ABSTRACT
This chapter defines the role and position of the United States according to the structuralists notions of empire. One of the central contributions was Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire. It argues that globalisation in itself was an indicator of empire, the emperor being the sovereign who regulates and rules the global market and thus the world. Martin Shaw criticised this approach while accepting that there is a concentration of much world power economic, cultural, political and military. Stephen Rosen elaborates on the meaning of power within the concept of empire. The promotion of democratic values and free market ideology and practices as well as the provision of public goods can be subsumed under the term soft power. Soft power is the basis for a consensual and commonly beneficial hegemony. Another contradiction lies in the effects of isolationism. According to structural neo-realism one should assume that the minor powers should try to counterbalance the sole superpower America.
