Journal Articles by Taesuh Cha
The End of ‘Swinging inside’? Republic of Korea’s Strategic Reckoning in an Era of Great-Power Competition
Third World Quarterly, 2026
This article examines South Korea’s evolving grand strategy as a geopolitical swing state under i... more This article examines South Korea’s evolving grand strategy as a geopolitical swing state under intensifying US–China competition. It addresses an apparent puzzle: despite expectations that the progressive Lee Jae Myung administration would revive strategic ambiguity, Seoul has so far continued to move towards heavy hedging or quasi-balancing against Beijing. Drawing on a two-level neoclassical realist framework, the article argues that South Korea’s long-standing hedging strategy has become increasingly constrained in the 2020s. Earlier administrations moved between light and heavy hedging as domestic ideological contestation filtered external pressure, producing what this article calls ‘swinging inside’. Yet intensified US–China rivalry has narrowed the space for ‘choosing not to choose’. The Lee administration is therefore treated as a provisional test case showing how far the centre of gravity in South Korean grand-strategic discourse has moved. The article substantiates this claim through evidence of partial economic de-risking and shifts in security alignment, while also emphasising the instability of this convergence. Domestic factional contestation, backlash against US ‘predatory hegemony’, and more radical autonomy-seeking scenarios may still reopen space for renewed hedging or strategic reversal. South Korea’s grand strategy thus remains an unfinished swing under conditions of systemic pressure and domestic change.
Third World Quarterly, 2026
This essay revisits Louis Hartz’s critique of American exceptionalism to analyse the United State... more This essay revisits Louis Hartz’s critique of American exceptionalism to analyse the United States’ contemporary alliance strategy, with a focus on recent political developments in South Korea. Drawing on the failed martial law declaration by President Yoon Suk Yeol, it highlights the enduring influence of colonial and Cold War-era legacies on US–ROK relations and critiques the familiar US framing of global competition as a binary struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. Central to the discussion is the ‘Hartz Trap’, a concept that underscores the limitations of a nation ‘born equal’ in comprehending the complex historical and political realities of non-Western nations that have had to become so. I contend that Washington’s imperialist monologue impedes the development of a more reflective and sustainable alliance architecture in the ‘Rest’. By offering a historically grounded analysis and policy recommendations, this piece seeks to guide US policymakers in fostering equal and inclusive partnerships in an increasingly post-Western world.
Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2024
This article aims to situate US-DPRK relations in a broader historical and theoretical context, t... more This article aims to situate US-DPRK relations in a broader historical and theoretical context, that is, part of the violent encounters between the West and the 'Rest' in modern times, to examine discursive causes of their animosity and devise preliminary solutions to usher in peace and reconciliation in the Korean Peninsula. Drawing on a postcolonial reading of the liberal internationalist project and the global nuclear order, as well as a reflexive realist critique of US foreign policy toward the rogue states, this research explores how two competing geopolitical discourses, the mission civilisatrice and realpolitik, have constructed the epistemological problématique of Washington's approach to Pyongyang and contributed to internal tensions in it over time. After analyzing the historical trajectory of America's contrasting understandings of the Korean question, I seek to offer their implications on the dramatic change in the bilateral relations in the Trump era. By interrogating Trump's realist turn in grand strategy and its unexpected influence on the two Cold War enemies' mini-détente in 2018-2020, this article asks how a genuine dialogue between the liberal, 'civilized' center and the illiberal, 'barbarian' periphery can be materialized in an alternative normative setting. In particular, I argue that Trump's new realist trial posed a critical question on how to depart from old ontological assumptions that frame the dominant liberal internationalist/neoconservative approaches toward a more dialogical and equal negotiation and compromise. A peaceful resolution of the North Korean dilemma is inherently related to a larger reflexivist project that promotes a thorough interrogation of the self-righteous US identity and a great transformation of America's imperialist monologue toward the Third World in general.
The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Dec 2020
Two years ago, the relationship between Pyongyang and Washington remarkably changed from hair-tri... more Two years ago, the relationship between Pyongyang and Washington remarkably changed from hair-triggering military tension to unprecedented rounds of summits. However, those diplomatic overtures suddenly fell away again over the course of 2019-2020. How can we understand this spectacular shift in the geopolitics of the Korean Peninsula? What kinds of solutions can we (re-)try amid a long post-Hanoi impasse in nuclear talk? With the Trump presidency coming to an end, it is high time to look back on what really happened in this turbulent international drama, in an attempt to explain the serpentine trajectory of the Korean conundrum. In this context, I ask if mapping competing historical analogies can shed light on our understanding of the potential U.S.-DPRK rapprochement. Each mainstream political force in the Republic of Korea has mobilized contrasting historical reference points as heuristics to analyze the changing relations between America and North Korea, as well as to construct policy options to respond to them. There are competing discourses related to specific historical events, such as the Munich Agreement of 1938, the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, and Gorbachev’s “New Thinking.” In the near future, we will see if the North Korean supreme leader is a Gorbachev initiating fundamental reforms or a Hitler who exploits idealistic appeasement moves. Thus, the series of summit conferences between Washington, Seoul, and Pyongyang in 2018-2019 will be remembered as a crucial watershed in the long history of the East Asian Cold War, similar to the Gorbachev-Reagan period during the Cold War in Europe.
Globalizations, 2020
After the two-fold crises of the liberal world order in the first decade of the twenty-first cent... more After the two-fold crises of the liberal world order in the first decade of the twenty-first century, including the debacle of the Global War on Terror and the global financial crisis around 2008, we are witnessing a combined crisis of US hegemony and the transnational moment, along with the explosion of populism across the Atlantic world. In this context, this research not only analyses how the United States has designed and maintained the liberal interstate order and globalization but also the way the hegemon proactively starts to destroy its cross-national project today. Therefore, I aim to fathom the future of globalization by interrogating the current US state's key strategies that express America's changing national identity and self-role conception under shifting structural imperatives from unipolarity to the emerging multipolar world.
Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 2018
This article analyses competing discourses on a postmodern world order perpetuated by the United ... more This article analyses competing discourses on a postmodern world order perpetuated by the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which are themselves built on their own pre-modern or early modern (inter)state models. Among several dimensions of the growing struggle between the two superpowers, this article focuses on their contestation of global norms or the standard of civilization regarding the question of world governance. What is unique in the contemporary competition between America and China is the fact that both countries aim to alter the fundamental organizing principle of modern world politics; they are against not only the balance of power system but also the imperial order, both of which originated from the modern European system. Indeed, Washington and Beijing strive to offer a third organizing principle beyond the conventional dyad in the modern discipline of international relations (IR) of anarchy and hierarchy. In terms of an analytic framework, this article explores the constitutive processes of self-identity formation in America and China against the European other (the Westphalian system and imperialism), thereby demonstrating the two states’ exceptionalist doctrines and their alternative visions for a postmodern world order.
Korean journal of defense analysis, Mar 2018
Does President Donald J. Trump have a coherent statecraft? Can we find a consistent grand strateg... more Does President Donald J. Trump have a coherent statecraft? Can we find a consistent grand strategy in this new administration, worth calling the “Trump Doctrine”? Mainly supported by angry Jacksonian folks who have been frustrated with economic polarization and racial anxiety, Trump’s foreign policy idea resonates well with European realism. Considering the fact that realist theory has been confined to the margins of public discourse in post–Cold War America, this unexpected return of the realist doctrine on the U.S. political scene needs to be explained. Why are we suddenly approaching realism’s moment in foreign policy? What makes prominent realists express their best wishes to President Trump?
In this article, we focus on the historical parallel between two maverick presidents in modern U.S. history, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. In particular, it is argued that the realities of the United States’ relative decline induced the Nixon and Trump administrations to embark on an unconventional course of realpolitik in world politics. The U.S. leadership in the early 1970s strived to adjust to a condition in which U.S. dominance was no longer as certain as in the early years of the postwar times by adopting unorthodox statecraft amid profound political polarization. Seemingly, the same story applies to the present administration. By attacking the liberal consensus of the establishment, domestic and international, the Trump government tries to “make America great again” in another era of increased stress. Confronting an emerging multipolar international system and the collapse of the existing national consensus, dramatic shifts in policies have been implemented to ensure that the United States will remain a hegemonic power on the world scene.
International Politics, 2019
This article analyzes an alternative perspective on the relationship between the USA and the conc... more This article analyzes an alternative perspective on the relationship between the USA and the concept of empire. We should note that another rich vein of policy dissent, the anti-imperial tradition, has long existed in American history. A republican tension between ‘empire’ and ‘republic’ has formed the core problematique of American political thought from the beginning. Furthermore, this enigma has haunted US politics along its trajectory, even though James Madison tried to invent a federalist solution to the ancient dilemma of liberty and power. Therefore, I will explore the lineage of the American tradition of anti-imperialism and its foreign policy manifestations, stretching back from the founding era to the contemporary world by re-reading American political development through the lens of republican security theory. I hope that such exercise will shed light on the future direction of US grand strategy in our age of the American hegemonic decline.
The Washington Quarterly, 2016
Trump’s rise is symptomatic of American people, particularly in rural southern and interior Weste... more Trump’s rise is symptomatic of American people, particularly in rural southern and interior Western communities in the Jacksonian tradition, increasingly embracing the idea of being freed from the burdens of global leadership. Many overseas are concerned we are witnessing a historical watershed with the direction of U.S. hegemony and the post-war liberal world order beginning to change.
Political Studies Review, 2017
The cardinal role of complexity in Friedrich Hayek’s theory of the market has hardly gone unnotic... more The cardinal role of complexity in Friedrich Hayek’s theory of the market has hardly gone unnoticed. Indeed, there is now a considerable corpus of literature that has established the importance of spontaneity as a central concept around which neoliberal economic theory revolves. However, as William Connolly analyzes, its closed conception of economic processes simplifies real economic volatilities and ignores both modes of self-organization and creativity found in democracy and social movements that periodically irrupt into market processes. This article builds upon this critique of neoliberalism and employs Karl Polanyi’s genealogy of modern capitalism to understand historical imbrications between the market and the social and their contribution to the fragility of capitalism. Polanyi’s notions of “(dis-)embeddedness” and the “double movement” not only show us a more “complex” view of modern political economy but also provide us with important lessons for political responses to the recent crisis of neoliberal capitalism.
European Journal of International Relations, 2015
The dominant structuralist/materialist schema in International Relations accords little importanc... more The dominant structuralist/materialist schema in International Relations accords little importance to the domestic ideational base of the state in its concern to explain the pattern of foreign policy. In contrast, my article, following the tenets of unit-level constructivism, asks how American identity was formed, contested, and manifested through its interaction with two significant others — the European empires and the Native Americans — in the USA’s formative era in order to understand the origins of American liberal internationalism and popular imperialism. I argue that the US identity was constituted in two different ways: as a transformative state against the Westphalian system and as a civilizing force over “barbarian” natives. The two main US foreign policy orientations — the Jeffersonian tradition and the Jacksonian tradition — were produced by these ambivalent American selves. In this context, a hierarchical, tripartite model of the “standard of civilization” in the American security imaginary emerged at the turn of the 19th century: the USA at the top as a revolutionary vanguard in human history; European international society, which should be negotiated and reformed in America’s own image later, in the middle; and the “Rest” at the bottom, which need to be removed or assimilated.
Political Studies Review, 2015
Unlike the immediate post-Cold War era of triumphalism and neoliberal prosperity, the last decade... more Unlike the immediate post-Cold War era of triumphalism and neoliberal prosperity, the last decade has witnessed the erosion of the ‘unipolar moment’ after the major setbacks of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and the financial crisis of 2008. In this context, reconsidering the idea of American exceptional identity is not simply a scholastic exercise, but an urgent practical problem concerning the direction of US leadership in the world. This article presents a review of three representative discourses on American exceptionalism at a critical juncture. First, the neoconservatives Charles W. Dunn et al. and Robert Kagan attempt to reconfirm the virtue of the ‘American Creed’ and reassure the American people that the US will lead the world as it has done. Second, Tony Smith represents a dominant liberal consensus in US academia. Following Louis Hartz, Smith emphasizes not triumphalism, but an historical irony of American liberal identity. Finally, Anatol Lieven, resonating with the ‘multiple traditions’ approach against the liberal consensus school, suggests a more complex understanding of American exceptionalism by analyzing the existence of the ‘antithesis’ or the Jacksonian tradition.
Journal Articles in Korean by Taesuh Cha
인간과 평화(Human and Peace), 2022
Considering that climate change, the sixth great extinction and the Covid-19 pandemic are simulta... more Considering that climate change, the sixth great extinction and the Covid-19 pandemic are simultaneously emerging in the present, it is clear that we are entering the state of longterm emergency in which the complex interdependence between humans and the nature becomes contradictory over time. Indeed, we come to a preliminary conclusion that some fundamental shifts are underway in the global ecology, which generates “existential threats” to humanity. Such a grave situation explains why the new concept of the “Anthropocene” is nowadays widely discussed in academia and broader public spheres. Against this historical backdrop, this article seeks to introduce how the coming of the Anthropocene has impacted International Relations, or in particular how the era causes a paradigm shift in understanding security and peace, the core problematique of the discipline. Initially, we will examine what a planetary polycrisis is in the contemporary Anthropocene. Next, after tracing the evolution of the notion of security-the rise and fall of the national security discourse-in IR, how the discourse of “ecology security” today aims to address the present catastrophes from a posthuman perspective, moving beyond the prevailing anthropocentric assumptions in conventional IR, will be delineated. To conclude, the implication of the change in idea from modern anthropocentrism to postmodern ecologism on the future political practices will be investigated.
미국학논집(Journal of American Studies), 2022
The United States is a quintessential case, demonstrating that a nation is a narrative product, a... more The United States is a quintessential case, demonstrating that a nation is a narrative product, a place of competition and negotiation among multiple national biographic stories. As an immigrant nation lacking primordialist elements, including blood and land, anyone who reveres universalist creeds enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution can be American, which often makes the question, who are “we the people,” truly subversive and highly-charged. In fact, how to construct national boundaries and to define national identity has been a central topic in the history of US politics. In this regard, this research initially seeks to situate the Trump era in the historical context of US political thought by analyzing the two competing narratives, liberal and illiberal, on American self. Next, several cases in the period of 2019-21 are explored to understand how the battle for the soul of America was unfolded during the pandemic turbulence. Lastly, after describing the persistent crisis of US democracy in the Biden years, we search for ways to overcome the current identity crisis by developing a new common national narrative and achieving political revolution.
국제정치연구(The Journal of International Relations), 2021
Confronting the COVID-19 pandemic, mainstream International Relations(IR) has focused on how this... more Confronting the COVID-19 pandemic, mainstream International Relations(IR) has focused on how this state of exception will shape the Sino-US hegemonic rivalry and the future trajectory of the liberal world order. Yet, considering the emerging issues of the anthropocene and posthuman, we wonder if such narrow questions in the dominant discourse of IR are sufficiently reflexive and radical. What are the most “political” subjects of contestation and negotiation in the present world? Isn’t a paradigm shift in political science needed to examine the metabolism between the human and nature in the context of the planetary, as well as to analyze inter-polity relations in a traditional sense? Therefore, this research seeks to interrogate the possibility of inventing “planet politics” that pursues a harmonious relationship between the earthbound and the earth, beyond the straight jacket of modern IR.
정치정보연구 (THE JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE & COMMUNICATION), 2021
In contrast to the rosy vision of Fukuyama-style triumphalism and the democratic wave in the post... more In contrast to the rosy vision of Fukuyama-style triumphalism and the democratic wave in the post-Cold War times, we are witnessing a series of deconsolidation and backsliding phenomena even in advanced Western countries today. In this historical context, this research not only explores the ancient dilemma between constitutional liberalism and majoritarian democracy but also interrogates the emerging populist moment or illiberal democracy under the Moon Jae-in administration.
국제지역연구(Review of International and Area Studies), 2021
Discussions on the direction of the Post-Corona international order have been on the rise in the ... more Discussions on the direction of the Post-Corona international order have been on the rise in the discipline of International Relations. In particular, whether the current pandemic will be an historical inflection point where the existing world order fundamentally shifts, or the year of 2020 will be forgotten as a temporary turbulence no significant geopolitical transformation occurred is hotly debated. Against such a discursive backdrop, this research aims to explore how the present global health crisis has shaped the trajectory of US foreign policy and the liberal world order so far. After comparing the “Before Corona” and “After Corona” eras, I argue that the emergency state of COVID-19 should be understood as a catalyst “accelerating” the previous mega-trends in international politics, i.e., the erosion of the US-led liberal order and the emergence of a realist world. In addition, as interrogating US grand strategy in the Post-COVID19/Post-Trump times, I ask whether the Joe Biden administration can act as a brake decelerating the rapid current of history in the years to come.
한국동북아논총(Journal of Northeast Asian Studies), 2020
This research focuses on the United States’ unique political experiment of networking or project ... more This research focuses on the United States’ unique political experiment of networking or project of organizing principle transformation. New academic terms, such as a network state and network power, were originally coined to explain the postmodernization of the modern state and the modern interstate order in the contemporary context of globalization. In contrast, this research aims to ① explain a compound republic model of the US as an alternative to a hierarchical modern state, ② reinterpret America’s liberal internationalist tradition and its embodiment, i.e., a global alliance system, from a network perspective, and ③ analyze how the US has sought to revise the Westphalian problématique by exercising the power of organizing principle or programming. In addition, I will explore the historical evolution of the East Asian alliance system as a specific example of America’s networking strategy and discuss its implication for South Korean foreign policy.
국제지역연구(Review of International and Area Studies), 2020
This research discusses contemporary engagement with the theory and analysis of discourse in Inte... more This research discusses contemporary engagement with the theory and analysis of discourse in International Relations (IR). It asks what discourse analysis is and explores its potential contributions to IR in South Korea. The paper proceeds as follows. First, it introduces a Foucauldian approach to discourse after the linguistic/cultural/interpretative turns and identifies the relevant debates that have characterized the approach to discourse analysis. Second, it explores two distinct types of discourse analysis in IR around which most contributions in this field after the so-called “Third Debate” converge: a micro-interactional approach and a macro-structural approach. Finally, some theoretical and policy-related implications of critical discourse analysis for our IR research with Korean characteristics and national grand strategy are interrogated.
한국과 국제정치(Korea and World Politics), 2020
In the Twenty Year’s Crisis, E.H. Carr gave emphasis on two elements in his analysis of the syste... more In the Twenty Year’s Crisis, E.H. Carr gave emphasis on two elements in his analysis of the systemic chaotic era after the post-WWI failure of rebuilding Pax Britannica. In a material dimension, he inquired a series of structural shifts, including the hegemonic transition, the collapse of laissez-faire economy, and later the surge of fascism. In terms of ideology, the rise and fall of liberal idealism prevalent in the pre-WWII period was interrogated. Based on the Carr’s problematic, this research aims to explore how complex crises in geopolitics and geoeconomics have deteriorated in the contemporary era. Therefore, we seek to find some clues to our fundamental question today: whether the present phase of world history is approaching toward a systemic turbulence parallel to the interwar period or the liberal world order can be restored as happened before.
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Journal Articles by Taesuh Cha
In this article, we focus on the historical parallel between two maverick presidents in modern U.S. history, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. In particular, it is argued that the realities of the United States’ relative decline induced the Nixon and Trump administrations to embark on an unconventional course of realpolitik in world politics. The U.S. leadership in the early 1970s strived to adjust to a condition in which U.S. dominance was no longer as certain as in the early years of the postwar times by adopting unorthodox statecraft amid profound political polarization. Seemingly, the same story applies to the present administration. By attacking the liberal consensus of the establishment, domestic and international, the Trump government tries to “make America great again” in another era of increased stress. Confronting an emerging multipolar international system and the collapse of the existing national consensus, dramatic shifts in policies have been implemented to ensure that the United States will remain a hegemonic power on the world scene.
Journal Articles in Korean by Taesuh Cha