The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Tag: South Korea

The South Korean Coup Attempt

Update: Report that the President may have backed down and will cancel martial law. Amazing.

The President of South Korea has declared martial law.

The legislature voted 190 to 0 to end the martial law, which is their right under the constitution, but the President has declared it will continue and the military command has said they will not end it till he says so. Even members of the President’s own party voted to end martial law.

I’m no expert on South Korea, but what I do know that the people with the guns have the final say. Back during the Arab Spring I noted that until the Egyptian army chose its side (it wound up choosing itself) nothing had been won.

The question, then, is the high command is unified and if lower officers and the rank and file will obey orders. So far the coup hasn’t been entirely competent: the military should have never allowed the legislators into the building to take such a vote.

There are unconfirmed reports that arrest warrants have been issued for leaders of opposition parties.

South Korea is America’s second most important ally, right after Japan. It has the highest science production per capita in the world and is a major industrial power.

One of the topics on the right hand side of the blog is “the age of war and revolution”. Coups are a type of revolution. This sort of instability will continue. Some nations will re-align against the declining West, others, in the core, as the decline continues, will become more and more unstable and serious political realignments will occur. The age of neoliberal ideology is also coming to an end (Trump’s tariff threats are as anti-neoliberal as it gets) and the global economy is being upended in ways it hasn’t been since the industrial revolution, as the core moves from a Western country to China.

Be prepared for much more instability.

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Japan and South Korea Agree China Will Rule SE Asia

Well, the headline says “South Korea needles Tokyo with military drills around Japanese-claimed islets,” but when one reads the story one sees:

Days after Seoul scrapped intelligence-sharing with Japan, all branches of its military descended on a handful of disputed islets for two-day drills, raising ire in Tokyo and fueling a brewing trade conflict between the neighbors.

The basic truth is that the days of the Pacific being an American lake are coming to a close. China is the 800 pound gorilla. As Yang Jiechi said, “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.”

So if the small countries don’t want to be ruled by China the way that Canada, Mexico, and most South and Central American countries are, they need to work out their differences and band together.

That is especially true for the two most powerful countries after China: Japan and South Korea.

If they can’t, well, welcome to vassalage as the Middle Kingdom rises.


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