negative fallout from the growing US-China rivalry than any other regional power. South Korea is very exposed and has few good options for dealing with the intensifying US-China rivalry. Prevailing assumptions are that a tough US policy toward China will continue in 2021 and strong Chinese retaliation will follow South Korean moves to align with the United States in the rivalry with China.

Security is an increasingly contested concept in terms of referent object and the scope of issues covered in its conceptualization and provision. Traditional approaches have addressed the survival of states in a hostile operating environment focusing on questions of war and peace from the perspectives of national or systemic interstate security. Even if traditional approaches can be seen to have functioned reasonably well within the limited parameters of the old state-centric operating environment, they have fallen short in addressing new challenges to state and international security that do not originate from state actors. They have also proven to be very limited in their ability to embrace nontraditional security (NTS) perspectives relevant to the provision of human security for vulnerable individuals and groups, or biospheric security. Furthermore, there is a lack of understanding and consideration of the intersections and interdependencies between different levels of security analysis and policy provision. This paper, therefore, advocates a holistic model of understanding of the mechanisms of the contemporary security operating environment, and comprehensive policy prescription to address old and new security challenges, traditional and NTS issues, and the spillover between them.

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread rapidly around the world since it was first reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. As of late July 2020, the global number of confirmed cases has surpassed eighteen million, with fatalities reaching 700,000. None of the five oceans or six continents remain free of COVID-19 diagnoses. The pandemic has brought about unprecedented sudden impacts on people’s economic, social, and political life. International relations have been equally devastated by the pandemic, precipitating new discourse on world order in the post-COVID-19 era. After having examined five contending scenarios of future world order (walled cities and the new medieval age, Pax American II, Pax Sinica, Pax Universalis, and status quo of asymmetric US-China bipolarity), the article predicts that the status quo order is likely to continue in the post-coronavirus era. Fierce hegemonic rivalry between China and the US will pose a serious existential dilemma to South Korea. In order to cope with the challenge of the worsening status quo order, South Korea is required to seek a sagacious and resolute diplomacy backed up by a broad national consensus.

This article makes three points about the post-COVID international political economy, the first of which is that the pandemic is far from over. Rather, it is moving into a completely different phase when developing countries, rather than advanced industrial states, will be its victims. The consequences include not only more severe public health risks, but also a wave of debt crises in both low-income and middle-income countries. The second point is that the pandemic is likely to generate ideational changes. Despite populist backlashes, publics will demand that governments develop the capabilities to protect them, not only from health shocks but from economic ones as well. State capacity will come to the fore. Finally, looking at the US-China relationship, we should not count on a snapback under a Biden administration. Although we can expect a shift toward more multilateral approaches to the Asia-Pacific, Democrats have their own reasons to limit risks from China; the trade war—broadly conceived—will continue even if on new turf.

How is multilateralism and regionalism in East Asia coping with the COVID-19 pandemic and economic shocks? This article argues that East Asian countries have shown a high degree of convergence in their approach to the pandemic and the informal institutional arrangements of the region have shown quite a bit of resilience overall. There will be some adjustment to supply chains but not a drastic economic fragmentation. However, the region is also beset with increasing security tensions that are related to the US-China confrontations and hardening of governance in China and the US, in addition to Indo-Chinese tensions. The future will be shaped by this balance of continued resilience and securitization occurring at the same time.

COVID-19 did not facilitate cooperation between the US and China but caused the bilateral relations to worsen further instead. US domestic politics, China’s “wolf warrior” diplomacy, and the pre-existing US-China rivalry are important contributing factors to the deterioration. Such deterioration amid the pandemic outbreak has presented a certain degree of security challenges in East Asia around Taiwan, the East and South China Seas, and the Korean Peninsula. Regional players in East Asia, namely Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, must look for a balance point between the two great powers to optimize security and economic benefits. To create and maintain regional prosperity and stability, cooperation between the US and China is necessary, which can be achieved through efforts of the two great powers and also of the regional players.

The world is in turmoil. The corona-pandemic continues to take lives and disrupt daily lives across the globe. This happens against a backdrop of a declining US and western-based world order and a resurgence of authoritarian rulers. In this essay, I discuss the inability of the international community to respond to the pandemic, especially as it relates to helping countries in armed conflict. At the end of March, the UN Secretary-General issued an urgent plea for a worldwide ceasefire to help communities cope with the pandemic. The plea was not met with adequate international support. I moreover show that regimes across the globe have used the pandemic to restrict political and civil liberties. In sum, we risk emerging from the pandemic as a less democratic world.

The main theme of our first issue is "After COVID-19," a timely subject as the spread of COVID-19 continues to affect the daily lives of people around the world. Moon Chung-in of Yonsei University, Stephan Haggard of University of California San Diego, Yves Tiberghien of University of British Columbia, Zhu Feng and Wang Xiaotian of Nanjing University, and Håvard Mokleiv Nygård of Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) made contributions to this first issue. They have shared their knowledge and insights regarding the impact COVID-19 had on the world so far and how it is going to shape the future of multilateralism, democracies, US-China relations, and East Asia. (We want to notify that the Jeju Forum Journal is committed to political neutrality and that the manuscripts in our publication do not represent our official views.