# Re-reading Brzezinski in Korea in the Trump era It’s kind of scary to think that the Korean Peninsula is one of five “geopolitical pivots” that Zbigniew Brzezinski detailed in his widely read 1997 text, _The Grand Chessboard_—and scarier to think Korea is the only one of those that has not been engaged in direct conflict since it was written. Yeah, read like that and Brzezinski becomes Nostradamus-like. Give him a beard, a loose-fitting robe, some tights, something about quatrains and the far east, then think Trump, America, China and Korea, and it sounds positively Nostradamus-like. But Brzezinski was just the latest in a long line of thinkers on the struggle between maritime and continental powers. The Greeks and Brits spun on about that crap for ages, until a U.S. thinker encapsulated it, and influenced generations of U.S. thinkers—Alfred Thayer Mahan. Mahan first emphasized sea power and control of maritime routes; then Halford John Mackinder focused on the enormous strategic potential of the Eurasian continental interior; and next Nicholas John Spykman turned attention to the “rimland”, the belt around Eurasia where land and sea power meet. Spykman is in like a direct line to Brzezinski’s ideas. He thought the rimland to be a peripheral zone—from Europe through the Middle East and South Asia to East Asia—where competition over Eurasia played out. Brzezinski’s pivots followed much the same geographical logic: Ukraine between Russia and Europe; Azerbaijan and Turkey around Russia’s southern approaches; Iran between the Persian Gulf, Caucasus, Central Asia and South Asia; and Korea where the Eurasian continent meets the Pacific. Seen this way, Brzezinski’s apparent Nostradamus act becomes considerably less mystical. He identified places where geography concentrates strategic pressure. Governments, alliances, technologies and ideologies change relatively quickly; geography does not. When the balance between continental and maritime powers shifts, states along the Eurasian rim become particularly important because they provide access, deny access, anchor alliances and constrain the movement of larger powers. This is what makes the Korean Peninsula especially interesting today. As the balance between the continental power of China and the maritime power of the United States shifts, Korea again occupies the uncomfortable ground where the two strategic systems meet. The same geography that makes the peninsula strategically valuable also makes it strategically vulnerable. What makes Brzezinski important, is that he consolidated and wrapped up those in neat little bundle. You ever read Mahan, Mackinder, or Spykman? Sure, it’s great writing, but it takes friggin ages! For anyone who grew up on AstroBoy and G-Force, let alone those growing up on Teen Titans and Ben10, that’s some damned heavy reading. Brzezinski made it easier, and as a result, he carries substantial weight in Washington.  That fact should scare folk in Korea. A book whose main treatment of Korea is that it is a locale to contest—a site to control, influence, deny, disrupt, and fight over. A site to pursue conventional or proxy war, intelligence operations and espionage, covert action, propaganda and disinformation. A site to engage in political interference, economic coercion, technological competition, military basing, surveillance, alliance building, and proxy war. A site to act as a buffer, a bridge, a barrier, a base, and a battlefield. The f$cked up thing is, it doesn’t. To be in the field of strategic studies in South Korea, and even in the field of international relations to a certain extent, means to be inculcated in an environment that unquestioningly accepts the same foundations of U.S. strategic thinking. The professional reach and achievements of academic, military, and public officials are measured by their connections to the U.S. Why, it’s broadly accepted that to become an academic at a top-tier Korean institution, you need a doctorate from the U.S. or need to publish with U.S. presses; to become a senior military officer means to be part of joint training, placements, and networks; and to be a senior public official, means securing training, education, or missions to the U.S. The foundations of U.S. strategic culture are so deeply embedded in South Korea, it’s often confused as Korean strategic culture—and there’s a good few books that add outdated Confucian tropes to U.S. strategic culture and mistakenly call it “Korean strategic culture”. _The Grand Chessboard_ should be re-read in Korea. Especially those few lines that bring out the distinctly self-interested nature of U.S. involvement on the Korean Peninsula: “South Korea is a Far Eastern geopolitical pivot. Its close links to the United States enable America to shield Japan and thereby to keep Japan from becoming an independent and major military power, without an overbearing American presence within Japan itself. Any significant change in South Korea’s status, either through unification and/or through a shift into an expanding Chinese sphere of influence, would necessarily alter dramatically America’s role in the Far East, thus altering Japan’s as well” All states are self-interested. The greatest skill that great powers had up until Trump, was to be able to convince others that they were _not_ self-interested. That’s now well gone. It’s time for South Korea to be more self-interested? Re-reading _The Grand Chessboard_ in 2026 and watching Trump deal with Iran and then want to next mix it with Kim Jong-un should be a wake-up call. That’s some scary shit--and Korea may be next. *** Please… support a budding novelist incarnated as a professor [Buy Me a Coffee](https://buymeacoffee.com/junotane)! ## Related articles - [[2026-04-06 Contesting the rimlands - Ukraine, Iran, Korea?|Prediction markets and North Korea]] - [[2026-03-25 Think Again - Blaming Israel Is Too Easy|Think Again - Blaming Israel Is Too Easy]] - [[2026-05-12 Increasingly great middle powers?|Increasingly great middle powers?]]