In the face of increasingly tense U.S.-China relations, how should South Korea, caught between the two, handle its relations with the two countries? For South Korea's presidential election, which is now in full swing, this is indeed a question that candidates must seriously answer.
However, it is interesting that just recently, a scholar from the University of Chicago, John Millsheimer, first poured cold water on these Candidates for The President of South Korea: No matter who becomes president, as long as South Korea and the United States are more and more involved in the future, it will inevitably attract more and more "retaliation" from China.
John Millsheimer is not only a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and a fellow of the American College of Arts and Sciences, but also a heavyweight geopolitician who has gained a lot of attention in Western academia as the spokesman for "offensive realism."
This "offensive realism" holds that the anarchy of the international system determines the scarcity of security, and that fierce competition for security forces countries to adopt offensive strategies, resulting in frequent conflicts and wars. In the process, even the great powers have security concerns that they will be forced to maximize their relative power, because this is the best way to achieve maximum security.
It can be seen that the root of this so-called "offensive realism" is actually the "Thucydides Trap" or "Law of the Jungle". And Millsheimer's own academic view is also quite "jungle": if a wolf sees a small tiger and does not eat it, it will one day become its belly food.
It is precisely because of this that Melsheimer became one of the few scholars in western academic circles to predict that "the conflict between China and the United States is inevitable"; and because of this, Melsheimer has also become one of the staunchest advocates of the "China threat theory".
The law of the jungle
Therefore, when such a scholar who has long observed China with colored glasses talks about the relationship between China and South Korea, the "little neighbor", his attitude is naturally inevitably pessimistic to the end.
In a recent interview with South Korea's East Asia Daily, Millsheimer argued that China's current rise is not good news for South Korea:
A strong China will inevitably put forward "security requirements" for its neighbors, and a country like South Korea that has long been eye-catching with the United States will inevitably become a "thorn in China's eyes";
What's more, because China's rise has caused a reaction from the United States, in the face of a sharp deterioration in Sino-US relations, the Chinese side will inevitably take the lead in attacking South Korea around it, and while alleviating the pressure on the United States around it, it can also play a role in "killing chickens and making an example" for the United States and its allies.
According to This, Millsheimer concluded that the current strategy of "national security depends on the United States, economic development depends on China, and the South Korean government should not deliberately pay attention to the ROK-US alliance" implemented by the current Moon Jae-in administration is really "extremely confused" - South Korea cares about China's attitude, but China does not care about South Korea's survival. South Korea still has a choice between China and the United States, but when China is fully emerged, there will be no way back for South Korea.
Moon Jae-in
Millsheimer said that if South Korea continues to exist in the world as an independent sovereign state, then consolidating relations with the United States is the only option, and strengthening the triangular alliance with the United States and Japan is the best answer for South Korea to deal with China's "threat". Even if this is bound to provoke Retaliation from China, this is the price that South Korea "must pay": "Whoever becomes South Korea's president, what kind of relationship with the United States is the most important issue for it."
China's rise will inevitably threaten South Korea's survival? And China will inevitably use South Korea to "kill chickens and monkeys"?
If This Mearsheimer really is an expert on the geopolitical situation in East Asia, he must have noticed that the lack of China's presence in the past hundred years is actually a special exception to the geopolitical situation in East Asia, and for most of history, China's presence and inevitable influence on neighboring countries have been the norm.
China rises
In other words, if China really saw South Korea as an existential threat to itself, the peninsular nation would have been wiped out by China hundreds of years ago— after all, South Korea did not have the protection of the United States on the other side of the ocean today.
And if South Korea really regards China as a dangerous big country, then China's cultural, ideological, institutional and other influences cannot penetrate into all aspects of Korean society, so that Korean society can worship China from top to bottom.
In this respect, South Koreans should not be surprised or abrupt that China's rise today is nothing more than a return to where it should have been in the geopolitical role of East Asia. What's more, today's China is no longer the empty-eyed feudal "heavenly kingdom", and China has reiterated many times that China is completely willing to coexist in harmony with neighboring countries on an equal footing, and has no will to restore the feudal tributary system of the past, let alone point fingers at the internal affairs of other countries.
China-South Korea relations
In the interview, Millsheimer also cited the THAAD incident as a typical case of China's "retaliation" against South Korea. However, it was the United States, an extraterritorial country in East Asia, that took the initiative to deploy the THAAD anti-missile system in South Korea, and its purpose was to weaken China's nuclear deterrence capability as much as possible in order to break the nuclear balance strategy of maintaining world peace since the Cold War.
In other words, in the eyes of the United States, itself, South Korea, and China are three countries with completely unequal identities, the world is bound to be unequal, the United States should be born to be at the top, South Korea is second, and the last China is bound to be suppressed by the United States, and it is worth the United States to make every effort to eliminate the possibility of its rise.
And in the face of such a country that strives to maintain an order of old age and childhood in East Asia, where "one country is bound to be more noble than another", what face does This Millsheimer have to claim that China, which is striving to achieve equal status, is a challenger to the security of other countries?
U.S. hegemony
The biggest mistake in this "China threat theory" promoted by Millsheimer is that it has adopted a preconceived position toward China: China's rise is bound to be as violent as the various empires in history, and it is inevitable to seize hegemonic power from the former hegemon of the United States.
But even many Western geopolitical experts have pointed out that China today does not have the motivation and ability to compete with the United States for world hegemony. On the contrary, it is the United States itself, because the bottleneck in its own social development has even been shaken to the point of ruling stability, which has forced the ruling class of the United States to deliberately concoct the "China threat theory" and claim that there is a "Thucydides trap" between China and the United States, thus creating a transfer object for the external transfer of domestic contradictions.
Thucydides Trap
It can be seen that this Millsheimer obviously does not really care about how South Korea survives between China and the United States, and he continues to promote the "China threat theory", but it is just to intimidate South Korea that it must stand with the United States to oppose China. At a time when the Korean election is in full swing, this is actually one of the public opinion means used by the United States to try to influence the outcome of the Korean election, and similar remarks are not only issued by Millsheimer, and the remarks themselves are just a variety of clichés, which do not deserve too much attention.
And if South Korea's presidential candidates really listen to Mearsheimer's "persuasion" and intend to implement a comprehensive anti-China and pro-US policy in the post-Moon era, then we can only say: Your kind of country is indeed doomed to a lifelong panic between the two major powers.