South Korea has emerged as a new middle power playing a significant role in a wide range of important global issue areas and supporting liberal international order with its leadership diplomacy. The growing role played by new powers like Korea calls into question the prevailing view that global governance is polarized with emerging powers challenging the liberal international order established by the United States and its European allies after World War II. As the case of Korea shows, large developing countries like the BRICS are not the only emerging powers active in global governance. Newly developed or high income developing countries like South Korea, Turkey and Mexico are also active emerging powers, taking new initiatives, setting agendas and mediating conflicts between rival groups on the global stage. Because these high income developing countries have advanced under and benefited from the liberal international order, they see a great stake in its stability and show a willingness to protect it. "Liberal internationalist" developing countries are joining the expanding list of middle powers who contribute to the maintenance of liberal international order as niche players and system supporters.

Against the backdrop of China’s mounting influence and North Korea’s growing nuclear capability and expanding missile arsenal, South Korea faces a set of strategic choices that will shape its economic prospects and national security. In South Korea at the Crossroads, Scott A. Snyder examines the trajectory of fifty years of South Korean foreign policy and offers predictions—and a prescription—for the future. Pairing a historical perspective with a shrewd understanding of today’s political landscape, Snyder contends that South Korea’s best strategy remains investing in a robust alliance with the United States. Snyder begins with South Korea’s effort in the 1960s to offset the risk of abandonment by the United States during the Vietnam War and the subsequent crisis in the alliance during the 1970s. A series of shifts in South Korean foreign relations followed: the “Nordpolitik” engagement with the Soviet Union and China at the end of the Cold War; Kim Dae Jung’s “Sunshine Policy,” designed to bring North Korea into the international community; “trustpolitik,” which sought to foster diplomacy with North Korea and Japan; and changes in South Korea’s relationship with the United States. Despite its rise as a leader in international financial, development, and climate-change forums, South Korea will likely still require the commitment of the United States to guarantee its security. Although China is a tempting option, Snyder argues that only the United States is both credible and capable in this role. South Korea remains vulnerable relative to other regional powers in northeast Asia despite its rising profile as a middle power, and it must balance the contradiction of desirable autonomy and necessary alliance.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

"Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data promise to help reshape the global order. For decades, most political observers believed that liberal democracy offered the only plausible future pathways for big, industrially sophisticated countries to make their citizens rich. Now, by allowing governments to monitor, understand, and control their citizens far more effectively than ever before, AI offers a plausible way for big, economically advanced countries to make their citizens rich while maintaining control over them--the first since the end of the Cold War. That may help fuel and shape renewed international competition between types of political regimes that are all becoming more "digital." Just as competition between liberal democratic, fascist, and communist social systems defined much of the twentieth century, how may the struggle between digital liberal democracy and digital authoritarianism define and shape the twenty-first? This work highlights several key areas where AI-related technologies have clear implications for globally integrated strategic planning and requirements development"--

The prospect of a new, rapidly rising China poses both opportunities and challenges for regional community building in Asia Pacific. In this book, intellectual leaders from the region present their perspectives on China's development. Four chapters by Chinese authors analyze the domestic dynamics related to the country's political and economic development as well as its external economic and political/security relationships. Contributors from Japan, Korea, member-countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and Australia/New Zealand cover the growing political influence of China in the region, its influence on security in the region, and the implications of China's continuing economic growth. Five final chapters examine China's regional strategy toward Asia Pacific, Japan-China cooperation on regional community building, taking a greater role in regional security arrangements and the regional economic order, and the cultural implications for the region of the rise of China. Contributors include Yang Guangbin (Renmin University, Japan), Men Honghua (Central Party School, China), Wang Rongjun (Chinese Academy of Social Science), Ni Feng (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), Takahara Akio (Rikkyo University, Japan), Ohashi Hideo (Senshu University, Japan), Lee Geun, (Seoul National University, Korea), Jwa Sung-Hee (Korea Economic Research Institute), Morada Noel (Institute for Strategic and Development Studies, Philippines), Mari Pangestu (former executive director, Center for Strategic and International Studies), Greg Austin, (European Institute for Asian Studies, Brussels, and Australian National University), Jusuf Wanandi (Center for Strategic and International Studies, Indonesia), Chia Siow Yue (Singapore Institute of International Affairs and EADN), and Wang Gungwu, (East Asian Institute, Singapore).

This book offers several perspectives on the contemporary position of North Korea. It examines, in the context of the post-Cold War order, US, European Union and British foreign policy to North Korea, and North Korean responses. It investigates the tensions that could develop in North Korean state and society as the country faces an increasingly market-oriented capitalist world and identifies the historical, political and ideological foundations of North Korean society and culture. The book is the work of a multidisciplinary team of scholars from Britain and the United States who work in the fields of anthropology, economics, history, international relations, social geography and sociology, most of whom have conducted first-hand research in North Korea. The book also contains contributions from policy-makers who have helped to form western policy towards North Korea.

The New Global Order is an endeavour to provide a multidisciplinary angle on the world we live in, to find solutions for a peaceful way forward. History is the witness that every time new borders are drawn, the seeds of future conflict are sown. The book maps the shifts in power over history across the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, France & Germany from the 12th century through World Wars 1 & 2 to the present. It also discusses the way the power shifted from the UK to the US post-World War 2 that led to the Cold War, the fall of USSR, the rise of China as well as India's rise as a counter to China in the times to come.