Jeju Peace Institute

KIM Dong-ryul(Professor, Korea National Diplomatic Academy)

Observing the recent conflict between the United States and Russia over the Ukraine crisis, some scholars have predicted the advent of a new period of geopolitical struggle. What lies behind such a view is the demand for a reappraisal of the post-Cold War world order in which people harbored great expectations about the end of ideological conflicts and the birth of greater social and economic collaboration between western and eastern countries. This study intends to shed new light on the nature of the foreign policy of the United States, and to review whether it can be applied properly to the reality as part of the effort to understand American-Russian  relations systematically against such a background. This study focuses on the relative influence of ideology and materialistic benefit, which are widely recognized as the two factors that exert the greatest influence on the foreign  policy of the United States. In connection with the Ukraine crisis, the basic direction of the country’s  foreign policy can be defined as the pursuit of geopolitical interest based on the ideology of free democracy. It is true that the pursuit of political and economic benefits based on national interest is the main motive behind the United States’ Ukraine-related policy toward Russia, but the collision of the values of the two powers appears to take precedence. In this respect, the return of geopolitical struggle can be said to be the returun of ideology from a more realistic perspective.