The abrupt end to 75 years of U.S. policy on South Korea?

South Korea is not your grandfather’s country. It’s time to rethink the Korean Peninsula.

South Korea has long been shaped—directly and indirectly—by the intellectual legacy of America’s most influential international relations thinkers. Figures like Hans Morgenthau, Henry Kissinger, and Zbigniew Brzezinski cast long shadows over South Korea. It is through their works that decision-makers formed modern U.S. policy on South Korea.

Trump’s approach to the Korean Peninsula upends seventy five years of international relations thought on South Korea. What happens when Morgenthau, Kissinger, and Brzezinski are no longer relevant?

Morgenthau’s focus was on the broad principles of international politics and the behavior of major powers in the context of the Cold War. While he occasionally referred to geopolitical events in Asia, including the Korean War, these were brief mentions used to illustrate general principles of power politics, rather than analyses of South Korea itself. South Korea appears in passing as part of the U.S.–Soviet strategic competition, but Morgenthau never pai…