Defending against Trumpism

Kim Young-jun
The author is a professor of international politics at Korean National Defense University.

Barely a year is left until the U.S. presidential election in November. But the rest of the world still does not understand the country appropriately. Over the past four years, Trumpism has spread in America rather than shrunk. In the Republican Party’s first Iowa caucus on Monday, Donald Trump, former U.S. President and the Republican presidential candidate, won a landslide victory, as expected.

Trumpism — firmly based on America First, isolationism and anti-elitism — wants to recover the golden days of the U.S. economy in the 1950s, advocates for gun ownership and insists on protecting traditional values, including Christianity.

Trumpism contradicted the image of the United States as the global leader of liberal democracy. Many people first brushed off Trumpism as a phenomenon that will disappear after the U.S. economy stabilizes. But it didn’t. Instead, it signifies a fundamental change in American society regardless of whether Trump will be re-elected or not. What President Joe Biden showed over the past three years on the diplomatic and trade front was, in fact, a milder form of Trumpism to accommodate the sentiments of the other half of the U.S. population.

In the exit polls in the last U.S. presidential election, the average income of Trump supporters was higher than that of all U.S. voters. It shows that Trump supporters are not high school grads who lost their jobs in their rural areas but the people who longed for a drastic change in the U.S.

Today, a majority of U.S. citizens in the Hispanic and Indian immigrant communities support Trump. In the Black and Asian communities, one-third of them support Trump’s policy for various reasons. Korea must understand the fundamentally changed political environment in the U.S. and reshape its policy toward America regardless of whether Trump will be re-elected or not. Gone are the days of the Democratic Party led by Bill Clinton or Barack Obama and the Republican Party led by Ronald Reagan or George Bush Sr. and Jr. Even if the Democrats retake the White House, Korea should draw up strategies to deal with a U.S. government that must reflect such changes.

A more important — and long-term — solution lies in fostering public diplomacy aimed at directly communicating with various sectors of America to promote Korea’s national interests.

Unfortunately, our government’s public diplomacy toward the U.S. is still stuck in its ways of the 1990s and 2000s — for instance, the repeated hosting of seminars on similar themes for the same think tanks and universities in Washington, mostly attended by Korean Americans, students studying in the U.S., American students dedicated to Korean studies, and precious few U.S. citizens who have worked in Korea or are married to a Korean.

K-pop, K-drama, K-movie, K-culture and Korean companies are popular in Amercia but the government’s public policy is still focused on staging ephemeral events in Washington and offering photo ops for top officials.

Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump campaigns in Clinton, Iowa, in the United States, Jan. 6. He won an overwhelming victory in the first caucus of the Republican Party.

We must ascend to the level of public diplomacy of advanced countries. Top government officials must appear on the U.S. mainstream media and proudly explain how Korea’s policies contribute to U.S. interests and the liberal world order. The officials must express their philosophy and world view to cameras rather than relying on the scripts prepared by their staffers. They must continue to talk with opinion leaders in the U.S. by visiting the Cosmos Club or the Army and Navy Club in Washington, for example.

Korea should expand the scope of its contacts for public diplomacy. International conferences have invited former officials in the Trump administration — such as his Vice President Mike Pence, State Secretary Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton — who turned their backs on Trump.

The time has come for private international conferences to invite not only pro-Democrat politicians but also pro-Trump senators and representatives, not to mention scholars from U.S. think tanks championing America First.

The government also must help Koreans living in the U.S. to expand their exchanges with Americans on the civilian level. The Korean people, including immigrants, have been residing in big cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles — the home turf of Democrats. As a result, Republicans and Trump supporters in the Midwest and South cannot meet Koreans unless they are Korean War veterans.

Japan, Europe and the Middle East are already leading the pack. As Busan’s failed bid for the 2030 World Expo showed, a conclusion is already made in the venue of public diplomacy before casting ballots to determine the host city. Korea is still weak in the category of advanced public diplomacy. The country must develop it if it really wants to play its role as a pivotal global state.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.