ABSTRACT
The advent of the information age is generating a new international landscape commonly called the ‘global information society’—a planet-wide web connecting societies together, linking them with a vast network of wire, fibre-optic cables and satellites. This increasingly dense network, and the cross-border flow of information that it carries, behaves like an interface between nations (including those that were until now isolated), exposing them to mutual influences. A common assumption is that the advent of the global information society is reshaping the global security environment and redefining the rules governing the conduct of international relations. The goal of this chapter is to probe this general assumption by addressing a couple of questions aimed at enlightening the fundamental transformations brought by the acceleration of the information revolution and the development of this hypermedia policy context. What are the new defining features of this supposedly new operational environment? How would these new parameters affect the nature of power and security? Can these changes be observed practically in a modification of security politics at the strategic and operational levels? And if so, what are the principal manifestations of these changes?
