Conceptual Model of State Collapse

by Denis Rancourt / January 13th, 2026

Summary

A minimalist conceptual model of the state is presented in which the fundamental basis of state existence and continuity is the flux of produced resources between producers and the needed state apparatus, while contending with powerful domestic non-state actors and foreign challenges. External conditions that reduce per capita production threaten state continuity, and the state attempts to survive by responding. Every decision either destabilizes the state and creates vulnerabilities or stabilizes the state on a road to recovery. The model provides a general framework for making and evaluating state decisions. It also provides predictions for circumstances that lead to state failure. I conclude that long-term state survival is possible, while describing the structural and dynamic challenges that must constantly be overcome.

Basic conceptual model of the state

The state is a living hierarchical structure that manages itself and controls and extracts cooperation and resources from its subjects and from its environment. It can be healthy or sick, and heal or die. The said structure includes the subjects who produce and state agents who are leaders, administrators, lieutenants, soldiers, teachers, analysts, and so on.

A given state is typically robust enough to thrive for several generations. Typical modern period life expectancy at birth of a new state is one or more centuries before being incapacitated by chronic systemic liabilities (Fischer, 1996; Goldstone, 1991; Turchin, 2003).

The state apparatus (or “state” for short, depending on the context) derives its resources from surplus productive work of subjects (“taxation”) and via pillaging operations abroad. In other words, the energy that feeds the state apparatus (i.e., the agents, equipment and infrastructure composing its structural and leadership or managerial hierarchy) is the labour and extracted physical resources provided by its subjects and provided by its targets and holdings abroad.

The state thrives as long as the influx of labour and physical resources is greater or equal to the resources expended to maintain all of its parts. That is, the resources needed to feed and maintain all of its agents (administrators, lieutenants, soldiers, teachers, analysts, and so on), and to maintain its equipment and infrastructure.

Note that I am purposefully avoiding the language of money and loans. This is because all that matters in reality is the flow of resources. Money instruments for coercion and bribes, and that represent promises to pay back, are irrelevant in themselves. The state is able to balance the fluxes of resources or it is not. It continues to thrive and grow or it degrades and fails, irrespective of the paper concepts of “debt” and “savings”. From the state view, its “savings” are temporarily unused resources whereas interest payments on “debt” owed by the state represent sinks of resources, lost for fear of lender repercussions.

We must add that powerful non-state actors coexist with the state and compete to influence or control the state to their advantage while building and maintaining systems of parallel resource extraction. These are the elite, bankers, industrialists, landlords, organized criminals, and so on, who can eventually form coalitions and overthrow the state, or capture the state and manage it while retaining its organizational structure and facade.

As long as the state survives with its rulers in place, it will constantly address non-state actor challenges, in the same way that an organism, to the best of its ability, defends against aggressive parasites. In practice, the state will make many accommodations and reciprocal agreements with powerful non-state actors, rather than expend too much energy combating these persistent forces. In this way, the state will integrate many non-state actors into its hierarchical structure, thus keeping and securing control.

Regarding continued state stability, the state apparatus (agents), the subjects and the integrated non-state actors are embedded in a changing world. One gauge of changing overall conditions is population growth or decline, which in turn depends on many factors, including environmental capacity to provide resources and violent aggression (both intra-societal oppression and war campaigns). Population growth rate is associated with fetal, neonatal and infant mortality rates, and recently in many countries population growth rate is associated with fertility control and abortion rates. Individually experienced biological stress (Selye, 1956) undoubtedly plays a major role in fertility, as do societal norms.

However, contrary to suggestions by several authors, population growth or decline by itself does not destabilize the state. This can be demonstrated as follows.

From a theoretical perspective, let us say under constant division of labour and age structure conditions, if population grows at the same rate across social classes while each subject maintains its per capita capacity to generate resources, then there is no problem. The state simply grows accordingly and the balance of flows of resources (producers to state apparatus) per capita is maintained without friction. Likewise, if population decreases (at the same rate across social classes) while other conditions do not change, then the state only needs to downsize accordingly and the balance of flows of resources per capita is again maintained. Even population-growth-driven increased geographical distance between producer subjects and consuming state agents does not create significant transportation or distribution losses because the state apparatus can be optimally dispersed near production regions.

This is just to say that the total population quantum in itself does not affect or determine state stability.

What then can irreversibly destabilize the state?

A balanced flux of resources is the first consideration irrespective of size. Here is a general scenario under select constant conditions.

State stabilization under conditions of constant trade, technology, structure and population

For simplicity, we first keep as constant:

1. the state’s ability to extract foreign resources (e.g., no wars),
2. foreign trade,
3. technology and resource-production practices,
4. the state’s hierarchical (social) structure, and
5. the population.

In this thought experiment, we then postulate that the capacity of subjects to generate resources diminishes because of external factors not controlled by the state.

Such external factors might include:

• diminishing soil fertility
• diminishing crop yields (environmental or ecological)
• diminishing individual health (biological, evolutionary or epidemiological)
• diminishing personal ability or motivation for productive work
• increasing scarcity and cost of extraction of resources from wells, rivers, mines, forests, wildlife…

We can imagine that these factors would be caused by external circumstances such as:

• unchanging ill-conceived agricultural practices
• extended drought conditions
• solar radiative output variations
• solar constant (perpendicular solar irradiation onto the atmosphere) variations
• variations in large-scale cloud dynamics (e.g., from geomagnetic changes)
• over-exploitation without exploration or regeneration
• volcanic eruptions of toxic substances (e.g., mercury) and dimming aerosols
• invasive spread of insects or other species, including parasites and disease-carrying animals
• development of allergic intolerance and nutritional deficiencies
• inadequate waste disposal and management
• external societal influences (including propaganda, inter-state exchanges, world religions) that affect the population age structure, work ethics, morale, nuclear family structure and dynamics, religious preoccupations…

  and so on.

Note that the latter category “external societal influences” is not strictly external since it is societal. It will typically be a convolution between worldwide or multi-state changes and domestic contribution and response. Todd (2024) has explained the transformational impact of such a change on the Western world, leading to a dramatic reduction in the ability of the Western world states (vassal or not) to produce both competent agents and highly trained subjects.

If we relax the condition of keeping foreign trade constant, then another mechanism that in-effect diminishes the capacity of subjects to generate resources is for a trade deficit to result from external trading partners demanding an increased exchange advantage, which is equivalent to a state currency devaluation in economic terms. This occurs via trade intimidation or when the state’s resources produced for export become less desirable to the outside.

Overall, from all such factors, the consequences to state viability are potentially serious. The postulated reduced capacity of subjects to generate resources implies that less taxes can be leveraged from the subjects. As a result, if nothing else changes, then the flux of resources to maintain the state apparatus becomes insufficient.

The state can respond in any combination of various ways, including the following.

1. The state can increase the taxation rate, meaning that it deprives the subjects of their usual personal resources in order to extract the needed quantum of resources to feed the state apparatus. With this policy, the subjects bear the cost of the externally imposed drop in resource production. This can heighten the resistance against taxation and diminish the subjects’ fitness to produce.
2. The state can decrease resource delivery (aka salary) to its agents and expect them to continue performing the same tasks. With this policy, the state’s agents bear the cost of the externally imposed drop in resource production. This can increase internal opposition to the state hierarchy, thereby reducing service quality and dedication, and it can also reduce the agents’ fitness to perform their duties. This also thereby makes the state less able both to enforce taxation and address the constant non-state actor challenges.
3. The state can increase demands (taxation) on the powerful non-state actors that coexist within the state (the said elite, bankers, industrialists, landlords, organized criminals, and so on). This has at least two effects: It produces destabilizing tensions within the systems of resource extraction controlled by the non-state actors; and it increases non-state actor opposition to the state. This in turn creates conditions for increased competition between non-state actors, likely leading to aggressive takeovers and larger and more powerful non-state actors. (E.g., smaller players with less defences may be regulated and taxed out of existence.)
4. Taking the latter point further, the state can capture the holdings of powerful non-state actors (so-called nationalization) and dismantle non-state structures. This can provide a temporary influx of resources but it does not on its own solve the fundamental problem of resource flux imbalance caused by the externally imposed reduced capacity of subjects to generate resources.
5. The state can sell off or lease its holdings (infrastructure, land, water, intellectual property, and so on) to non-state actors in exchange for resources. This, again, on its own does not solve the fundamental problem of resource flux imbalance caused by the externally imposed reduced capacity of subjects to generate resources. It only delays the inevitable. (Unless, of course, the new influx of resources is successfully used to make game-changing structural changes, such as technological developments or war, which are explored below.) Note that this sell off of holdings is distinct from so-called “privatization”, which is usually an outright giveaway ―under non-state actor pressure and manipulation―having the effect of expending state holdings and resources to contract out the depriving of subjects (point “1”) and of state agents (point “2”) of their usual resources.

The above picture, so far, under the given assumptions of constant conditions (above points “a” through “e”), means that the externally imposed reduction in capacity of subjects to generate resources, if the said reduction is too large and too prolonged, will lead to a breakdown or dissolution of the state.

As long as the external hardship conditions persist, the positive feedback reactions contained in the presented state responses (above points “1” through “5”) are such that the state system will experience a non-linear (accelerating) spiralling down into destruction, and only the accelerating rate of this downfall can be mitigated by state reactions.

State stabilization with unconstrained trade, technology, structure and population

Longer state lifetimes can be achieved, for example, in the following creative and adaptive ways, allowed by relaxing the above-postulated constant-condition constraints (points “a” through “e”).

One oft illustrated approach in history is for the state to raise an army and practice war, slavery and imperialism. If successful, this creates a larger state, an empire. However, the law of balancing fluxes of resources from subjects to the state apparatus (which now includes a maintained occupying army) remains the same, and such an empire can spiral down towards oblivion under a strong and growing pressure of reduced capacity of subjects to generate resources. An empire will generally have a longer lifetime than a small state, but the same law of balanced resource flux applies.

In this version of our hypothetical world which allows inter-state competition, wars and empire building, each state now has a defence burden as part of its apparatus, not only police and soldiers for domestic order.

In addition, having relaxed condition “d” (above) of a constant or unchanging social structure, the state’s administrative apparatus of service agents itself will be driven to grow larger in size and more demanding of resources through careerism and social-class greed, which must also be countered by the state.

Another approach to solving the deficient resource flux problem is for states to practice pillaging, which is the iconic resource supplementation strategy of the Vikings. Similarly, a large state can use protection-racket coercion, a popular method of the USA empire practised against its so-called allies through arms sales, military bases, corporate not-so-free trade and control of the world currency (Rancourt, 2019).

The now relaxed hypothetical rules (of our thought experiment) also allow improving technology and resource-production practices (point “c” above). Our hypothetical state therefore now has many new inventive ways to solve or alleviate its deficient resource flux problem (of externally imposed diminished capacity of subjects to generate resources).

The state, its subjects, and its agents can, under the newly considered relaxed constraints, respond in any combination, for example, of the following:

1. develop improved and sustainable agricultural practices giving higher yields in both food quantity and quality (such as optimized livestock and crop rotations, improved water management methods, imported crop varieties, improved pest management methods, improved pollination strategies, and so on)
2. increase, adjust or redistribute resource allowances to subjects in order to make them more productive (this is partly achieved through taxation policy and is akin to reducing poverty and unemployment, while improving living conditions and increasing individual fitness)
3. develop improved state-run education and religious practices that increase national (state) identity and allegiance, while responding to worldwide changes in values
4. develop improved intelligence systems for rooting out and discouraging subversion and corruption (thus keeping non-state actor ambitions and out-of-state infiltration more efficiently in check)
5. adopt or adapt social and work-environment structures that strengthen state subject and state agent dedication and efficiency (such as highly stratified hierarchies with merit-based assignations) (Note that the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) in China, for example, had a robust merit-based hierarchy for its elite educated state public service agents, see Turchin, 2023.)
6. develop improved and novel state management practices to continuously optimize the mosaic of production specialization and agent duty specialization, adjusting compartment populations as needed, in ways that do not create destabilizing tensions
7. develop improved education or mentorship structures and incentives to transmit and develop technical skills and practices
8. develop improved energy use technology in both mechanization and transportation
9. develop improved and sustainable mining and energy extraction and refinement technologies
10. develop improved land use practices, including specialization based on regional climate and ecological conditions
11. develop improved waste management strategies and sanitation practices

and so on.

In all of this, the state must have breadth and depth in its own increasing and institutionalized knowledge of state management principles and response strategies and tactics. This knowledge base must be state-owned and independent. It should not rely on or be corrupted by non-state actors or foreign influence.

In this way, creative and coordinated state responses to external factors that would diminish the capacity of subjects to generate resources can ensure that the law of balanced resource flux (from subjects to the state apparatus) is dynamically maintained. Surpluses can be used to reduce poverty and increase employment in socially rewarding work, for both subjects and agents, thus strengthening the state and reducing internal frustration against the state.

As long as the state project is alive in the minds and hearts of subjects and agents, then such creative state responses to external factors that would diminish the capacity of subjects to generate resources can continue without state collapse except for the most extreme external shocks.

Regarding keeping the state project alive in minds and hearts, at the psychological level the individual is expected to largely take their identity from their place in the state-structured and maintained social hierarchy. The state is aided by a large biological impetus to belong, as is the case with all social animals, such that early and continued state education and institutions (including state religions) that promote state ideology do well in this regard. With vassal jurisdictions (states in facade only) the empire may provide globalized generic ideologies (Rancourt, 2019). Individuals (especially males) also have a natural impetus to rebel and to seek more power if promotion within the established hierarchy is not forthcoming or sufficient, especially among the elite social classes (Turchin, 2023). This biological impetus drives the growth and multiplication of non-state actors, if it is not accommodated by the state.

In all of this, population need not increase or decrease, although an increased and integrated population in-effect increases the size and power of the state in the world. Likewise, loss of population can so diminish the state’s effective size as to make it more vulnerable to external pressures and threats. Furthermore, an artificial or accelerated increase in state population, if not integrated, can cause an impetus for war, both civil and predatory.

Presently, it seems superficially that large societies that have long historic traditions of intended merit-based state management hierarchical structures (Russia, China) and experience with long-lived recent empires (Tsarist Russia, 1547-1917; Qing Dynasty, 1644-1912) are able to apply the above responses well, whereas states that have more colonizing traditions (Western world) tend to stick with the colonizing model, using both military projection and financial predation.

Can the state survive?

Finally, regarding the cycles of state breakdown that are observed historically from the late-Middle Ages through the early modern period (Fischer, 1996; Goldstone, 1991), it appears that these collapses were due to state failures to cope, in the presence of large intra-state and inter-state pressures, in which competing non-state actors played major roles. There are two main striking features of these cycles, in the particular (mostly European and northern Asian) states studied by Fischer (1996) and Goldstone (1991).

First, state stability periods did not last much more than approximately 100 years (3 generations), up to approximately 200 years; again, for these particular states studied by Fischer (1996) and Goldstone (1991). It seems one century or so was long enough for threatening non-state forces to generate and cause severing changes, while exploiting external conditions such as trade conflicts and war. Elite greed and ambition was certainly a driver, and relative inflation of cost of basic commodities was always a factor (Fischer, 1996; Goldstone, 1991; Turchin, 2023).

These events suggest that the state, like the body of a living animal, has a finite and species-specific lifetime. Once enough damage is accumulated in the process of living, then a non-linear final failure (death) precipitously occurs. Has modern technology and civilizational management experience made a new species of state having a super immune system? It is doubtful. However, as argued above, unlike with the body of a living animal, state longevity is not limited by biological laws, only by unchecked internal rot, conquest or external catastrophic shock.

From another perspective, the state is a social dominance hierarchy and all social dominance hierarchies are subject to a dynamical law of spontaneous creep away from merit-based stratification towards competing mega-players and a totalitarian end point (Hickey and Davidsen, 2019). The loss of merit-based social stratification is the death of a state. The theoretically predicted death by dominance dynamics is postponed by optimal choices of the rules of social-status competition (Hickey and Davidsen, 2019), which the state can control.

Overall, statecraft is the most challenging human endeavour. Long-lived states and empires are possible, where longevity depends more on autonomous internal management than on external factors. Every legislative, legal and policy decision of the state either stabilizes or destabilizes, in the changing environment of external factors.

Second, state stability (and instability) periods were essentially synchronous across continental-scale geographic space. This led Goldstone (1991) to conclude that there must be an overarching common external factor driving all state instabilities: Population growth pressure on natural resources. I disagree. The approximate said synchrony of state stability and state meltdown can be induced by several strong coupling forces that include:

• • • • inter-state trade
      • inter-state technology transfer (including agricultural practices)
      • war and territorial disputes
      • climatic change (e.g., Little Ice Age conditions, 1300-1850)
      • large volcanic eruptions

These coupling forces draw the states into a single dominance hierarchy which will then follow its own whole-system dynamics. Simply put, the states have synchronized cycles because they are integrated parts of one world.

This does not mean that an individual state is not self-determined. Only that its downfall is coupled to the downfalls of other states. Strong states follow their own paths. Failing states fail together.

Acknowledgement. I thank my colleague Dr. Joseph Hickey for a critical review of the paper and several suggestions regarding content and clarity.

References

Fischer (1996): David Hackett Fischer, The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History Oxford University Press, p. 536, ISBN 0-19-512121-X (Pbk.)

Goldstone (1991): Goldstone, Jack A., Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World, University of California Press, p. 608, ISBN 0-520-08267-2

Hickey and Davidsen (2019): Hickey J, Davidsen J, “Self-organization and time-stability of social hierarchies.” PLoS ONE 2019, 14(1): e0211403. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0211403

Rancourt (2019): Rancourt, Denis G., Geo-Economics and Geo-Politics Drive Successive Eras of Predatory Globalization and Social Engineering – Historical Emergence of Climate Change, Gender Equity, and Anti-Racism as State Doctrines /// (April 02, 2019) /// Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5403798 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5403798

Selye (1956): Hans Selye, The Stress of Life, McGraw-Hill, p. 515, ISBN 0-07-056212-1

Todd (2024): Emmanuel Todd, La Défaite de l’Occident, Gallimard Publ., p. 384, ISBN 978-2073041135

Turchin (2003): Peter Turchin, Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall, Princeton University Press, p. 245, ISBN 978-0-691-18077-9

Turchin (2023): Peter Turchin, End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, Penguin Press, NY, p. 352, ISBN 9780593490501 (hardcover)

Denis G. Rancourt was a former tenured full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is a researcher for the Ontario Civil Liberties Association. He has published more than 100 articles in leading scientific journals, on physics and environmental science. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. Denis can be reached at denis.rancourt@gmail.com. Read other articles by Denis, or visit Denis's website.

Marxists.orgwww.marxists.org/reference/archive/kropotkin-peter/1896/state/index.htm

The State: Its Historic Role - Marxists Internet Archive

Kropotkin explains in the French edition of his Memoirs “The research that I carried out in the course of familiarizing myself with the institutions of the ...

 

The Dream of Korean Independence

Sovereignty survives in the shadow of imperial hegemony.

By Simone Chun

January 14, 2026

Source: Counterpunch

Light sticks from K-pop idol concerts have become a symbol of mass demonstrations. (Telegram/Bisang Action)

“People of this nation, please come to the National Assembly now. Protect the final bastion of our democracy!”
—Lee Jae Myung, December 2024

This urgent plea was livestreamed at 10:40 p.m. on 3 December 2024 by National Assemblyman Lee Jae Myung, barely ten minutes after martial law had been declared by the now-impeached President Yoon Suk-yeol. Hundreds of citizens heeded the call, converging on the National Assembly building to block troops from entering parliament and prevent the country from sliding into authoritarian rule.

One year later, Lee, now President of Korea, commemorated one of the most dramatic nights in the nation’s history. He described it as a moment when the Korean people peacefully overcame an “unprecedented democratic crisis in world history,” in what is now remembered as the Revolution of Light. Lee went on to designate December 3 as National Sovereignty Day, pledging to build a Korea in which no one could even contemplate extinguishing the light of popular sovereignty. Lee’s renewed focus on sovereignty underscores the urgent need to examine not only the causal factors behind Yoon’s failed insurrection, but also to confront deeper factors that continue to undermine the foundations of Korea’s sovereignty, namely, Washington’s encroachment on Korean independence. 

Despite the great strides made by South Korean democracy, the country remains the world’s only state to have ceded wartime operational control to a foreign power, an arrangement that violates international law and contradicts the principles of the UN Charter by effectively positioning Korea not as a fully sovereign state but as a U.S. forward military base. For 74 years, Washington has maintained wartime Operational Control (OPCON) over Korea’s military, commanding 600,000 frontline troops, 3.5 million reservists, and the entirety of Korea’s military infrastructure. Under the 1953 U.S.–ROK Mutual Defense Treaty, U.S. forces have unrestricted freedom of operation on Korean soil. 

As a result, Korea remains bound to a security framework that prioritizes Washington’s strategic objectives over its own sovereign decision-making. This unprecedented system has long constrained Korea’s military and political sovereignty and continues to shape every major security decision the country faces. It is within this broader structure of dependency–and the ongoing limitations on Korea’s sovereignty–that the events of December 2024 must be understood.

Exposing the U.S. Role in Yoon’s Insurrection 

A six-month investigation into Yoon’s declaration of martial law resulted in his indictment, along with 18 co-conspirators, of attempting to create justification for declaring martial law provoking North Korea to “mount an armed aggression”; a gambit that failed only because Pyongyang “did not respond militarily.” The Special Prosecutor investigation revealed that the Yoon administration carried out a series of calculated provocations, including repeatedly launching droves of massive balloons and military drones into North Korean airspace just two months before the December 3 insurrection. South Korean military sources confirmed that these were not defensive measures but deliberate provocations. A memo from the Defense Counterintelligence Command warned of potential North Korean reprisal scenarios ranging “from a minimum security crisis to a maximum Noah’s flood,” reflecting the high stakes of Yoon’s planning.

While Yoon stands trial for deliberately heightening inter-Korean tensions and risking a devastating war in furtherance of his own ambitions, the U.S. role in his brinkmanship has remained largely unexamined. In fact, Yoon’s declaration of martial law, far from being an isolated act of authoritarian overreach, was the culmination of years of U.S. pressure under the Biden administration, which strategically positioned Korea as a frontline military hub in Washington’s global strategy. Washington’s geopolitical ambitions were directly manifested through Yoon’s pursuit of regime change in the North, his advocacy for the deployment of U.S. nuclear assets in South Korea, and his full embrace of a U.S.-brokered trilateral military alliance that inducts Korea and Japan into Washington’s aggressively anti-China regional strategy.

It strains credibility to suggest that given the extensive intelligence sharing between the U.S.–ROK Combined Forces and the advanced reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), which monitors the Korean Peninsula 24/7 with advanced equipment like satellites and reconnaissance aircraft, Washington somehow failed to notice Yoon’s sustained provocations against Pyongyang. Noh Sang-won, a Yoon associate and former intelligence operative, was found in possession of notes pointing to a plan to notify the US in advance before martial law declaration, including several references to “US advance notice,” “cooperation from the U.S.,” and “prior notice to the U.S.” While Noh Sang‑won’s notes contain references to “U.S. advance notice” and “cooperation from the U.S.,” suggesting that elements of Yoon’s plan may have considered informing Washington, U.S. officials have publicly denied any prior knowledge or involvement in the attempted martial law declaration.

The special prosecutor’s most striking claim is that Yoon sought to justify martial law by repeatedly trying to “provoke” North Korea into responding militarily and coordinating covert moves to spark a security crisis. Yet the most serious provocations toward the North remain in place even after Yoon’s impeachment, namely, the decades-long campaign of military brinkmanship led by Washington. 

Under the Yoon administration, U.S.–ROK combined military exercises surged to nearly 340 per year, nearly triple the number conducted in 2017, locking the Korean peninsula in a cycle of militarization and provocation that perpetually thwarts any prospect for peace. These maneuvers mobilize tens of thousands of troops and U.S. strategic assets for live-fire field maneuvers simulating preemptive strikes, decapitation of leadership, territorial occupation, and post-war stabilization. ROK–U.S. and ROK–U.S.–Japan military exercises expanded exponentially, signaling near-continuous training and a sharp escalation from 2023. This trajectory reflects the consolidation of a trilateral nuclear war alliance, formalized in 2022–2023 and now actively operationalized. The exercises have also undergone a qualitative shift, encompassing nuclear war simulations against North Korea, China-focused drills, U.S. homeland defense training, and Conventional–Nuclear Integration (CNI). Through CNI—evident in bomber escort missions and carrier-based operations—South Korea’s conventional forces are increasingly embedded in U.S. nuclear war planning.

At the same time, the U.S. has been rapidly expanding its airborne footprint in South Korea, signaling a significant strategic shift. Gunsan Air Base, located on Korea’s southwest coast in North Jeolla Province, provides the U.S. with rapid access to key theaters such as the Chinese mainland, the Taiwan Strait, and the West Sea maritime zone, making it a critical platform for US power projection into Northeast Asia. It now hosts the first U.S. F-16 “super squadrons,” with 31 aircraft deployed last year and additional squadrons joining this year. Infrastructure upgrades, including 20 reinforced hangars built in 2020 and another 18 more nearing completion, have prepared the base to accommodate F-35A strategic bombers as well.

While portrayed as “defensive”, the U.S. military posture in the Korean peninsula is unmistakably offensive, integrating nuclear and conventional capabilities, and rehearsing multi-domain operations spanning land, sea, air, space, cyber, and electromagnetic domains and extending across the Indo-Pacific to explicitly target China. The increased cadence of Multinational drills such as Talisman Sabre, Pacific Vanguard, and Freedom Edge deepen South Korea’s entanglement in U.S. strategic priorities at the expense of its own national interest. Properly understood, the offensive character of these U.S.-led military exercises is not incidental but foundational, providing a structural context that enabled and emboldened Yoon’s insurrection. Although the exercises are justified as “reinforced deterrence,” in practice they implement a permanent near‑war posture. The battlefield is being structured not around risk reduction and normalization of relations, but around the maintenance and even increase of heightened tensions.

Gravest Threat to South Korea: Servility Toward Washington

In contrast to Yoon, the Lee administration has taken modest but meaningful steps to de-escalate tensions, including suspending anti–North Korea leaflet launches and halting loudspeaker broadcasts along the heavily militarized border. Yet even these small gestures merely serve to expose the limits of South Korea’s sovereignty under the alliance structure. Washington has taken no parallel steps, as U.S.-led joint military exercises continue unabated, hamstringing any measures independently taken by Seoul and effectively constraining South Korea’s capacity to pursue an independent de-escalatory policy.

In fact, the precedent of provocation set under the Yoon administration has not only persisted but expanded, undermining South Korea’s efforts toward genuine de-escalation. Just two weeks after Lee’s inauguration, on June 18, 2025, the U.S., Japan, and South Korea conducted their first-ever joint military exercise near Jeju Island, while South Korean artillery drills near Hwacheon, situated only a few miles from the North Korean border, violated the September 19 Inter-Korean Military Agreement, underscoring the persistence of provocative military posturing.

Moreover, General Xavier Brunson, Commander of the ROK–U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC), has explicitly described South Korea as a forward platform for U.S. power projection and offensive operations against China and Russia, thus abandoning any pretense of pursuing deterrence or regional stability. Brunson has prioritized “cost imposition” against China and Russia by operationalizing the Korea–Japan–Philippines strategic triad, placing Seoul in the front line of potential conflict and highlighting the enduring challenge to South Korea’s sovereignty. In doing so, he has openly positioned South Korea as the central hub of U.S. forward military operations in Northeast Asia aimed at China and Russia. By enabling the USFK to impose military costs not only on North Korea but also on Russia’s Northern Fleet and China’s Northern Theater Command, South Korea itself becomes a primary target. 

Korea’s National Sovereignty Crisis Under the Trump Administration

Since Yoon’s removal from power, the Trump administration has imposed even harsher and more coercive encroachments on Korea’s national sovereignty, deepening the subordination of Korean decision-making to U.S. strategic imperatives. Trump’s newly released National Security Strategy (NSS) 2025 explicitly states that “allies” must bear the costs of the Indo-Pacific strategy “with a focus on the capabilities—including new capabilities—necessary to deter adversaries and protect the First Island Chain”,  a U.S.-led strategic concept describing the line of western Pacific islands stretching from Japan and Okinawa through Taiwan and the northern Philippines. These nations are intended to serve as the U.S. front line of military containment against China.

This represents Washington’s renewed emphasis on systematically shifting the financial costs, operational burdens, and strategic risks of its Indo-Pacific and global defense commitments onto subordinate allies who are incapable of rejecting this structure. South Korea, deeply bound to the United States economically, militarily, and ideologically, has become a prime example of this subordination. Not only does the country shoulder the major financial responsibility for the U.S. forces it “hosts”—troops whose unrestricted operations on Korean soil have been guaranteed since the 1953 U.S.–ROK Mutual Defense Treaty–it is increasingly being entangled in a program of intensified regional militarization driven by Washington. 

Coupled with military pressure, economic coercion has also been systematically applied to undermine Seoul’s sovereignty. Through the imposition of a new trade arrangement that replaced the zero-tariff framework of the original KORUS FTA with a 15% tariff rate, Washington has compelled Seoul to commit to an estimated $350 billion investment (which amounts to nearly 19% of the country’s total GDP in 2024), including roughly $200 billion in cash commitments and $150 billion tied to U.S.-controlled assets, including shipbuilding and other strategic sectors. According to Trump’s Social post, South Korea has agreed to pay the U.S. $350 billion and additionally purchase large quantities of oil and gas, with investments by South Korean companies exceeding $600 billion. Trump’s tariff-driven trade deal has had a profoundly destabilizing effect on South Korea’s economy, exemplified by the current won‑weakening crisis.  By pressuring South Korea to put U.S. investment first—at the expense of its own economic stability—the deal shifted real financial risk onto Seoul. The result is not merely economic realignment but effective dispossession: Korea has ceded control over critical segments of its own economy and entrenched itself in a structurally subordinate position within a U.S.-led economic order.

Furthermore, South Korea’s 2026 defense budget has risen by 8.2 percent, representing the largest year-on-year increase since 2019 and driven largely by expanded procurement of U.S.-made arms. Seoul now finds itself compelled to purchase an estimated $25 billion in additional U.S. weapons systems, underscoring how Seoul’s defense policy is being reshaped under coercion and locking Korea into a U.S.-dominated military-industrial framework. Moreover, South Korea has committed an additional $33 billion to support USFK, on top of the expenses it already bears for hosting roughly 28,500 U.S. troops on its soil. Notably, South Korea covered 90% of the $10.8 billion cost of constructing Camp Humphreys, the largest U.S. overseas base in the world.

Under the Trump administration, Seoul, as a key “burden-bearing” state within a U.S.-centered framework spanning defense, energy, and infrastructure, is being compelled to finance the construction of U.S. military installations, absorb strategic and frontline costs, fund U.S. security operations, increase defense spending to support U.S. forces, and purchase billions in American weapons. Recognizing these exactions, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby praised South Korea as the first non-NATO treaty ally to make such commitments, calling it a “model ally” for “stepping up” its defense spending.

Taken together, these measures reveal not a commitment to peace or regional stability but the deep entrenchment of a war-making posture: Korea’s sovereignty has been subordinated to Washington’s strategic agenda, forcing the country to finance the occupation of its own territory while bearing the material, political, and front-line risks of U.S. militarism in the Indo-Pacific.

Inter-Korean Reconciliation Blocked by Washington

Amid mounting economic and military pressure, Washington not only continues to veto even modest Korean efforts to foster inter-Korean rapprochement but also preempts any attempt to formulate independent policies based on the principle of self-determination.

On December 3, for the first time since his inauguration, President Lee publicly mentioned the possibility of suspending or reducing U.S.-ROK joint military exercises. To bolster his argument, Lee recalled President Trump’s 2018 statement: “I think it’s very provocative…  We will be stopping the war games… which will save us a tremendous amount of money.” Indeed, a U.S. Army budget analysis later confirmed that canceling certain exercises in 2018 had saved the U.S. an estimated $14 million. Lee then argued for dialogue and rapprochement as a means of reducing or postponing the exercises once “a peace regime between the North and the South is firmly established”

However, USFK Command promptly rejected the prospect of suspending or reducing the exercises, asserting de facto control over Korea’s military decisions. General Brunson retorted: “Whenever someone talks about—I don’t care who it is—talks about exercising less or exercising differently, they need to understand that there are two times in a year where we absolutely need some support.” Brunson also made clear Washington’s rejection of another central pillar of President Lee’s agenda: the transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) to South Korea within Lee’s presidential term.

Veteran American journalist Tim Shorrock, who has covered Korea for more than two decades, summed up the implications succinctly: “Sovereignty much? … South Korea’s de facto leader is a U.S. four-star general, Xavier Brunson, Commander of U.S. Forces Korea.”

In spite of an approval rating above 60 percent, based largely on public pledges to safeguard Korea’s national sovereignty, Lee remains unable to fully exercise Korea’s sovereignty on the most important national security matters. War, peace, and sovereignty on the Korean Peninsula is being decided by Washington, while the Korean ambition for sovereignty has been pushed aside and Korea itself reduced to a sidekick in the U.S. Indo Pacific strategy, forced to pay for the U.S. military assets stationed on its soil.

Asserting Sovereignty in a World Shaped by Washington’s Militarism

While the broader pitfalls of the U.S.–ROK alliance remain largely unchallenged, grassroots movements within Korea, together with the Korean diaspora in the U.S., continue to assert the right to self-determination and demand an end to Korea’s structural dependence on U.S. forces. In the U.S., Korean American activists, scholars, and peace advocates, along with independent research and educational organizations such as the Korea Policy Institute have been at the forefront of the struggle for Korea to reclaim its sovereignty. At the same time, domestic pro-democracy organizations within Korea such as the weekly Korean Citizens’ Candlelight Rally and Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), whose protests were instrumental to removing Yoon from power, have remained active, renewing their focus on social reform, national sovereignty, and liberation.

Viewed through the lens of U.S. militarism and Korea’s eroded sovereignty, the following takeaways highlight both the significance of the Revolution of Light and the paradox of Korea’s sovereignty crisis under Washington’s persistent pressure.

First, Korea’s revolution of light exposed the enduring imperial dynamics shaping Korean politics and the geopolitical constraints imposed by Washington’s revived Cold War posture. In this context, the movement underscored the profound moral contradictions at the heart of a U.S. foreign policy that claims to defend democracy while simultaneously enabling authoritarianism in its client states. It also illuminated the deep contradictions at the core of Washington’s hegemonic ambitions that continue to erode Korea’s sovereignty.

Second, the revolution of light effectively united millions of Koreans around a shared demand to reclaim democracy not only from domestic authoritarians but also from imperial domination. It revealed a truth rarely acknowledged by mainstream analysts: the fragility of U.S. unipolar power when confronted with a morally grounded and highly organized popular resistance. Standing as a testament to the resilience of Korea’s grassroots democracy, it demonstrated that any U.S. policy in Korea that dismisses or sidelines the democratic will of the Korean people is ultimately unsustainable.

A year ago, Koreans rose not only against illegal martial law and an attempted insurrection but also implicitly against a hegemonic U.S. framework that empowered an autocratic president whose ambitions nearly sparked war. To challenge Yoon and martial law was to resist U.S. hegemonic power within a deeply militarized client state under occupation, a reality that most mainstream analysts and media either ignore or deliberately obscure. Korea has already proven it can resist authoritarianism peacefully. The question now is whether it can assert genuine sovereignty in a world order dominated by U.S. militarism.

How South Korea’s Billions Will Upgrade Trump’s War Machine

By Dae-Han Song

January 14, 2026

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Money to Weapons by Cam Cotrill

In a flagrant disregard for international law and national sovereignty, the Trump administration invaded and kidnapped Venezuela’s President Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores. Rather than being an isolated event, the increasing bravado of and remarks from President Donald Trump open the terrifying possibility that, if not opposed, Trump’s war machine will proliferate its aggressions, with next possible targets being Cuba, Mexico, and Colombia or Greenland. US hyperimperialism is dividing and unraveling the world at a time when we should be coming together to address our most existential crises. 

Key in this strategy for military domination are ‘AI, quantum computing, and autonomous systems, plus the energy necessary to fuel’ them. South Korea’s pledge of $350 billion dollars in factories, manufacturing know-how, and technology in these sectors will strengthen Trump’s war machine. Opposing this memorandum of understanding is one front in resisting the Trump administration’s hyper-imperialism. 

Robbing the Mouse

Since his ““Liberation Day””, Trump’s tariff war has extorted pledges for trillions of dollars from the rest of the world, accusing it of taking advantage of the US and creating the US trade deficit. This narrative conveniently ignores the ultra-rich in the US whose trillion dollar companies were built on these global supply chains. More specifically, over 70 percent of the US S&P 500 companies rely on global supply chains (as noted by COVID 19’s impact on them). Most spectacularly, Apple grew into a $3.8 trillion company by selling products manufactured by the rest of the world. If it were a country, Apple would be the 7th largest. Amazon grew into a $2.6 trillion company (greater than Italy’s GDP, the 8th globally) by trading mostly (71 percent) goods manufactured in China. If countries, nonetheless, developed and industrialized by producing US goods, they did so despite earning pennies on the dollar. For instance, China earned 2 pennies for every dollar from the sale of an iPhone; Apple earned over 50 cents. The bulk of the US trade balance went not into the coffers of countries around the world but into those of the ultra-rich in the US, who took the lion’s share of the wealth. Now, Trump is gunning for the mouse’s share.

Much has been made of the fact that the EU’s $600 billion investment pledge lacks enforceability, with most investment happening on its own through the markets. Yet, the enforcement mechanism for Japan and South Korea’s investment pledges of $550 billion (42 percent of Japan’s foreign reserves) and $350 billion (83 percent of South Korea’s foreign reserves) is far more direct and brutal. Both countries must invest in Trump’s projects or risk reciprocal tariffs. More specifically, the Trump administration will propose investments in strategic sectors. If they refuse, Trump can simply impose the reciprocal tariffs and, despite South Korea’s bragging that it has gotten a better deal than Japan (through assurances that the US would consider the destabilizing effects of investments and would limit investments to $20 billion a year), it still has the same unequal profit sharing scheme: South Korean and Japanese investors would bring all their capital and manufacturing know-how into a project, but contrary to the principles of the market, they would still hand over 50 percent and, once the investment is recovered, 90 percent of the project’s profits to the US. In effect, the US gets 50 percent and then 90 percent of profits without putting a penny of its own money. Furthermore, it’s not yet clear what impact the funneling out of such massive investments from South Korea and Japan will have on their people. By building factories for and training future competitors, it’s hard not to rule out a hollowing out of each country’s industrial base and a dulling of their competitive advantages. 

Upgrading the War Machine

Worst of all, these investments do not build a world centered on the needs and interests of people in the United States or of the world nor make the world safer or more sustainable. On the contrary, they help Trump preserve and advance ‘cutting-edge military use technology and dual-use technology’ to intimidate, bully, and invade other countries. More specifically, South Korea will be investing $150 billion to expand the US capacity (which is suffering from backlogged orders) to build warships and potentially nuclear powered submarines. Additionally, South Korea will invest up to $20 billion a year for 10 years on sectors Trump’s National Security Strategy has identified as deciding ‘the future of military power.’ Semiconductor factories would create the chips for the data centers that will allow the US to dominate AI, which is becoming central to waging war. To power these electricity-hungry data centers, South Korea will provide the nuclear power plants. Finally, South Korea will be providing smelting technology and know-how for refining critical minerals for defense.

Not Set in Stone

While Trump has managed to extract many concessions through his tariff war, the memorandum of understandings (MOUs) that are reached are not set in stone. Not only are the legality of Trump’s tariffs (the extortion mechanism) being deliberated upon by the Supreme Court, the MOUs are not legally binding. In other words, their enforceability will be determined by a struggle between Trump’s tariff pressure and a government—and more importantly, its people’s—willingness to resist Trump’s extortion and war machine. 

South Korean progressive political parties and civil society created the Organizing Committee of the International People’s Action Against Trump’s 1st Year Anniversary to resist Trump’s aggressions. Jeong-eun Hwang of the Organizing Committee explains, ‘The US doesn’t need more submarines, warships, and AI to get better at intimidating, bullying, and destroying the world. Opposing South Korea’s $350 billion investment offers one specific way to resist Trump.’ 

This article was produced by Globetrotter. Dae-Han Song is a part of the International Strategy Center and the No Cold War collective and is an associate at the Korea Policy Institute.Email