A German lesson for Korea amid geopolitical shifts

“What is South Korea’s perception of China? Germany is currently deliberating its strategy toward China,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz asked President Lee Jae Myung during their first summit at the G20 in Johannesburg on Nov. 22. 

Lee did not respond immediately. Merz, sensing the moment, added that Berlin would take Seoul’s perspective into account as it shapes its new China strategy.

Lee, for his part, asked what Germany had learned from overcoming national division: “We have much to learn from Germany’s unification. Were there any hidden strategies?” 

“There are no secret strategies,” Merz replied.

To Germans, unification is remembered as a “historic gift,” but one achieved through deliberate layers of political, social, and diplomatic architecture — a structure that Korea never built to comparable scale. 

The first pillar was political leadership. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s Westpolitik anchored West Germany firmly in the European system, laying the economic groundwork known as the “Rhine miracle.” Chancellor Willy Brandt, guided by advisor Egon Bahr, pursued Ostpolitik, establishing relations with the Soviet Union in 1970 and East Germany in 1972. Helmut Kohl later expanded these paths, becoming the statesman credited with executing unification. Unlike South Korea, which has centered its efforts on summit diplomacy, Germany constructed durable, irreversible channels of contact between its two halves. 

The second pillar was civic. East Germany’s democratization and grassroots momentum — most memorably the Leipzig candlelight marches — opened the political space. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and Kohl moved within weeks to seize the window of history. 

The third was diplomatic. Support from France and the United States enabled what Germans now call the “six-party talks for peace,” formally known as the Two Plus Four Talks. They provided the legal and geopolitical guarantees necessary for peaceful unification. 

And the fourth — a variable Korea does not control — was leadership in Moscow. Mikhail Gorbachev’s reformist approach made German unification possible. Germans openly acknowledge that unification would not have occurred under a leader like Vladimir Putin. 

A similarly profound shift is now unfolding in the global order. Unipolarity is dissolving; multipolarity is taking shape. The change brings risk, ambiguity, and unexpected openings. 

On Dec. 5, the Trump administration released its new National Security Strategy (NSS), the document that guides U.S. foreign and security policy for the next four years. Its pillars — protecting the American homeland, expanding prosperity, securing peace through strength, and widening U.S. influence — are framed with unusually sharp ideological language. 

The NSS criticizes the European Union for “damaging identity with flawed immigration policies,” praises “patriotic parties” such as the UK Reform Party and Germany’s AfD, and accuses Brussels of eroding democratic freedoms by censoring media — including a $140 million fine imposed on Elon Musk’s platform X. 

European reactions are deeply split. Italian MEP Brando Benifei called it a “direct attack on the EU.” Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, by contrast, mocked Europe’s weakness and welcomed the shift. 

On Ukraine, Europe is alarmed. Trump rejects NATO expansion, is open to a deal with Russia, and signals he will seek an end to the war on terms that align closer to Moscow than to Brussels. 

The NSS labels China and Russia “rivals” and predicts U.S. success in fierce competition. It identifies China’s Indo-Pacific ambitions as the central challenge and calls for strengthened deterrence to prevent war. South Korea and Japan are urged to increase defense spending, and Seoul is explicitly described as a “middle power” alongside Germany, Japan, and India. 

One striking omission: North Korea. Mentioned 17 times in Trump’s first NSS, it appears nowhere in this one. 

Beijing is shifting too. China’s latest military white paper omits the longstanding phrase “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” a conspicuous signal that it accepts North Korea’s nuclear status — at least implicitly. 

Together, Washington’s NSS and Beijing’s white paper mark a turning point: strategic gravity is pulling away from Atlantic Europe toward the Indo-Pacific, but the Korean Peninsula is paradoxically falling out of focus. 

For Korea, this is an uncomfortable lesson in geopolitics. The peninsula is becoming a secondary priority at the very moment great-power competition intensifies around it. A U.S. administration willing to restore ties with Russia, and a China no longer committed to denuclearization, leave Seoul little room to rely on old assumptions. 

The German analogy returns here with force. 

In a multipolar era unsettled by fractured alliances and shifting priorities, South Korea — designated a middle power — must not wait for others to define the peninsula’s future. The Six-Party Talks collapsed more than a decade ago, but Germany’s own Two Plus Four model offers a reminder: peace regimes are negotiated before they are needed, not after crises erupt. 

What Korea needs now is not another summit but a strategy — and someone to build it. 

Germany had Egon Bahr, the architect of Ostpolitik. The United States had Henry Kissinger to orchestrate diplomatic alignment in moments of systemic flux. Unification or denuclearization will not materialize from rhetoric alone. It requires a negotiator empowered to work quietly across capitals, anticipate strategic shifts, and craft the scaffolding of a new peace regime. 

The question now is whether President Lee will appoint such a figure. In an era when the United States and China are redefining their priorities and Europe is consumed by its own fractures, Korea can no longer afford to be reactive. 

It must decide whether it will simply adapt to the new order — or shape it.