Strongman.
A strong man in Korean.
A modifier with negative and positive nuances, like a coercive and tough person, but also sometimes imbued with charisma and leadership.
However, strongman in political science is read in a rather negative connotation.
Although seemingly attractive, it is because it refers to a political leader who uses democracy as an opportunity cost to build up his political strength.
There has been a controversy over the concept of Strongman in our society.
In December 2012, <Time> selected then-presidential candidate Park Geun-hye as an Asian cover story and introduced her as 'The Strongman's Daughter'. Translating it as 'the dictator's daughter', a war of words went back and forth.
Time then put an end to the controversy by changing the online version's title to "The Dictator's Daughter."
Strongman is known for its use by political scientists Brian Lai and Dan Slater.
Initially, it meant the leader of a dictatorship dependent on military force.
It was a concept distinct from the one-party dictatorship centered on private elites.
However, as populist politics has recently risen to the surface, authoritarian politicians who build strong leadership by leveraging public popularity have become more common.
Even the leader of a democratic country is followed by this modifier.
Donald Trump of the United States is a prime example.
The year 2022 was a year when Strongman was getting more attention than ever.
Some succeeded in laying the groundwork for long-term rule, while others sparked international criticism by inciting war.
Naturally, the international news was filled with news about strongmen.
And in 2023.
It is evaluated as a time to take a breather as there are no major international elections.
But for Strongman, this year is more important than ever.
You can grow your muscles through politics, not elections, or, on the contrary, you can lose your strength.
Like it or not, they were put to the test this year.
How will Strongman, who shook the international community last year, become an actor in international politics in 2023?
Furthermore, how will the world's political landscape change?
This is why we need to pay more attention than ever to strongmen standing in the middle of international politics.
In 2023, a strongman battle in the middle of international politics
Democracy and Strongman.
Two keywords that don't go together at all.
However, it is paradoxical that the gap has narrowed in the United States, which is known to lead democracy.
When Trump was elected president in 2016, the world was shocked.
Democracy could conceive and even nurture strongmen.
The next US presidential election will be held in November next year.
Considering that the party primary will start in earnest from January next year, this year is the year the outline of the competition for the presidency is drawn.
Trump failed to win a second term, but threw a vote again.
It is also true that his position in the party is narrowing after the de facto defeat in last year's midterm elections.
Even in American media polls, his approval rating seems to be dropping little by little.
He needs to gather all his energy this year for re-election.
Trump, the strongman of the once superpower.
He is destined to continue to show and convince him that 2023 is still politically sound.
China, synonymous with elite politics.
However, each time the conclusion is different.
One-man rule in the Mao Zedong era, elder rule in the Deng Xiaoping era, and collective rule after that.
However, the Communist Party Congress in October last year implied a new change in the ruling system.
This is because, in effect, it became a signal for Xi Jinping's one-man rule system.
Former Prime Minister Hu Jintao being dragged out seemed like a symbolic scene of the retreat of a rival faction.
At least in China, a strong competitor to compete with Xi Jinping has disappeared.
It has been evaluated that the establishment of a political system for long-term rule is virtually over.
What remains now is what Xi Jinping will look like this year.
In a situation where the US check is becoming stronger day by day, Xi Jinping is putting weight on the fact that he is going to show off his muscles against the US.
It seems that Xi Jinping is already concentrating his energy on the 'double cycle' policy, which seeks to expand domestic demand, economically, and the 'Taiwan unification' policy, militarily, against the US's containment of China.
Naturally, the impact on the Korean economy and security will not be small.
Strongman Xi Jinping has disappeared from the forces of check.
For him, 2023 is a time of all-out efforts to show that his muscles are as strong as that of the United States.
At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, everyone knew that it was a war without justification, but the world saw Putin's victory as obvious.
However, the result was not.
Ukraine's will to fight was strong.
Furthermore, thanks to Western support, it succeeded to some extent in dragging the war into a protracted one.
Putin must have been embarrassed.
Foreign media reported that Putin's position would be shaken.
Although he is being criticized internationally for being a war criminal, there is also a consensus that Putin's position is still intact in the short term.
Russian elites, who are the base of support for Putin, are generally considered to have strong solidarity.
There are ups and downs in Russian domestic opinion polls, but the war support is not that low.
This domestic situation is by no means against Putin.
Of course, the possibility of a regime crisis occurring in the mid- to long-term cannot be ruled out.
There are many variables such as economic sanctions and the development of the war situation.
For Putin, these variables must be minimized in order to maintain his own political position.
Strongman Putin who became a war criminal.
For him, 2023 is a desperate time to lead the current situation stably.
Last year, Kim Jong-un fired more than 90 missiles.
the biggest ever
Circumstances that a seventh nuclear test is imminent also continue to emerge.
North Korea's strongman, Kim Jong-un, poured his energy into military buildup last year.
In other words, it was also an opportunity for him to use pressure as leverage to advance missile technology.
It has also been somewhat successful in attracting international attention.
Among the dictators of many small countries in the world, is there another strongman who is so frequently mentioned in the foreign press?
Security cooperation between South Korea, the U.S. and Japan will become stronger this year, and there is no reason for it to weaken.
Another good cause for North Korea.
"Depending on the struggle this year, the achievements of the struggle so far will determine victory or defeat," is a sentence from an article in the Labor Newspaper on the 3rd.
As long as there is no change, the prevailing interpretation is that Kim Jong-un's thoughts will not change significantly.
As the Rodong Sinmun put it, this year is also a struggle.
You have to push hard to survive.
Celebrity strongman Kim Jong-un of a small country.
For him, 2023 is a turbulent time to unite and struggle like last year.
It seems far away from us, but the wind of Middle East politics can reach the Korean Peninsula through several steps.
For example, as can be seen in the US withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and the cracks in the US-Saudi alliance, the US has gradually withdrawn from the Middle East and begun pouring its strategic capabilities into China.
This is the so-called Indo-Pacific strategy.
However, as a reaction, pro-US countries in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia began to get closer to Russia and China, and the US position became embarrassing.
It suggests that there are still gaps in US diplomatic strategy.
The Korean Peninsula is highly resilient to changes in US diplomatic strategy.
The key variable influencing this strategic margin is the strong men of the Middle East.
The Middle East is truly a set of strongman variables.
Saudi Arabia's strongman Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, aka Mr. Everything, is at its center.
In July of last year, Biden, who went to appease Crown Prince Mohammed due to soaring oil prices, unfortunately had to return empty-handed.
Muhammad would have thought.
No matter how much the shale revolution is called, the power of oil is still there.
Naturally, his confidence that he could use this as a weapon to travel between the US, China, and Russia, and even jump around to increase his ransom, would have soared.
Even now, he is no different from the highest power, but there is also a possibility that he will succeed the throne after his senile father Salman.
For this Saudi strongman, 2023 could be a golden opportunity to raise the ransom even higher.
The problem is Iran.
Hijab protests are intensifying in Iran, Saudi Arabia's biggest competitor.
Muhammad bin Salman is very concerned that the fervor for democratization might move to the Arabian Peninsula via the Persian Gulf.
But perhaps not as frantic as Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The eyes of the hijab protesters are slowly turning to Khamenei.
He is one of the world's leading anti-American leaders.
If his power shrinks, a change in the domestic power landscape is inevitable.
We cannot ignore the possibility of changes in our relationship with rival Saudi Arabia, and furthermore, with the US, China, and Russia.
It seems that the nuclear negotiations with the US are also not going smoothly.
For Iranian strongmen, 2023 is an impatient time to put out the urgent fire first.
In Israel, an enemy of both Saudi Arabia and Iran, Benjamin Netanyahu, the symbol of Israeli Zionism, returned to power last November.
A policy of increasing Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, where many Palestinians live, could face backlash throughout the Middle East.
Local media even go up and down rumors of a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.
Then, the diplomatic strategies of the US, China, and Russia become intertwined.
It is no exaggeration to say that tensions in the Middle East in 2023 will depend on the decision-making of strong men in Israel.
Although 2023 will not have many big elections, Turkiye has a presidential election in June this year.
Turkey, which connects Europe and Asia, is a geopolitical country that is always needed by powerful countries.
At the center is Erdogan, a Rezeb type who is synonymous with strongman.
As the incumbent president, he has already laid the foundation for his 30-year rule through constitutional amendment.
Unlike other Middle Eastern countries, Turkey's president is perceived as a defender of secularism.
However, Erdogan attracted attention by explicitly reinforcing the color of Islam.
In 2023, his political life is at stake.
Strongman and the international community
"There is no war between democratic countries" is the core content of 'Democratic Peace Theory' among international relations theories.
This is because the leaders of democratic countries do not make decisions about war because they are afraid of voter criticism that may arise due to the risk of war damage.
In other words, it can be reinterpreted to mean that the cause of war is provided by strongmen in an authoritarian state who have little to fear from voters.
It is also true that the share of military expenditure in authoritarian countries is higher than that in democratic countries.
The theory of democratic peace received attention after the Cold War, but at the same time it was criticized.
It is said that powerful democracies avoid going to war directly, but often engage in proxy wars through weaker countries.
The Korean War and the Vietnam War are also considered representative examples of proxy wars.
There are also studies that show that even authoritarian regimes have mixed preferences for war according to their characteristics.
Even the same strongman can be different depending on how the domestic political system is structured.
American political scientist Jessica Works, in her book <Dictators at War and Peace>, analyzed differently whether war was waged according to the political system of authoritarian regimes.
The analysis method is complex, but the key point is that even if the same strongman is checked by domestic elites, the possibility of participating in the war is not high.
Given this approach, the war in Ukraine is highly suggestive.
This is because it can be interpreted that, after Putin's long-term rule after 2000 and the domestic elite's checks became dull, decision-making about war became easier.
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