This study focuses on the role of knowledge factors in the rise of U.S. global power in the 21st century recently conceptualized as "empire" from the theoretical and empirical perspectives. Chapter 1, "A Framework for Empire in the Information Age," a ...
This study focuses on the role of knowledge factors in the rise of U.S. global power in the 21st century recently conceptualized as "empire" from the theoretical and empirical perspectives. Chapter 1, "A Framework for Empire in the Information Age," argues that the concept of "empire,"" which gains a lot of attention in recent years, is helpful in analytically understanding a centralizing aspect of world order transformation which the United States has been newly reorganizing in the 21st-century. The concept, however, has explanatory limitations in that it misses another decentralizing aspect of world order transformation, usually conceptualized as "global governance." In this context, chapter 1 proposes a perspective of the global politics of knowledge/network as a theoretical attempt to explain these two aspects of world order transformation, which are seeming contradictory, but are closely interconnected. Chapter 2, "military empire in the information age: U.S. Strategies for Military Transformation and the implications for the U.S-Korean Alliance," attempts to elaborate the militaristic nature of the empire in the information age. In particular, this study focuses on imperialistic tendency of U.S. foreign policy by analyzing network-centric nature of military-security strategy. Ironically, since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, despite overwhelming U.S. power, it is increasingly difficult for the U.S. to manage everything by itself. As a result, the necessity to create amicable network for the United States is expected to increase. Chapter 3, "Imperial Knowledge Diplomacy in the Information Age: The Case of Transformational Diplomacy of the Bush Administration in the U.S." argues that Great changes in the 21th century in international relations have had transformative effects on diplomacy. The US as the only superpower longing for international legitimacy is eager to acquire international endorsement in every foreign policy, especially in counter-terrorist war, pays special attention to international public diplomacy. Chapter 3 traces the diplomatic transformation in the 21th century and tries to find out if this change will be followed by more comprehensive, post-modern change in international affairs. Chapter 4, "Information Revolution and Economic Empire: The Perspective of Global Production Network," analyzes the bases and working of power that USA has had on global political economy, in order to estimate properly the various arguments about 'American empire.' This study, in particular, tries to examine the role of US firms in global production network to see where US firms are located, based upon the three cases of computer, footwear, and aerospace industries which represent the different types of global production networks. Chapter 5, "Cultural Empire in the Information Age: The Case of Siliwood," examines the case of Siliwood--a term derived from Silicon Valley and Hollywood--in the global entertainment industries. Siliwood is the strategic alliance between Hollywood studios that have dominated the global movie market for the last century and IT companies located in Silicon Valley that are rising as the engine of industrial growth for the next century. In a broader sense, however, Siliwood should be understood as one of the most remarkable examples of U.S. global hegemony that are reproduced in the information age, and it also means global political order reorganized by the 21st-century cultural empire armed with a new form of soft power.