A struggle against the ethics of empire: A critique of the moral claims underlying the global political policy of the United States with particular attention to United States-Korean relations since World War II

This dissertation attempts to expose the violence and brutality of modern Empire, represented in the imperial policy of the United States toward the peripheral nations. From the perspective of Christian liberation theology, it pursues the task of demystification to reveal the underside of the ethical justification of imperialist U.S. capitalism, which integrates peripheral nations into the global network of the world economy through coercion. Coercive means include military intervention, covert action and Structural Adjustment Programs. It covers the period from the Cold War to the age of post-Cold-War globalization. This study focuses on the particular relations between the U.S. and Korea since 1945, when the end of the World War II re-colonized South Korea under the hegemonic power of the U.S.; Methodologically, this thesis mainly employs global system theories, and Revisionist American history to uncover the structural and historical components of imperial violence and the U.S. strategy of capital accumulation. Global system theories help identify the process that underlies the structural formation of U.S. capitalist Empire, while revisionist American history highlights the long-standing expansionist policy of the US. In addition, a critique of ideology helps reveal the reality concealed behind the moral and philosophical sophistication of imperial domination.; Here, four moral themes of Empire are critically examined. These moral claims are made to justify the imperial expansion of the U.S.: defense of human rights and civilization, democracy, the free market and the global mission of a great nation. I try to prove that these moral claims of U.S. foreign policy have been designed to justify its violence to and rule over the powerless and the poor on the periphery as well in the core. Through this demystification process, I try to confront the ethical basis of the Empire with the realities of poverty and oppression.; In conclusion, this thesis scrutinizes the logic of capital to grasp the basis of oppression and advocates the ethical tasks of counter-hegemonic struggle against the imperial hierarchy of the U.S. in global capitalism. In order to replace the ethics of Empire that subordinate the powerless to serve the powerful, this study proposes five alternative ethics: (1) faithful listening to the suppressed voices of the victims, (2) autonomous developments with self-affirmation by the oppressed as the subjects of history, (3) public and democratic control over wealth and power, while rejecting the capitalist ethics of privatization of wealth and power that seriously disrupt communal life, (4) solidarity among the victims, (5) life-affirmative actions that refuse to submit to the power of death of the Empire.