Sould secured a 15% cap on tariffs but look closer, and the foundation crumbles. There is no signed agreement. No formal declaration. No U.S. legal record. And already, the two sides are offering conflicting interpretations of what, exactly, was agreed to.
President Lee Jae-myung has dispatched special envoys to the EU, France, UK and India, and now to Poland, Vietnam, Australia, and Germany. The official explanation is that these envoys are meant to “introduce” the new administration, reaffirm diplomatic ties, and share the government’s broad intentions with key partners.
Significance. President Lee’s loudspeaker suspension aligns with his liberal mandate and appeals to domestic stakeholders. Yet the lack of pre-coordination with the Trump Administration reflects a critical oversight in diplomatic choreography.
For decades, diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula has been trapped in a rigid and repetitive cycle, largely shaped by the strategic interests of others. American security priorities, Chinese strategic concerns, Russian opportunism, and Japanese anxieties have each carved deep grooves into how the world thinks about Korea.
The Trump Administration’s DOGE is a bull in the international relations China shop. It’s taken a wrecking ball to USAID, RFA, VOA, the Wilson Center and USIP - institutions of international relations that most of us grew up with and held to be inviolable.
By focusing on substance over form, and by leaning on informal networks of trust and mutual understanding, burgerflippers navigate the world of foreign policy and diplomacy with a mix of irreverence and skill, quietly shaping policies that matter while resisting the fecklessness of imposed authority.
The Ugly American (1958) by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick is a novel, which exposed the failings of U.S. foreign policy through a series of fictionalized stories about American diplomats and their interactions abroad. Though the novel was set in the context of Southeast Asia during the Cold War, its insights into the importance of humility, cultural understanding, and the dangers of arrogance remain relevant today.
Diplomatic analysis has often been regarded as the domain of hard-nosed realists, relying on historical precedent and strategic interests to shape the world’s most consequential decisions.
International relations theory often overlooks the emotional, cultural, historical, and practice dimensions that influence decision-making.
Dominant states never reinvent diplomacy, they just adapt it to secure their interests - and most states are already adapting to China.
