# The liberal-international order is dead On 8 October 2026, South Korea announced the recall of its ambassador to Ukraine. Local and global media are reporting a diplomatic dispute over the transfer of two North Korean prisoners of war—and then throw in Ukrainian calls that South Koreans are selling diesel to Russia. Each media outlet takes its own position on the breach of confidentiality, the safety of the soldiers and their families, the competing accounts of Seoul and Kyiv, the diesel shipments, and President Lee’s demands for a formal apology. All are well short of what’s happening below the surface. The entire episode is a sign of the times. The liberal-international order is dead and Korea just called it—again. Now you’ll have to excuse my rambling, and my choice of high literature, but there’s a scene in _Trailer Park Boys_, which captures the entire shitshow so succinctly, it’s gotta be expounded. The aptly named Phil Collins is selling his home-caught mackerel in a liquor-store car park when Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles pull in to sell the meat they’ve just stolen from the supermarket, and a brouhaha ensues. What follows is a confrontation between a fundamentally honest man engaged in a slightly illegal enterprise and three substantively just but formally criminal entrepreneurs, all squabbling over territory in the car park of a perfectly legal but socially far less honest enterprise. The entire liberal-international order is today a _Trailer Park Boys_ liquor-store car park. The Ukraine venture is an abomination. The call to states to support the liberal-international order was pushed as the defense of a budding democracy against the child kidnapping ravages of the evil authoritarian Russians. By a thousand cuts this has evolved into funding and rallying behind a mix of fanatical Banderist Nazis and grubby corrupt dogs diverting funds to villas and yachts in the Mediterranean while young fathers and sons (and now daughters) are dragged into vans to be shipped off to the trenches and become drone-fodder—all in the name of fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian, so the global elite can get its hands on Russian resources and finances, while Washington executes a geopolitical _Zwischenzug_ against China. It was always a tough sell in Korea. It’s distant, geographically and psychologically, with little historical, cultural, or economic significance to ordinary Koreans. The war is widely understood as a European conflict, fought over European security interests, with little obvious connection to the immediate challenges facing South Korea. This understanding was demonstrated at the very beginning when as candidates in the 2022 election, former President Yoon and current President Lee, demonstrated little understanding of the conflict and the wider role of middle powers in supporting what was already a dying liberal-international order.  Fact is, Koreans have their own divided peninsula, their own nuclear-armed neighbor, and their own increasingly uncertain great-power relationships to worry about. Appeals to defend democracy and the liberal international order have limited resonance when the same Western powers making those appeals have shown little enthusiasm for confronting the contradictions of their own policies. North Korea’s involvement in the war has made Ukraine more relevant to Seoul’s security calculations, but it has hardly transformed Ukraine into a cause that ordinary Koreans feel compelled to embrace. The Iran venture sealed the fate of the liberal international order. The US-Israeli assault dispensed with even the pretense of respecting international law, violating the principles of sovereignty, non-intervention, and the prohibition on aggressive war. In doing so, it exposed the hypocrisy of earlier interventions in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Somalia, where appeals to humanitarianism, collective security, and self-defense had provided varying degrees of legal and moral cover for strategic objectives. Iran stripped away the remaining pretense: the rules-based order was the American order—and it ended as corrupt, dishonest and evil as those it decried. With Trump, the liberal international order is now a parody of itself. What was once presented as a system of universal rules has devolved into a crude instrument of power wielded by a financial Epstein class that surveils, brutalizes, impoverishes, and punishes its own citizens for daring to speak out. The efforts of Canada to “step-up”, “coalition build” and “restore” the liberal-international order with other middle powers are the final steps of desperate junkie looking for one last hit. While Australia, Canada and the Nordic States drown in their own liberal-international hypocrisy, South Korea follows the same path it did from the beginning—not the flouting of nominal liberal-internationalist morals but rather the rationalist pursuit national interests. Korea’s decision highlights a factor in its statecraft that places it above and ahead of its fellow middle powers. A realistic and adaptive strategy that does away with the hypocritical moralizing that’s become such a feature of liberal-international middle powers. When the U.S. wanted troops for its war in Vietnam, Australia sent its troops to defend democracy; South Korea sent troops to secure funding and support for national development. History proved both wrong, one was hypocritical, the other self-interested. When the U.S. wanted troops for its war in Iraq, Australia sent combat troops to support international security and rule of law; South Korea sent reconstruction and security teams to the oil-rich far north. History proved both wrong, one was hypocritical, the other self-interested. Korea’s foreign policy has always been self-interested and transactional—and this is exactly what a government should do, and should make the Korean people proud. Some will criticize South Korea’s decision to recall its ambassador. Some will say it’s a gift to China and Russia. It weakens the liberal-international order. They’ll criticize Seoul as if its abandoned the West and point to Chinese or Russian media reporting of the facts. And it makes perfect sense for these cretins to say this, because whether you’re in Washington, London, Canberra or Wellington, unrestrained hypocrisy is an essential criteria to be published in the top foreign policy publications.  The liberal-international order was always a farce. It was super easy to accept and super easy to turn your back and chew down the Soylent Green or Snowpiercer Protein Blocks fed to us over the years, but now its too easy to see how they’re made. It was once easy to accept the Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness mantra as the shining city on the hill. Yet, when your “shining city upon a hill” is filled with unemployed youth, junkies, hookers, and homeless in tents, you ain’t no model for the world. The liberal-international order is dead and Korea just called it, again. *** Support writers! - [Buy Me a Coffee](https://buymeacoffee.com/junotane)! ## Related articles - [[2026-09-09 South Korea, Trump, and Iran|South Korea, Trump, and Iran]] - [[2026-10-07 When should U.S. allies walk away?|When should U.S. allies walk away?]] - [[2026-03-19 The zombie middle powers|The zombie middle powers]] - [[2026-10-05 In Seoul, Trump is an opportunity|In Seoul, Trump is an opportunity]]