TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editor’s Introduction

- Lee Jaehyon

“One Year of Trump 2.0”

Beyond Shocks: Coming Out Ahead in Trump 2.0 Amid Growing Global Responsibilities
- Lee Chung Min

Japan and a Discretionary Superpower: Alliance Management in the Second Trump Administration
- Jimbo Ken

Rebuilding U.S. Alliances: Why the Post-Cold War Order Broke Before Trump
- Jennifer Lind

Australia and the Second Trump Administration
- Peter Dean & Georgie Hicks

Rethinking Asia-Europe’s Security and the Search for a “Third Way” for America’s Allies in Europe and Asia
- Michael Raska

Emerging Voices

A Year After Trump’s Second Term: Lessons from Zootropolis
- Min Sheewon

National Imperatives and Technological Power: Trump’s Second-Term AI Agenda and Its Global Ripple Effects
- Marianne Singh

Introduction

Since its launch in 2013, the Asan Forum has been the flagship English-language publication of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies. Under the editorial leadership of Professor Gilbert Rozman, a renowned scholar of Northeast Asia and the Musgrave Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, the Forum has offered a platform for expert exchanges on the changing geopolitical dynamics of Northeast Asia. In 2026, the Asan Institute hopes to build on the valuable sociological and comparative political insights that Professor Rozman so skillfully catalogued over the years with a new editorial team and new publication focus.

The Asan Security Quarterly seeks to offer a platform for international debates on security issues most pertinent to the Korean Peninsula, with a particular focus on the Republic of Korea’s strategic interests. In keeping with the Asan Institute’s core mission to undertake policy-relevant research to foster domestic, regional, and international environments conducive to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, the Asan Security Quarterly’s selection of topics and contributors will prioritize Korea’s place in the world and how Korea should conduct itself on the world stage. To do so, the Asan Security Quarterly issues will each be focused on a single issue facing Korean policymakers. The articles will offer diverse, competing, but tangible policy recommendations that can inform readers and policymakers alike about the options they have available.

For the inaugural issue of the relaunched Asan Security Quarterly, we have invited leading academics and policy practitioners to reflect on the ‘one year of Trump 2.0.’ President Donald Trump dominated the news cycle and policy arena in 2025 like no U.S. president before him in living memory. The Asan Institute’s 2026 International Strategic Outlook provides a concise analysis of how the United States impacted Korea and the wider Indo-Pacific. What this Asan Security Quarterly issue aims to do instead is gauge how like-minded strategic partners have dealt with the disruptive and transformative foreign and security policy agenda of the Trump administration.

In doing so, we hope that policymakers can read this issue and absorb comparative experiences, lessons, and warnings. Too often, U.S. allies tend to be consumed by their dealings with the United States and fail to realize what other countries are doing. These best and worst practices can be valuable, not to mention the precedents that are established in Washington or Mar-a-Lago.

The issue begins with a Korean perspective from Professor Lee Chung Min, a Senior Fellow and Chairman of the International Council at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It then moves to insights from Professor Jimbo Ken of Keio University, followed by Dr. Jennifer Lind, Associate Professor at Dartmouth College. Perspectives from Australia are provided by Professor Peter Dean of the Australian National University and Ms. Georgie Hicks, a PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania. The panel also includes Dr. Michael Raska, Senior Researcher and Section Head, Security and Defense in Europe, Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich. Finally, emerging scholars Min Sheewon, a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford, and Marianne Singh, an Analyst from New York University, contribute next-generation perspectives.

We look forward to your continued readership and engagement as the Asan Security Quarterly raises the profile of the Republic of Korea in international affairs.

Sincerely yours,

LEE Jaehyon

Editor-in-Chief

Asan Security Quarterly