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Alarmed by Trump's verbal attacks, symbolic missteps, and unpredictable behavior, the Korean people's confidence in the administration quickly fell to unprecedented depths.
One poll revealed that only 17 percent of South Koreans believed that he would "do the right thing regarding world affairs," a dramatic decline from 88 percent at the end of the Obama years. To preserve this critical relationship, South Korean leaders must re-conceptualize their approach to the U.S. for as long as Trump is in the White House.
Doing so requires them to recognize that his policies are not about any specific Korean action or policy. They are instead a reflection of his larger worldview, one that is rooted in a dramatic rejection of American foreign policy traditions, and one that holds potentially serious consequences for South Korea in particular.
Since the end of World War II, American foreign policy has been rooted in what some call "liberal internationalism." This worldview rests on two central pillars. The first is the existence of institutional structures such as the United Nations, the World Bank, NATO and SEATO, which were designed to bind participating nations together in ways that could ensure relative stability and prosperity.
Beyond these structures, however, nations were to be further connected by an underlying ideological commitment.
Liberal internationalism reflected a commitment to certain shared fundamental principles, including a belief in democratic governance and the rule of law; support for a free media, civil liberties, and basic political protections; a commitment to the spread of capitalism and free trade; recognition of the sanctity of contracts and the centrality of international trade bodies; a pledge of nonaggression between participating states; and a belief in the importance of international bodies and multilateral agreements.
In pursuit of economic gain, of course, the U.S. did not always live up to the broader democratic ideals it promised. Still, the architects of liberal internationalism genuinely believed that the world would be a better and safer place for everyone if this value system spread across the globe.
"We could be the wealthiest and the most mighty nation and still lose the battle of the world if we do not help our world neighbors protect their freedom and advance their social and economic progress," President Eisenhower declared. "It is not the goal of the American people that the United States should be the richest nation in the graveyard of history."
South Korea, more than any other country, demonstrates the success of the liberal internationalist system. From the ashes of the Korean War in 1953, the ROK, supported by the U.S., steadily rebuilt itself along liberal internationalist lines. A powerful economy emerged over the next few decades, one rooted in industrial development and international trade.
Even today, Korea remains the only country to have gone from being a recipient of international development aid to a donor of international aid. The political evolution emerged more slowly, but recent events surrounding the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye offer evidence of the vibrancy and dynamism of its democracy as well. South Korea, simply, reflects everything that the architects of liberal internationalism hoped to achieve.
President Trump, however, fundamentally rejects these principles. His administration, steeped in the business world of stockholders, quarterly financial reports, and cost-benefit analysis, sees foreign policy solely as a way to maximize short-term financial benefits for the U.S.
America's history of supporting long-term development programs in the hopes of creating new liberal international states, or of maintaining long-term relationships that are based on shared values and histories, are anathema to such a vision that evaluates everything based on immediate monetary results. Shortly after the inauguration, a group of military advisers briefed Trump about the roots of American foreign policy.
The greatest thing the World War II generation had created, they told him, was "the rules-based postwar international order." The president rejected their position. The postwar international order, he replied, "is not working at all." It was, he explained, "exactly what I don't want."
Korea's very success as a liberal internationalist state has thus brought it into conflict with the American president. The administration is not specifically anti-Korea; it is simply hostile to any relationship that cannot be measured by a calculator, and the long connections between the U.S. and Korea make such appraisals impossible.
The Trump administration thus cares nothing for the critical role the United States played in ROK development, nor for the partnership that emerged over the Cold War years. It cares nothing for the hundreds of thousands of Korean deaths in the Korean War, nor the important role Korean troops played in Vietnam.
It cares nothing for Korean development, for Korean cultural exchange, or even for Korean democracy. It cares only about immediate financial gain. As Jared Kushner, one of Trump closest foreign policy advisers, explained, "I'm a businessman, and I don't care about the past. Old allies can be enemies, or enemies can be friends."
This value system helps explain the president's behavior towards South Korea. No previous American leader would have so overtly charged the nation with failing to contribute to its defense costs, rejected already-accepted trade deals, haggled over the price of defense systems, or unilaterally cancelled important joint military exercises.
For the Trump administration, however, the nuances of traditional diplomacy and the critical role played by the ROK in the American-led world system are irrelevant. Nothing matters beyond the immediate financial bottom line.
Liberal internationalism has been replaced by a Walmart unilateralism, and it is now the great task of the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs to recognize and adapt to this new reality.
Mitchell Lerner (Lerner.26@osu.edu) is associate professor of history and director of the Institute for Korean Studies at the Ohio State University. He is also associate editor of the Journal of American-East Asian Relations. Follow him at: @MitchellLerner.
