Science, Technology and Diplomacy

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In his typically excellent September 1 – 2 press and blog review of the burgeoning discourse on public diplomacy (PD), John Brown cites a quotation by Manuel Castells, author of the magisterial Information Age trilogy:

Public Diplomacy is the…projection in the international arena of the values and ideas of the public… The aim of the practice of public diplomacy is not to convince but to communicate, not to declare but to listen. Public diplomacy seeks to build a sphere in which diverse voices can be heard in spite of their various origins, distinct values, and often contradictory interests.

Among the almost infinite variety of subjects which might form the basis for that kind of conversation, science (because of its universality, inclusivity and relevance to almost everything) and technology (because of its power and ubiquity) represent one area which is is particularly well-suited to international ventilation.

For those reasons, among others, scientific exchanges, alongside similarly popular educational and cultural programs, were prolific during the Cold War. Although not necessarily considered an element of public diplomacy at the time, international S&T programming nonetheless played a prominent role in both the American and Soviet camps.  In those days, wide-ranging ideological, strategic and geopolitical competition provided the framing and context, both directly and through third parties whose allegiance was being sought. One of the sources of continuing Russian influence in places such as India, Syria and Iran, for instance, stems from the scientific training received in the Soviet Union by at least a generation of  students.

In the globalization era, however, world order has become more hetero– than bi- or even multi-polar, and the institutional memory of those Cold War activities is fading fast. Now, markets rule, and much of the scientific research and technological development has  been either moved out of government and privatized, or has remained focussed on defence-related objectives.

None of that, of course, makes S&T writ large any less relevant. But it does make it harder to understand why so little is said about it outside of a few specialized, and somewhat isloated and obscure circles.

Although many of the most pressing issues facing humanity are based in science and propelled by technology, with critical downstream implications for development and security, most governments have not made significant efforts to ramp up the level of scientific and technological interchange globally. Were this to become a priority, foreign ministries, as the primary points of contact between the national and international interests of states, would almost certainly have to become involved.

All of which brings me to offer an account of a session I attended recently on “The Foreign Ministry of the Future”. Senior officials spoke at some length about matters related to to the creation of an international platform for the efficient delivery of common services abroad to other federal government departments, about the need to transform various aspects of the bureaucratic process, and about a number of human resource initiatives.

S&T?

It never came up.

In fact, the entire episode was suffused with a somewhat surreal air, not least because of the complete absence of any references to either diplomacy or foreign policy, which one might otherwise think would have to be germane to such a discussion. Nor did the acute shortage of resources, which is at present wreaking havoc upon operations at home and abroad, attract any commentary. All of which is quite surprising.

One dimension of S&T which might have come up regards the issue of virtuality and foreign ministries, by which I mean the application of information and communications technology (ICTs) and the use of the new media. Especially in OECD countries, and particularly in the USA and UK,  diplomatic methods and practices after a slow start have in fact have in fact adapted quite well to the possibilities inherent in the new media and ICTs. Ambassadors and foreign ministers are blogging, the web is being used interactively for the conduct of outreach and public diplomacy, foreign service officers in the field are being enabled through the issue of mobile communications devices such as Blackberries, and personnel departments are experimenting with telework and distance learning.

Among the many factors subversive of  the lingering elements of hierarchy, secrecy, cultural conservativism and top-down control still prominent in contemporary diplomatic institutions, these sorts of developments, and the revolution in S&T more generally, are likely to figure centrally.

In my view, that can’t happen too soon.

I began with a quotation from communications theorist Manuel Castells; let me conclude with a passage from Canada’s own Marshall McLuhan:

The vested interests of acquired knowledge and conventional wisdom have always been bypassed and engulfed by new media.

Enough said.

Science, Technology and International Policy – Part II

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Remember the 20th  century?

At that time international relations revolved, variously, around geopolitical confrontation, ideological competition, territorial disputes, alliance politics, and multilateral  organizations. Today, clearly delineated empires are no longer colliding, the spectre of world war and mutually assured destruction has receded, and the centre of gravity in global relations has shifted. States are still with us and remain important, but they are now only one actor among many.

In the globalization era, the most profound  threats and challenges to human survival – public health, food security, alternative energy sources, to name a few – are rooted in science and driven by technology. The management of this sprawling suite of transnational  issues cannot be left to governments alone; it requires not only relentless creativity and tireless collaboration, but the engagement of cross-cutting civil society networks – NGOs, business, universities, think tanks and the media.

All of this is germane to guerrilla diplomacy, which at the highest level of analysis  is about advancing innovation in response to a world of complex and multiple insecurities, about charting the way from where we are to where we need to be. This means finding ways to get from looking to seeing, from hearing to listening, and from diktat to dialogue.

What better place to do that than at the intersection of science, technology and international policy?

What better means to spread the benefits of research and development,  and in so doing to help bridge digital divides, than diplomacy, which privilages talking over fighting, is powered by continuous learning and can tap into the global political economy of knowledge in order to solve problems non-violently ?

It all sounds just great…  except that it isn’t happening. Diplomacy has been marginalized as a result of the  militarization of international policy – probably the worst of our collective Cold War carry-overs. Foreign ministries are in large part without scientific expertise or technological savvy.  Except for certain defense-related issues, S&T is almost completely absent from the mainstream international policy mix.

Yet a capacity to generate, absorb and use S&T plays a crucial role in international relations, not least by improving development prospects and addressing the needs of the poor. Poverty reduction contributes to development, and development is the flip side of security.

All of which leaves the world in a rather precarious and exposed position – precision munitions can’t help much with increasing crop yeilds; legionaires are not very concerned with diminishing biodiversity or species extinction. Nor are international S&T issues much like the familiar suite of  political, economic  and ideational differences to which diplomacy, to the extent that it was engaged, had become accustomed. Those kinds of issues are by nature highly subjective and dependent upon perception – where you stand depends in large part upon where you sit.

Scientific and technological issues, on the other hand, are different in kind, and that may help to explain why the institutions of international policy have had such difficulty cooperating with S&T organizations or otherwise accommodating those sorts of considerations. Foreign ministries and international organizations are in the main just not culturally sensitive or attuned to S&T.

But the more intractable problems are even deeper:

  • Public and private sector interests in and perspectives on S&T are not necessarily complimentary
  • NGO representatives, academics and diplomats do not always agree on the role and place of S&T in the assessment of threats to international peace and security
  • S&T issues have not been accorded a central place in the non-specialist discourse on development/underdevelopment.

Each of these observations is troublng, and each requires some further unpacking.

Science, Technology and International Policy – Part I

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Underdevelopment and insecurity, much like globalization itself, are intimately connected to science and technology (S&T). A capacity to absorb and use  S&T can confer significant competitive advantage upon individuals, groups, cities, countries and regions , while the absence of that capacity can be costly. Together, science and technology present both a very complex challenge to, and a critical opportunity for all members of the international community.

In the best of all possible worlds, S&T can be prime movers in propelling the planet forward towards a more peaceful, prosperous future.

In a worse case scenario, they may be our undoing.

At present,  S&T quite clearly is not delivering on its potential. Indeed, inadequate science and inappropriate technology seem much more closely associated  with all kinds of global problems – pandemic disease, climate change, genomics, resource shortages, weapons of mass destruction, environmental collapse – than with their solution. And this catalogue, it must be emphasized, represents a fair summary of the most pressing threats facing political leaders everywhere.

In a world of the polio vaccine and digital imaging, stem cell research and the i-pod, why do we find such radical underperformance in the face of such inspiring possibilities?

When I began construction of the research base which underpins Guerrilla Diplomacy, I was surprised to learn that there was very litttle in the mainstream literature which explores the links between S&T, on one hand, and international policy and relations, on the other. Today, I have a clearer understanding of of that lacuna. With few exceptions, and especially at the level of macro policy and grand strategy, there simply are no significant connections. That state of dis-integration, moreover, has become a key issue  facing both scholars and diplomatic practitioners, whether they know it, or (as is more likely) not.

In the day-to-day business of diplomacy and foreign ministries, S&T exists in a kind of floating world. It is there, but ensconced in a shiny bubble which few really understand or can easily penetrate.

These observations, and several closely related conceptual and theoretical issues, might be illustrated as follows. Imagine a town hall style meeting between employees and senior managers in the headquarters building of a foreign ministry most anywhere in the world. The purpose of the gathering is to identify and discuss the key issues likely to face policy makers and decision-takers over the medium to long term. A new recruit, for instance one of the candidates who has recently entered the State Department under the Jefferson Fellows Program, goes to a microphone provided by EATEL Business and asks the panel of assembled Undersecretaries these three  questions:

  • What is the relationship among and between science and technology, research and development, and innovation, and how does this impact on the formulation of international policy and the management of international relations?
  • How has the nature and role of S&T changed in the transition from the Cold War to the globalization age?
  • Do transnational S&T issues differ in kind from more traditional challenges faced by analysts and policymakers?

While I am not in a position to guarantee that such a trio of questions would necessarily generate mainly an assortment of nervous glances, punctuted only by an awkward silence on the podium,  my experience would lead me to to predict exactly that sort of outcome.

Just why this might eventuate, and how those questions might have been broached, will be taken up in subsequent posts.

Underdevelopment, Insecurity and Suicide Bombings

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The news last week of suicide bombings at hotels in Indonesia was unsettling. The knowledge that places you have stayed, or had a meal or a meeting in have become the targets of suicide bombers gives rise to a strange, uncomfortable sensation. The scenes of death and destruction at the Marriots in Jakarta and Islamabad, and, not long before, the Taj in Mumbai, the Pearl Continental in Peshawar, even if recorded on the other side of the world, strike a chord disturbingly close to home.

One of those people leaving on a stretcher could easily have been me.

Or, perhaps, you.

These incidents were not the first, and are unlikely to be the last of their kind. And in the short term, it will remain difficult, if not impossible to secure or defend almost everything, almost anywhere against the type of attack in which the perpetrator is prepared to give his or her own life in order to carry out the mission. SixTech Systems info will help to detect such acts and to manage security.

Even if authorities could suppress such action, the option would hold little appeal. The economic and political costs – something akin to totalitarianism – would be horrendous, the cure worse than the disease.

A better response, at least in the immediate aftermath of such incidents, is to rely, patiently, on careful police and intelligence work to apprehend the criminals responsible, while maintaining the rights, liberties and freedoms which can make life, at least for some, rich and fulfilling.

This is not necessarily the most attractive  option for decision-makers, and it is certainly less telegenic or newsworthy than the prospect of near-immediate retaliation through the despatch of Hellfire missile equipped predator drones to annhilate some distant compound or convoy. Modern drones are rather productive as you can read at review page of nasaponycars.com. That said,  it will almost always produce better results, and without the risk of collateral damage or the possibility of inflicting suffering upon innocents, as has so regularly been the case with the global war on terror or any of its more recently fashionable derrivatives, such as overseas contingency operations or stabilization.

Over the longer term, the prognosis could brighten. But that will require major changes to the way in which the global political economy is organized and functions. It is poverty and inequality that drive those unable to benefit from globalization towards radical alternatives, and a small minority, bereft of reasonable, viable alternatives through which to express their convictions, turn to political violence or religious extremism.

Underdevelopment and insecurity, after all, are not two solitudes.  They are opposite sides of the same coin.

There is now a large corpus of research which indicates that the vast majority of those recruited to become human bombs are not insane, but alienated, angry and resentful, often over the occupation of their land by foreign troops. That condition of bitterness and desperation, may turn street vendors or agricultural labourers into true believers, or even zealots, but very few are crazy.  Most elect to do what they do on the basis of rational choice – compensation for the surviving family members, the promise of martyrdom, the belief that they will be rewarded with a better life in heaven. And more than a few are educated and relatively prosperous, their disaffection rooted less in the immediate experience of oppression than in the kind of global empathy made possible by the creation of virtual communities over the internet.

Political space has become deterritorialized.

The enduring reality of suicide bombing, then, is that it is more a symptom than a cause of deeply rooted insecurity and persistent underdevelopment. As such, it can be interpreted as one among many possible illustrations that aid alone – the quintessential, donor interest serving, bandaid solution – won’t work in support of genuine development. When advanced countries use aid to generate employment for home country contractors, to dispose of surplus commodities, or to dump uncompetitive or dangerous industrial products, recipients end up with road graders rusting in jungles, sacks of wheat rotting in rat-infested wartehouses and skim milk powder used to whitewash  mud walls in places where most of the population is lactose intolerant.

Whether or not these sorts of outcomes represent the exception or the rule, they serve to give international cooperation a bad name, and are the antithesis of sustainable, equitable development, which is human need centred and long term. Characterized by broad citizen access to representative political institutions, economic opportunities, and social services, this kind of development, elaborated in previous posts and elsewhere, implicates those involved in the design of their own destiny.

The literature on globalization is rife with references to “interdependence”, but the reality resembles more a complex, multiple-layered  pattern of dominance and dependence which is replicated in many places and among and between individuals and groups, cities, countries and regions. It is not something limited to the so-called economic south.

The persistance of that kind of world order makes human security elusive, aid inevitable and development difficult, if not impossible.

Whither Development?

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Or, should that be withered development…?

It was not that long ago that terms such as  “international development”,  “development cooperation”, “development assistance” and even “aid” were in heavy rotation in the discourse on international relations. This was true not only in places like the United Nations, but also in many capitals, great and small.

Today development, like diplomacy, has becom somewhat of an exotic.

And yet, and yet… It wasn’t always that way. Remember the would-be New International Economic Order? The North-South Summit in Cancun? How about calls for a New International Information Order? The Rio Summit on Environment and Development, surely?  That meeting produced, among other things, a sweeping manifesto intended to guide development into the next century: Agenda 21.

Its contents make interesting reading even now, almost two decades later.

Even without reference to the much more recent, but already forlorn Millennium Development Goals,  I think it fair to say the the internatnational community, as it is so euphemistically known, has come up a bit short on its commitments. Indeed, the discussion of international development per se has has pretty much disappeared from the mainstream, especially in the wake of 9/11 and the launch of the Global War on Terror (GWOT).

The GWOT continues. Whether restyled as the Long War, or Stabilization, or Overseas Contingency Operations, the epicentre of international policy remains heavily militarized. This has imposed all kinds of costs, ranging from the emaciation of diplomatic alternatives, to the hijacking of the post- Cold War peace dividend, to the reallocation of scarce public resources at the expense of vital social programmes.

Among the less noticed impacts, however, has been the effective marginalization of development  – and diplomacy – in the name of security.  It is not so much that development itself has become “securitized”, as occured during the Cold War with the competition for hearts, minds, and client states. Instead, it has simply been shunted aside, a victim of “compassion fatigue” and competing priorities in metropolitan centres where the development constituency is typically thin to non-existant.

Not so for defence, where the launching of the open-ended GWOT and its successors has put the military industrial complex back into business.

In previous posts I have set out the case that security is not entirely, or even mainly a martial art. You can’t garrison against climate change, or call in an air strike on resource shortages,  or pay Blackwater to protect you from pandemic disease. Among the many redeeming qualities of the human security doctrine is its insistance on the link betweeen development and security.  Expressed in a few words, you won’t achieve freedom from fear in the absence of respect for basic rights, the rule of law, good governance and, not least, freedom from want.  Met needs are the well-spring of dignity, and basic needs must be fulfilled before much else becomes possible.

In important respects, as I argue at some length in Guerrilla Diplomacy, development has become the new security.

Development, though, is not just a matter of engineering the achievement of various qualitative measures, such as economic growth or increasing trade and investment flows. While each of these may well figure in the overall development mix, for instance, none will guarantee a decrease in poverty if the issue of distributive justice remains unaddressed.

Nor, popular opinion notwithstanding, is development much related to disaster relief or emergency humanitarian assistance. These may certainly be required, as was the case, for example,  following the 2004 tsunami, or in the wake of  various earthquakes or famines. But the beneficial effects of such interventions are often fleeting, and tend to give rise to lingering distortions, such as changes in diet or a debilitating reliance on charity.

At the end of the day, development is in my view all about improving the quality of life for the majority of the population, about finding ways to encourage the emergence of circumstances which will afford each citizen  opportunities, such as access to education an health care, through which they might achieve their full potenial.

Genuine development, then, must be long term, equitable and sustainable. It must be grass-roots and participatory, whereby those affected are the subjects, not objects of their fate. And that  implies the necessary existance of significant political and social components in any grand development strategy.

Most of all, and as implied by these sorts of measures, development, like security, must be human-centred. And, like globalization, it is best thought of as a process rather than a condition or an end state. It is that dynamic relationship – between development and underdevelopment, security and insecurity –  which I have tried to capture in the ACTE world order model. The security measures are universal, being applied to each and every are of human life – from school security to the worldwide one.
In the midst of the most sever economic crisis since the Great Depression, official development assistance budgets are shrinking, overseas remittances are falling and corporate philanthropy is drying up. In a world in which so many have so little, and so few have so much, one might expect rather more by way of discussion and debate on all of this.

Clearly, we will have to delve more deeply.

Putting the Human back into Security – Part II

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A decade and more ago, the human security doctrine  was all the rage. Books, conferences, and even the foreign policy platforms of some governments were organized around it.

Today, while some embers still glow, the fire is out.

What happened?

From the very beginning, some analysts, mainly, but not exclusively those subscribing to the realist school of international relations, were skeptical about an approach which seemed to them  mushy and vacuous. Human security was seen as a thinly veiled excuse for reducing expenditures on international policy tools  generally, and on traditional security instruments, such as the military and intelligence agencies, in particular.

Still, for much of the 1990s human security withstood the criticism, and indeed enjoyed significant prominence in the broader discourse.

A decade later, little remains.

An explanation of at least part of the mystery may lie in the relationship between domestic and international politics. In Canada, which had been one of the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for  human security, the disappearence of official reference to the concept coincided with changes in political leadership that occurred around the turn of the century. Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy’s successors, beginning with John Manley and Bill Graham, acting in a pattern which is both familiar and understandable, wanted to put some political space between themselves and their high-profile predecessor. As a result, official Canadian support for what had come to be known as the human security agenda, always controversial, gradually withered.

Public diplomacy,  the technique which was relied upon to move that agenda, later took a similar hit.

That said, in international relations single factors rarely tell the full story, and in this case, too, forces much greater than changes in the Canadian political firmament were in play.

For starters, the definition of human security was always rather vague and contested. There was real tension between those seeking to limit the application of the doctrine to considerations related to the freedom from fear (ending war, building peace, furnishing emergency assistance) and those who preferred to include as well the more sweeping aspect of freedom from want (disasters, disease, and underdevelopment more generally).

That debate remains unresolved.

Secondly, the human security approach was never very evenly applied, and when it was attempted, the results often differed. Human security imperatives were  ignored in the case of the international community’s failure to stop the genocide in Rwanda, and they are still overlooked in Darfur. Humanitarian interventions in Somalia and Bosnia (Srebrenica), on the other hand, ended in disaster. The one case study which might be judged a success, East Timor, was small scale, expensive, and has not been replicated since.

So, the record is mixed. And the reputation of the term has not been helped by its appropriation – if not hijacking –  from time to time by certain parties in support of military intercessions in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Among many contributing elements, however, it was the cathartic events of 9/11 and subsequent launching of the Global War on Terror which achieved most in terms of bringing concerns about the protection of the nation-state front and centre. Suddenly, hard security was back, and its primacy has been largely unchallenged since. Almost overnight international policy was re-militarized, and infused with aggressive new theories such as pre-emptive defense.  Not only was the world deprived once and for all of the much-anticipated peace dividend, but 9/11 also restored defense departments, the arms industries, and the vast edifice which supports them to the pre-eminent position which all had enjoyed throughout the Cold War.

Threat conjuring and the politics of fear returned, big time, and human security has yet to recover.

In Guerrilla Diplomacy,  I argue that in the age of globalization, development and security, like underdevelopment and insecurity, are fused. The challenge for policy-makers now is to find a way to insert diplomacy into the spaces between the two – spaces now occupied physically, intellectually, and in terms of resource allocation, by defense.

The human security doctrine, even if the time is not yet ripe for its rehabilitation, offers diplomats some useful insights towards that end. And it is that critical component of development to which we will presently turn.

Putting the Human back into Security – Part I

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Security, not unlike globalization or development, is a very, very big idea.

To talk about about it in any meaningful way, you need to know where to  begin, and what to focus on.

In terms of security, might that be:

National, or international?

Common, or cooperative?

Collective, or individual?

State?

Personal?

Homeland?

And what of any one of the welter of other, non-traditional security possibilities, ranging from environmental, to resource, to economic, to …?

I set out this catalogue  to illustrate a recurrent point in the discussion of international relations and global issues: the effective confrontation of these sprawling topics requires precise descriptive  language. Finding that language, however, can be almost as difficult as identifying possible remedies. Our vocabulary has not kept pace, and that may help to explain why the accurate diagnosis of the world’s many afflictions remains so elusive.

This is particularly true in the case when speaking of security, where it is crucial to be specific. Nations resort to violence, and sometimes go to war over perceived threats to security.  When security is thought to be in jepoardy, diplomacy quickly comes to be seen as appeasement , and is consigned to the margins.  Generals and admirals come to the fore. Fighting trumps talking.

Whenever the the notion of security is invoked, therefore, it is absolutely essential to be concrete, to know what is seen to be at risk or under threat. Yet this is rarely the case. In fact, “security” is probably one of the most over-used, and abused terms in the lexicon of international relations.

I have written elsewhere of the acute need for new analytical tools, and have tried to come up with a few of my own, such as the ACTE world order model outlined in an earlier post.  In the case of security, however, I believe that kind of enterprise is unnecessary. The concept of human security provides most of the elements needed to understand the pre-requisites of peace and preosperity in the globalization age. Moreover,  it the widespread absence of human security – and the concommitant presence of fear, want and exploitation and suffering – which in my view lies at the root of much of the instablity and conflict around us.

Security is critical to diplomacy because most diplomats work for states, and the highest calling of the state – roughly speaking, the apparatus of national government –  is to ensure the security of the citizenry.

That is, the population.

In other words, humans.

That would be – us.

Human security puts people first. As an objective, it involves the pursuit of demonstable rights and freedoms, subscription to the rule of law, and the existance of the kind of fundamental human dignity which is sustained and nurtured by met needs. This goal seems to me unassailable, both morally and practically, and commitment to attaining it carries significant implications across the board, not least in terms of our thinking about development.

Why, then, have we heard so little of the profoundly people-centric notion of human security in recent years? Never very popular with great powers, human security nonetheless once provided the foreign policy lens, if not grand strategy, favoured by a number of middle and smaller powers. In the second half of the nineties, the doctrine was championed by Canada, and became the core principle animating a string of initiatives – the land mine ban, International Criminal Court, blood diamonds, children in conflict, small arms control, and the Responsibility to Protect, which seeks to provide a political and legal framework for humanitarian intervention.

Since about the turn of the century, however, human security has been largely exiled from the mainstream discourse. With a few notable exceptions, it lives on mainly in academic circles, international organizations and in the NGO community. Yes, the  Human Security Network still exists, although that institution appears to be on life support, there is still a Human Security Gateway on the Internet, and human security reporting and analysis continues. On balance, though, human security as an operative policy tool is now at most a faint shadow of its former self.

What happened?

Therein lies a tale. In broaching those issues, I hope that readers will come to understand why I tried to avoid excessive reference to the term human security in my volume on guerrilla diplomacy, notwithstanding my belief that it remains the concept best suited to understanding the complex political dynamics which prevail in the world today.

A more detailed deconstruction of that paradox comes next.

Grappling with Globalization

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Working in a foreign ministry is as good a place as any, and better than most, to observe the world in transition.  I did it for 28 years. From that vantage point, it was near impossible to avoid thinking about why diplomacy has been performing so dismally, especially in recent years when diplomats have been sidelined, and departments of defence favoured as the international policy instrument of choice.

In trying to assess the crisis of diplomacy, I was led repeatedly to the same observation. Simply put, many of diplomacy’s failings can be attributed to its failure to adapt effectively or well to the challenges of the globalization age.

As a result of that early finding,  readers will notice that many of the constructs which support the arguments presented in Guerrilla Diplomacy are based upon my understanding and analysis of the paramount features of the phenomenon popularly referred to as globalization. But, what, exactly,  is that?

Globalization is both over-used and under-appreciated. It also a highly contested term, and has been ascribed a variety of different meanings. At the highest level of apprehension, globalization can be thought of as the successor era to that of the Cold War.

Yet that would be too easy. Globalization is clearly more than that. I would define it as a totalizing historical force which is conditioning, if not determining outcomes across a broad range of human enterprise. Among its effects and at a planetary level, globalization tends to integrate economically, fracture politically, polarize socially and homogenize culturally. It is multifaceted, vexing, and above all, enormous. Might I venture to say that from both practical and ideational perspectives, globalization is the dominant theme of our times.

But its essence cannot be captured in a single narrative.

Images of Nike, Mercedes, McDonalds and Clinique are only the tip of the iceberg. Globalization compresses space, accelerates time, and has unleashed a hornet’s nest of threats and challenges, many rooted in science and driven by technology. A sampling would include:

  • climate change
  • pandemic disease
  • environmental collapse
  • genomics
  • weapons of mass destruction

This catalogue demonstrates that globalization has framed and populated the contemporary  international policy agenda. These issues, moreover, differ in kind from the territorial disputes, ideological rivalry, military confrontation and competition for client states which were the hallmarks of the Cold War.

But even all of this is only a very small part of the story. Like a scythe, globalization  cuts all ways, bringing comfort, choice, power and influence to a few, and hardship, constraints,  anger and resentment to many.

For the beneficiaries, globalization contributes to prosperity and capital accumulation.

For those lost on the periphery or trapped on the underside – at any level and in any location –  globalization can breed insecurity, exacerbate inequality and abet undervelopment.

Globalization has on balance been good for corporations and bad for governments. It jeopardizes fragile states and increases the liklihood of their failure. The backlash against globalization has contributed to violent extremism, often religiously affiliated, world-wide.  It is percieved in many places as the latest incarnation of something more familiar, empire.

Absent the institutions of effective global governance, globalization will remain largely beyond the purview of either popular sovereignty or the public interest.

Like so much else in life, then, where you stand on the question of globalization depends in large part upon on where you sit.

In the midst of the worst international economic downturn since the Great Depression, it would be tempting to conclude that the age of globalization is over.  Indeed, many have. Yet that kind of conclusion would be based upon a relatively narrow understanding of the term, one rooted mainly in observations about trade liberalization, investment flows, resource prices and other, for the most part  macro-economic indicators.

Even by those criteria, I would hesitate to subscribe to the “end of globalization” thesis.  These sorts of measures are highly variable, and in the overall scheme of things, these are early days still. Reports of globalization’s passing are at best premature.

Staggeringly complicated and  immensely consequent, globalization may be  down, but it is far from out.

The implications for security, development and diplomacy, as we shall see, are far-reaching.

Rethinking World Order – Part III

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Why think about world order?

Because diplomats, like everyone with a practical or intellectual interest in international political economy,  need an analytical tool suitable for understanding the big picture.  Today, the  marketplace for world order models is littered with paradigms and prototypes.  Some aren’t labelled as such. Many have next to no predictive or explanatory capacity. Most take inadequate account of global issues.

That’s a problem.

To recap…

Bipolarity is history.

The unipolar moment of US hegemony has passed, flaming out in a spectacularly violent starburst of shock and awe.

Multipolarity doesn’t readily fit the circumstances inherent in the globalization age – the power of nations is no longer easily compared.

Heteropolarity, a term first applied to international relations by Brown University scholar James Der Derian in 2004,  might be more apt, but it its analytical power is somewhat limited by its association with polarity per se, and as such it can  take us only us so far conceptually.

The notion of worlds – First (advanced, capitalist); Second (defunct, communist) Third (less developed); and perhaps even Fourth (least developed) – comes closer to getting at what we see today. But this model, too, fails to take account of the emergence of worlds within worlds at all levels. It is too state-centric, too territorial, and it does not adequately reflect the dynamic flux which is globalization.

Though now almost forgotten, and to some extent discredited, in my view it was the dependency theorists, whose influence peaked in the 1970’s, that contributed the elements of an analysis which comes  closest to capturing the underlying patterns of development and underdevelopment. Readers may find it worthwhile, even revealing, to return to the work of Raul Prebish, Samir Amin, Andre Gunder Frank, Osvaldo Sunkel , Fernando Cardoso, Theotonio Dos Santos, Paul Baran, and others, with a view to comparing the applicability their diagnoses and prescriptions against current conditions in the world political economy.

To be sure, some of their prescriptions – self-sufficiency, or import substituting industrialization, for instance – did not stick. Yet there are many points of continuing relevance and insight – the critique of free market economics, the focus on transnationalized elites, the perils of reliance upon commodity exports and the associated difficulties with terms of trade, the idea of the poverty trap.

None, however, is more appropriate to the early 21st century than the notion of core-periphery relations at many levels between and within states, regions and social groups.

I have tried to draw on some of this prescient thinking in the construction of the arguments adduced in support of the ACTE world order model set out summarily in Part II above. I have also tried to abstract various insights offered by the dependency school in setting out the defining elements of both guerrilla diplomacy and the guerrilla diplomat, and will elaborate these at greater length in future.

Unlike traditional diplomacy, and even more so than public diplomacy, guerrilla diplomacy, and indeed guerrilla diplomats, are designed to perform effectively within and across the full spectrum of conditions encapsulated within the ACTE world order model.   Part of that alternative predisposition is borne of a very different understanding of two key terms, development and security. So, too, with the diagnosis of globalization’s  darker  side, underdevelopment and insecurity.

In the era of globalization, these two concepts are fused. Security is no longer the exclusive preserve of departments of defence, or a function of arms and  force.  Development has implications which extend well beyond the machinations of aid agencies, or notions of modernization and growth. To a great extent, development has become the new security, and guerrilla diplomacy, both as diplomatic method and as an alternative approach to understanding international relations, proceeds from that conviction.

Globalization. Security. Development.  These sprawling topics are the touchstones of our times.

A closer examination of each is coming up next.

Rethinking World Order – Part II

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Polarity is a static concept, and its expression is spatial. Various poles, be they considered of the hetero or multi-polar genus, can be named, mapped and fixed on a world atlas. In the dynamic, de-territorialized environment that characterizes the globalization age, each of these aspects is highly problematic.

To construct a model of international relations that puts people, rather than states or measures of GDP at the centre of notions of security and development, a more fluid and supple approach to modelling is required.

A quick survey reveals this point starkly. Today, parts of the USA, such as the abandoned neighbourhoods of Flint, Michigan or Akron, Ohio, or New Orleans, Louisiana, look as bad or worse worse than much of anything that might be found in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, or Santiago, Chile, or Accra, Ghana. The downtowns of Shanghai, Sao Paulo or Dubai outshine those found in many major centres in Europe or North America. For the homeless in Los Angeles, life is at least as tough, and likely moreso, than it is for those at the bottom of the social pyramid in Singapore.

All of which is to say that the old distinctions just don’t work any more. First World conditions are enjoyed by many people, and found in many places in what used to be known as the Third World. The upscale opulence associated with the better districts of Capetown or Caracas attest to this emphatically. At the same time, nominally Third World lifestyles and environments are found among many individuals, such as the disposessed, and groups, such as aboriginals, as well in many places, such as inner cities and social housing estates, all over what we used to call the First and Second Worlds.

How might such diverse and shifting characteristics be incorporated in the construction of a new world order model? Not easily. But that is no excuse for not trying.

I would propose moving beyond both the now obsolete First, Second and Third World labels, as well as the centre-periphery model and its variants favoured by the dependency theorists and their successors, to adopt four broad categories of people and places affected by globalization:

•    The A- or advancing, world, whose economic and political advantage is growing

•    The C- or contingent world, whose prospects are uncertain and will be determined by future developments which could tip in either direction

•    The T- or tertiary world, whose relative position is subservient or dependent; and

•    The E- or excluded world, who find themselves for the most part outside of globalization’s matrix.

Put the four categories together and there you have it –  a user-friendly and adaptable world order model, the ACTE.

World order modelling is, of necessity, undertaken at a high level of abstraction, and hence exceptions will be inevitable. But these do not the rule make, and the rules, I think, hold up quite well. Each category could contain individuals, social or cultural groups, cities or parts thereof, states or parts thereof, regions, or multilateral combinations. The hybrid formulation, which is transnational and not ordered by geography, combines the utility of labelling with the dynamic quality of the dependency analysis. It avoids undue association with immobile national political space, while allowing for the constant movement upwards, downwards and sideways within and between the principal groups associated with globalization.

The point here is that it is no longer useful or even possible to attempt to classify entire countries, regions or groupings into this or that particular intellectual or geographic box. There is just too much complexity and swirl out there, and much less stratification and rigidity, for any of that. In the globalization age, the concept of de-territorialization – of power, agency, nationality, language, even of ethnicity – has become a defining attribute. While it is very difficult to avoid completely the use of spatial and geographic terms, economic and political relations in the globalization era are less and less between territorially based units and more and more between social agents – individuals, classes, and other groups of various description.  It is these billions of people, almost one half are under twenty-five and live in cities, rather than entire countries, that experience development and underdevelopment.

The situation of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) is illustrative. In these resurging or aspiring great powers, there are very large elements of A-, C-, T- and E-worlds internally. There are also elements of each in Europe and North America, although in those cases the A- component would be larger, the E- component smaller, and the C- and T- components perhaps more mobile.

Unconvinced? More on all of this, and why it is germane to guerrilla diplomacy, in Part III.

Rethinking World Order – Part I

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It is Easter Monday in central Canada, and change is everywhere. You can smell it in the air and see it on the land.

Seasons change. The way we see the world, and understand its workings, apparently does not.

Modelling world order is a very high-level analytical pursuit. I love politics, reading discussions on calguns shotguns, am a nationalist and from time to time love firing guns at the local range so take it from me when I say modelling the new world order not only informs and but also conditions perception.

During the long decades of the Cold War freeze, it was easy enough to get a handle on the idea of world order. There were two competing superpowers, two clearly identified and associated blocs, and competition, to a greater of lesser extent, for the allegiance most everyone else. One bloc, capitalist and led by the USA, was the widely referred to as the First World; another, nominally communist and led by the USSR, the Second World, and the rest, some affiliated with one or the other bloc and some non-aligned, was known as the Third World. Later in the game the notion of a Fourth World emerged – not less, but least developed countries, the poorest of the poor.

In my Diplomatic Surge? post I mentioned the problems related to carrying over a binary, Cold War era world view into the globalization age. Our inability to imagine accurately the world in transition, however, has implications which extend beyond the persistence of a Manichean sensibility, a mis-diagnosis of the threats and challenges, and a tendency to militarize international policy and relations.   At a very basic level, we don’t know how to name,  or describe, or come to terms with the powerful forces which are re-shaping the planet’s political economy. About two decades after it began, the latest epochal shift remains, in large part, unassessed.

When the dust finally cleared in the wake of walls coming down and an empire imploding in 1991, it was clear that bipolarity did not work anymore. One of the poles had melted away. In the intervening years there have been several attempts  –  by Robert Cooper, Thomas Barnett, Immanuel Wallerstein and others – to reconstruct models which somehow capture the complexity and swirl which has characterized the intervening years. None have stuck, though,  like the familiar First, Second and Third Worlds, and accordingly terms remain in widespread use. Unfortunately, given the sheer flux of contemporary geopolitics, not to mention the disappearence of what had been the Second World, they no longer make much sense.

In the mainstream media, the notion of unipolarity became initially very popoular – one remaining superpower, the USA, leading in just about any category worth measuring, and having its way pretty well whenever, and wherever it wished. With the 2003 invasion of Iraq – no WMDs, but plenty of Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, Guantanamo Bay, black detention sites, torture, and extraordinary rendition – that period of unparalleled  quasi-imperial dominance quickly eroded away. Associated neoconservative preferences for ideas such as  pre-emptive defense,  the creation of a homeland security state,  and the gutting of domestic governmental capacity revealed so starkly in the inability of government to respond effectively to either natural or man-made disasters, combined to become the Bush administration’s brand. A trickle of defections from the Coalition turned into a stampede for the doors, the economic meltdown discredited the laissez faire economic doctrine embedded in the Washington Consensus, and the result was a near perfect storm over America’s international image and reputation, its soft power and political influence.

All have tanked.

And all will probably recover, but when they do, the environment will be very different, and it is not quite clear just what will emerge. Many commentators are speaking of a return to some kind of multipolarity, based on the sorts of balance of power calculations and relationships which prevailed for a few hundred years following the Treaty of Westphalia and later, in a more deliberately codified form, the Congress of Vienna. I don’t think that model fits, either. The kinds of power that the statesmen of the day were trying to balance were more or less similar and hence comparable, based on benchmarks such as the size of armies and navies, the nature of weapons and armaments, population numbers, resource bases and colonial connections.

But that was then. Today, extant types of power are not easily comparable.  The US leads in military strength. The European Union will soon have the largest GDP and projects broadly attractive social and political values. China has become the world’s manufacturer and is destined within a decade or so to become the single largest national economy. India is huge in back office operations, software design and call centres. Resurgent Russia is a resource giant and rearming fast. Brazil is leading Latin America. ASEAN is integrating Southeast Asia. The concept of multipolarity does not adequately capture the existance of so many different types of power.

A new term, heteopolarity, which suggests different sources of power and influence, just might.   Yet even if it does, finding any kind of balance will be extremely difficult. And any model based on polarity will in any case be too territorially based and state-centric to embody the dynamism and blur which are hallmarks of  the globalization age.

Perhaps the time has come to dispense with the very notion of polarity as an organizing principle of world order. More on that coming soon.

Lashings of Insight – Part II

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One reason for the ISA’s enduring popularity is the sheer variety of presentations on offer. Anyone weary at the prospect of attending yet another panel on, say, constructivist critiques of neo-colonialism, or a reconsideration of the English School perspective on regional integration, can simply browse the telephone book-like ISA program and almost certainly find something of interest.

I am drawn typically to sessions offered by the Association’s Diplomatic Studies and International Communications sections. But I am attracted as well to discussions organized by other sections – intelligence, or foreign policy analysis, for example. Those panels which touch on the core issues of issues of guerrilla diplomacy, namely security, development and globalization, are of particular interest.

Following is an eclectic and highly distilled dollop of all that, garnished with a side order of commentary acquired in conversation:

  • globalization is down, but not necessarily out as the defining historical process of our age; palatable alternative options are not on the horizon
  • public diplomacy in large part is the new diplomacy, but it will never completely displace traditional diplomacy, and could usefully be adapted for use by the representatives of developing countries in the cities of the metropolis
  • major international organizations (UN/IFIs) were designed by the USA in post-war years primarily in order to serve US interests; American dominance has waned, its interests have changed, and most institutions now require radical reform or complete re-invention
  • evidence of direct correlation between climate change and incidence of conflict is uncertain and possibly exaggerated (cf. Gwynne Dyer’s Climate Wars)
  • growing popularity and influence of Al Jazeera English may be more significant over time than foreign policy decisions/ actions taken by many of world’s governments
  • Russia is currently the wild card in the international system – armed, dangerous, re-assertive, but falling faster and harder than EU or US; a collapsing  Russian economy will be more significant than religion or nationalism in conditioning outcomes in the Eurasian colossus
  • India’s latent economic and military power has not yet translated into real international influence, it almost certainly will, but not anytime soon
  • al-Qaeda is now more of a brand than a centralized terrorist network, but the brand has been damaged by setbacks in Iraq, Jordan and Palestinian territories; response by brand managers is centred on internet marketing and heavily reliant upon new media
  • Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Shia militias in Iraq, all with deep roots in populations and territories, are likely to outlast al-Qaeda
  • number of fragile, failing and collapsed states is set again to increase, but the track record of donor countries in nation-building is mixed  to poor
  • inability of NATO members to agree on grand strategy for Afghanistan may result in participating ISAF members joining the ranks of outsiders who have tried, but inevitably failed to have their way with this “graveyard of empires.”

In all, quite a lot to chew on.

The theme for next year’s event is Theory vs. Policy: Connecting Scholars and Practitioners. While compelling enough in itself, the venue is New Orleans, a city still struggling almost five years after the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina revealed so much to so many about the hollowing out of the American state.

Stay tuned.

Lashings of Insight: Tid-bits from the Brain Food Buffet (I)

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Last month I spent five days at the 50th annual conference of the International Studies Association (ISA) in New York City.

I make a point of participating in this sprawling brain food buffet most years, and although the intensity and pace of the program can be exhausting , with 40-50 simultaneous panels, five times per day over four days, it does provide a comprehensive snapshot of academic thinking about most things international at a given point in time.

In that respect, this year’s event was perhaps especially interesting in the wake of the recent arrival of the Obama administration in the USA. The expectations that have been engendered by the heavy rotation of the “hope and change” agenda, both during the long campaign and after, are enormous. Will the new government be able to deliver as advertised? Or will expectations have to be managed and downsized?

With these, and many other issues in mind, I attended many sessions on global order and US foreign policy. Following are some of my summary observations. Processed, condensed, and unattributed, they are intended less as a record of the proceedings than as points for further discussion and debate:

  • US foreign policy will be both framed, and constrained by economic crisis, the depth and duration of which remain unclear, but menacing

  • Obama’s powerful message of hope and change is very different in tone from that of his predecessor, but could lead to an “expectations gap” which will be tough to bridge

  • choice of advisors at upper and mid levels was characterized by one speaker as “neo-con lite”; main international policy directions are more likely to be representative of continuity than change (eg. despatch of 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, and message about international policy priorities which that conveys)

  • commitment to Global War on Terror is likely to persist, even if the taxonomy has changed; careers, budgets, institutions and industries now depend on it (GWOT is “sedimented” in Washington)

  • notwithstanding the temporary bump associated with “Obama effect”, the continued relative decline of US power and influence is inevitable

  • unipolar moment has passed, but the world seems headed towards heteropolar rather than multipolar order – US will lead militarily, but EU and BRICSAM countries will be major economic forces, with other nations powerful culturally, demographically, and environmentally

  • emergent order will take time to work out; requirement for cross-balancing at various levels may result in lower levels of state-sponsored violence, but not necessarily more stabilty than during brief period of US hegemony

  • evangelical US model (deregulation/marketization/democratization) for the world political economy has been deeply discredited; authoritarian, regulated, statist capitalism seems ascendant

  • the good news? A smaller US place in the world and concomitant need for complex balancing will necessitate a larger role for diplomacy, and possibly a smaller role for the military in the overall international policy mix

  • influence of Ambassadors is set to increase and regional military commands/commanders likely to diminish

All in all, a pretty rich harvest, and I will be providing more by way of take-aways from the ISA meeting in future posts.

Manoeuvring the Ship of State

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Most diplomats work in foreign ministries, and most foreign ministries have been struggling to adapt to the challenges posed by globalization. Those challenges, which include the emergence of rival international actors ranging from celebrities, to NGOs, to other government departments – are compounded during periods of weak leadership and uncertain political interest. At such times, absent international policy demands or the requirement to produce related real-world outcomes, the employees of foreign ministries tend to fall back on the transactional, on the perfection of bureaucratic process, on entrail gazing. Endless internal reviews, re-organizations and narrow careerist calculation often substitute for policy analysis, development and implementation.

The result strikes me as something like a metaphorical equivalent to the board game “Snakes and Ladders”… or perhaps, “Vipers and Chutes”.

What to do? A few years ago, following the separation of the Canadian Departments of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, senior officials tried to turn adversity into opportunity by launching an initiative to create a “Foreign Ministry for the Twenty-first Century”, or FAC 21. At the centre of this strategy was a significant re-definition and sharpening the of the foreign ministry’s s mandate as an interpreter of globalization, articulator of foreign policy, integrator of the international agenda, advocate of values and interests, provider of services, and steward of public resources.

The plan?

To identify and address the imperatives for institutional change by:

  • strengthening policy capacity;
  • renewing core professional skills;
  • increasing agility, reducing rigidity;
  • maximizing assets in the field;
  • connecting with wider networks; and
  • focussing on public diplomacy.

All of this struck me as completely sensible, and indeed overdue, but an election intervened, the government changed, new resources were withheld, and the attempt to build a contemporary, stand-alone foreign ministry, but one that did not contain a trade component, was among the first casualties of the subsequent re-integration of the two departments.

When I think back on this initiative, or reflect on former Secretary of State Rice’s efforts to transform the State Department, or consider the current initiative in the UK to produce an FCO which is more foreign, less office, a certain image keeps returning to my consciousness. I imagine a scene set on the bridge of a once-magnificent ocean liner, still in service but well past its prime. The boarding process is complete, and thousands of passengers are excited about their imminent departure. The captain is gazing ahead, taking note of possible navigation hazards and enjoying a majestic view from his command centre on the bridge.

The last few voyages, though, have been a bit rough and the captain is eager to get underway. He gives the order to cast off, does a final check of the instruments, nudges the wheel to port and slides the throttle forward to “all-ahead half.” He waits to hear the rumble of the mighty engines… but nothing happens. He shoves the throttle to “full.” Still nothing. “Reverse.” Nothing. He tries to correct course – but the wheel now spins as if it were being used for roulette.

The captain looks down and to his horror discovers that none of his controls are connected. Either someone else is driving, or the ship is adrift.

Interpretation?

The success of any diplomatic surge will be dependent, a least in part, upon fixing the foreign ministry.