Tuesday, June 3, 2025

Today, H.R. McMaster explores how the Trump administration will navigate the election of a new center-left president in South Korea. Niall Ferguson examines the limits of the Trump administration’s reality television– and real estate–inspired foreign policy. And Chester E. Finn Jr. makes recommendations on how to reinvigorate civics education in America’s schools.

Determining America’s Role in the World

The Perfect Storm? South Korea’s Presidential Election and Implications for Relations with the Trump Administration

Writing on his Substack, Senior Fellow H.R. McMaster explores South Korea’s presidential election and its possible impact on US–South Korea relations. South Koreans went to the polls today, with center-left Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung emerging victorious. McMaster cites Jae-myung’s stance on the US presence in Korea, with the candidate calling US troops “an occupation force.” “The timing could not be worse as the threat from North Korea is increasing and Pyongyang is benefitting from increased support from Moscow and Beijing,” he writes. But this isn’t the first time a Republican US president and a left-leaning South Korean counterpart have butted heads. McMaster reflects on his own experience in the White House, where a skeptical Trump eventually accepted the value of US–South Korean cooperation. Read more here.

Trump’s Foreign Policy? Reality TV Politik

Writing in The Free Press, Senior Fellow Niall Ferguson explains why President Donald Trump’s tendency to apply his real estate experience to the realm of US foreign policy will likely lead to poor results. After cycling through the weak position Biden left Trump when he took office and the mismatch between Trump’s desire for isolationism and the pro-Ukraine, pro-Taiwan, pro-Israel sentiment of the US public, Ferguson argues that treating negotiations with Iran, peace in Gaza, and an end to the Russian invasion of Ukraine as business transactions, or as reality television, is highly unrealistic. “Making peace is historically harder than launching wars—or, for that matter, buying skyscrapers. Trump is learning this the painful way in both the Middle East and Eastern Europe,” Ferguson writes. Read more here.

Revitalizing American Institutions

Civics Ceasefire

The latest episode of Intellections features Senior Fellow Chester E. Finn Jr’sefforts to reinvigorate US civics education. Today, barely one-fifth of US eighth graders are considered proficient in the subject. Finn recommends that states take the lead in civics education reform, so that American teachers can bypass ideological logjams and generate a new civics curriculum. One measure he suggests is for states to require a high school civics examination. It’s something 13 US states require already. Watch the episode here.

The Environment

The Physics Behind the Spanish Blackout

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Visiting Fellow Bjorn Lomborg writes that beyond obvious cost increases that come with an electricity grid based on large amounts of solar or wind power generation, there is also a reliability penalty, which may have contributed to the Spanish grid collapse on April 28. With traditional generation methods such as nuclear, gas, or hydroelectric power, it’s easy to achieve a stable generation frequency, but it’s difficult to do the same with solar or wind energy. Lomborg cites the Spanish grid operator’s own warning to its government, that “the high penetration of renewable generation without the necessary technical capabilities in place to keep them operating properly in the event of a disturbance . . . can cause power generation outages, which could be severe.” Read more here (subscription required).

Revitalizing History

“Well, He Got Beheaded”: Caroline, Countess of Derby, on Her Husband’s Family’s Illustrious History

On the latest episode of Secrets of Statecraft, Distinguished Visiting Fellow Andrew Roberts speaks with Caroline Stanley, Countess of Derby, about her work as a historian charting the travel and work of her predecessors. Their discussion goes back to Stanley’s familial ties to William Shakespeare and to the 14th Earl of Derby, Edward Smith-Stanley, who traveled extensively in North America prior to leading the UK Conservative Party and serving as prime minister on three different occasions between 1852 and 1868. Watch or listen to the episode here.