Raymond Aron’s Warning for Northeast Asia: Close the Window of Opportunity

Raymond Aron died in 1983, long before China emerged as the US’ principal strategic competitor, North Korea acquired nuclear weapons that could threaten the continental United States, and Russia developed its present military relationship with Pyongyang. Nonetheless, few twentieth-century thinkers are suited to understanding the strategic dilemma of today’s United States, Japan, and South Korea. Raymond Aron was a French philosopher, sociologist, and journalist, and one of Europe’s most prominent thinkers on international relations and strategy. In Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, he treated diplomacy and military power as inseparable: states negotiate under the shadow of violence,…