The case for South Korean membership in the G7 | Hacker News Reader

The case for South Korean membership in the G7

nationalinterest.org

53 pointseatonphil38 comments

A Korean who is a partner at an investment bank making the case for Korea to join the G7. Seems about right.

That aside, this guy is proficient in 7 languages, pretty impressive!

Find-replace “rules-based international order” and “free-market democracies” with “G7 interests” for the non-ideological version. (The publication itself is straightforward about this on its About page (Realism).)

All these international coordination groups are somewhat questionable as they have no strong democratic controls. Imagine, for example, if all citizens of the G7 countries could vote directly by referendum on G7 policy decisions (or even on national policy decisions in the individual countries, e.g. the USA has no national referendum system, only certain individual states like California do).

Representative democracy is quite the failure, as the (s)elected representatives owe their positions more to their big money donors than to the general public, and their legislative behavior aligns more with the special interests of their top donors than it does with those of the people who live in their electoral districts.

Direct democracy seems far more preferable, assuming a well-educated and well-informed general public.

”Direct democracy seems far more preferable, assuming a well-educated and well-informed general public. "

I'm all for adopting Switzerland style governance. AFAIK they've seem able to run things rather well.

> Representative democracy is quite the failure, as the (s)elected representatives owe their positions more to their big money donors than to the general public, and their legislative behavior aligns more with the special interests of their top donors than it does with those of the people who live in their electoral districts.

And yet they get voted in again and again. I'm sure the next answer is that this happens due to propaganda, which brings up the question how a direct democracy isn't even more at risk of manipulation.

> And yet they get voted in again and again.

Yeah when you have a two-party system (in the case of America) and you have two business parties, people only vote for the reactionary lackeys of business and the gay-friendly lackeys of business. It’s such a conundrum.

What happens is that the “establishment” candidates get all the press/propaganda while the other candidates either (1) belong to third parties which risks “wasting” a vote, and/or (2) either stay completely fringe/off everyone’s radar or get smeared by the establishment candidates.

And propaganda is everywhere. It’s not just “this message has been approved by” commercials. My comment could be astroturfed. (It’s not though. My political brain is just programmed in a weird way, (kind of) organically.)

How are you supposed to counter that as a citizen? Vote for the candidate that you least know as a kind of bypass-the-system trick?

“Democracy” in IR-speak is just a self-congratulating title that regular people and the elites alike think sound good and noble in theory. But out of the two words in “liberal democracy”, only the former matters to the elite; the latter is just the pretty mask put on capitalism.

> Direct democracy seems far more preferable, assuming a well-educated and well-informed general public.

The meme that never dies. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36086819

As Japan is already a member, if you had to pick one additional Asian country for membership India might be the better option if you're looking to slow or halt Russo-Chinese transgressions. While they might have a much lower per-capita GDP India is a force to be reckoned with because of it's population, high-end education (admittedly for some), and natural resources.

India would block strong statements against Russia and inhibit cooperation that benefits the rich world over developing countries. The G7 is essentially just a club of western-aligned rich democracies, and India isn't two of those things. India has little interest in aligning with the west, and little to gain. They are going to continue with a third path, or possibly creating their own block in the future.

They are already part of the BRICS.

BRICS is not a real thing. It's just an acronym someone made up, like FAANG. There are no BRICS summits. These countries even have border disputes with each other.

There have been annual BRIC/BRICS summits since 2009 (South Africa didn’t become part of it until 2011.) BRIC or the BRICs referring to the other four members is an older term, but it has since become something of a superficially, at least, real thing, largely because it being perceived to be real serves (different, for each member) the propaganda interests of the members.

Yeah, I've just read the wikipedia article[1] and it appears a lot "realler" then I thought. Headquarters, even. Bullshitting is the best way to learn.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS

It’s mostly a propaganda thing to make China (and recently Russia) look bigger

I am not sure how India and Brazil benefit from it

India lacks the cultural buy-in to be a serious member of these groups of democracies. They just do not want the things a UK or Germany wants. Mores and values are more aligned with South Korea than India; adding India would weaken the G7.

India wants trade partners. Russia and to some extent China are currently happy to fill that void because the west seems to have no desire. Bringing India into western economies could effectively replace China for it's cheap labor and manufacturing for the west, and India would have more economic reliability and opportunity for itself.

India wouldn't sever its ties with China and Russia overnight, but it would help to erode their despotic influence against the rest of the world.

Can you elaborate on this some more? I am curious what you mean when you say they do not want the same things.

india buys a huge amount of weapons and energy from russia. rival pakistan is an intelligence partner of the five eyes.

india also just doesn't like the UK for colonial reasons. they don't take kindly to being 'told' what to do by the west, which is 110% what is going to happen if they join any kind of economic or defense alliance.

"let's all hate china together and be BFFs" sounds great, possibly even the obviously correct, moral and upstanding thing to do if you're a white westerner, for everyone else in sk, india, brazil... it doesn't really work. there's that pesky colonialism/imperialism historical thing always getting in the way.

I think you’re mostly right but India is definitely in favor of hating China. They just don’t have any plans to lock theirselves into a western alliance that forces them to be a vassal of the US.

I think the main problem with that is not India's GDP but that it's backing up its close ally Russia by buying their oil.

It will be interesting to see how that works out if tensions between increase further between India and China, who Russia are now also closely allied.

Interesting times all round.

The point of the G7/G8 etc was that by getting together and setting rules among themselves, the big (economic, trading) powers would present everyone else with the fait accompli. That is why China, Russia and the US all joined together in it in the first place. Membership is not a matter of being fair or being gifted by one nation or another. It is a matter of aligned economic interests and reliability to present a united front. That is why India has never been asked to join previously: too little trade, too little aligned interest with the rest of the group, perceived low reliability.

> The point of the G7/G8 etc was that by getting together and setting rules among themselves, the big (economic, trading) powers would present everyone else with the fait accompli. That is why China, Russia and the US all joined together in it in the first place.

China was never a part of the G-7, and Russia wasn’t a separate country (and the USSR wasn’t a member) when it was founded as the G-5 or expanded to the G-7; it was admitted after 1994 first as a “+1” non-member, and then as #8 when it became the G-8, before they were expelled in the wake of the invasion of Crimea.

Not only is your explanation wrong, the facts you explain with it are also wildly wrong.

The Quad (of which India is a part) is the structure more appropriate for that. The point of the Gn (currently 7) was to have a little structure for the folks who were a big part of the global economy and were worth talking together when there was a common problem.

Countries like India and China are still pretty poor on a per capita basis and don't really interact with the international banking, force projection, or trading systems in the way the G6/7 members did and do. G7 members all have per capita gdp in the same neighborhood which gives you an idea of their ability to respond collectively to events (whether they do so well is another matter).

Russia was always an anomaly; adding them to the group was more an aspirational goal than a practical one, so it's no wonder that fell apart.

SK makes a lot of sense and doesn't even need the justification ("should have another asian member"), though its per capita is far behind the others. Compare that to Australia (also a Quad member) which has a higher per capita gdp than most G7 members and an economy around the same size as SK's -- it's not really big enough on those other topics to be worth adding to the Gn).

also as a partner India are a much more strategic pick. They are wavering between the two worlds that are shaping up. South korea has essentially already chosen (north korea pretty much made their choice for them), adding them wont do anything more diplomatically

I thought that India was reliant on Russia for military equipment?

Yeah, its not like anyone in the G-7 or the broader Western community makes and sells military equipment to countries that are aligned with them, so they are stuck permanently with Russia, making it impractical to switch alignments.

Won’t that make it the new G8+1 since it’s already G7+1(EU also gets representation beyond France and previously also the UK)?

If not who you gonna boot?

The G7 became the G8 when Russia was added in 1997, then went back to being the G7 in 2014 when Russia was expelled for annexing Crimea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G8

Korea's GDP per capita (PPP) overtook Japan and the UK, so yes, if Canada belongs, so does South Korea.

If Canada belongs, why shouldn't Australia belong too?

Canada belongs because the US wanted a strong ally there

Can we double up and admit them to NATO too?

The *North Atlantic* Treaty Organization has geographic boundaries.

Article 6 excludes armed attacks outside of Europe/North America (etc)

Article 10 only allows European countries to join (as new members).

Article 6 and its specification of geographic scope has been changed with new members before [0], it can be again.

Article 10 is kind of irrelevant, since it takes a unanimity to admit a new European member, and the members can also unanimously adopt any changes to the treaty they feel like, so the limitation to European new members is more symbolic than anything.

Alternatively, the NATO members with, say, Asia-Pacific territories could just form a whole new alliance with each other and friendly countries in the region, structurally similar to NATO but focused in that region (say, the Asia-Pacific Treaty Organization), and each alliance could even have the other’s non-common members as non-member partners.

[0] https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_17245.htm

So renegotiate those. Hem Russia in from all sides.

There are other organizations/treaties that do more or less what NATO does. Here are the mutual defense agreements from 2017: https://2009-2017.state.gov/s/l/treaty/collectivedefense/ind...

I'm not aware of a newer official source sadly. Though we do have a pretty map from 1956 here: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3201f.ct004057/

South Korea already has a mutual defense treaty with the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Defense_Treaty_(United_...

It’s a dying country, with lowest fertility rate in the world and an ultra conservative president backed by evangelical nutjobs. I know they are quite good partner and they tend to listen to us when we need to contain China but still I think they peaked. They will probably end up similarly to Japan with several lost decades.

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