Can a Middle Power Run Its Own Grand Strategy? | Eye on Korea Ep. 40

South Korea is running a deliberate grand strategy, pursuing autonomy and freedom of action while keeping the U.S.-South Korea alliance intact and turning the trade power and influence it has built into real leverage, says Dr. Andrew Yeo on this week’s Eye on Korea. In this episode, he lays out what that strategy looks like and whether a country constrained by larger powers can actually pull it off.

Drawing on his forthcoming book on South Korean grand strategy, Yeo details the assets Seoul holds to manage its external security environment and uncertainty from the Donald Trump administration.

That strategy is being tested against a fast-moving backdrop, as North Korea runs its most active diplomacy in years. Yeo unpacks how leader Kim Jong Un is managing his two great-power patrons at once, whether he is playing China and Russia against each other or charting a new approach, and what the North Korea-Russia relationship has done for the country domestically and abroad. He also weighs the prospects for an inter-Korean summit between South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Kim, the conditions for renewed diplomacy between the United States and North Korea, and the role denuclearization can realistically play in U.S. policy toward the Korean Peninsula.

Andrew Yeo is Senior Fellow and SK-Korea Foundation Chair at the Brookings Institution's Center for Asia Policy Studies and Professor of Politics at The Catholic University of America. He is co-editor of Great Power Competition and Overseas Bases: Chinese, Russian, and American Force Posture in the 21st Century.

[This material is distributed by KEI on behalf of the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice, Washington, DC.]