Highlights from The Rise of Netpolitik, a report by the Aspen institute's Roundtable on Information Technology. This policy brief inspired me to create this blog.

Until the current period—call it the Information Age, Communications Revolution, Third Wave, or Postindustrial Era—world affairs have been in the hands of diplomats and national leaders. Certainly long before Machiavelli wrote The Prince, diplomatic strategists sought to balance one state’s interest against another to achieve their own state’s purposes. Yet there is a sense that the old rules do not apply anymore.

This is a period of blurring borders, flattening hierarchies, and heightened
ambiguity. Those who are competitors and enemies one day are collaborators and allies the next. Those who stand alone, no matter what their strength, find even the smallest networks in opposition to be daunting. Something is different: the emergence, significance, and importance of the network structure within a world of complexity. The “life form” and organizational structure that is most in evidence in this new world of ideas and media is the network—social networks,electronic networks, media networks, to name a few.

To frame the global strategic questions, political leaders and leading thinkers have tended to gravitate to at least two different “worldview” approaches:

Realpolitik has been practiced over the past 500 years by historical luminaries such as Richelieu, Metternich, Bismarck, and Kissinger.Diplomats play political chess with nation-states, balancing and maneuvering one against the other to gain political advantage or equilibrium. This is a world of fault lines: the global alliances leading to the world wars, the subsequent Cold War, or the Clash of Civilizations suggested by Samuel Huntington.

Global Interdependence or “Liberal Internationalism” regards the world as moving to an intertwined world organism composed of international players—governmental and nongovernmental—for whom reality is interreliance among nations and cultures, economies and environments, and lack of control over many of the actions that affect one’s own locale. It recognizes that people belong to several communities at the same time, have multiple self-images and identities, and need to see themselves as world citizens as well. Here, informal diplomats use soft power, the attractive power of ideas, to survive or prevail.

Other frameworks have been suggested as well:

Mediapolitik: Lee Edwards describes the interrelationship between the mass media and world politics in liberal democratic, authoritarian, and totalitarian regimes. He suggests, as many observers have before, that “there is a strong but always shifting correlation among government, journalism, and public opinion in foreign policy making”. In essence, Edwards places the role of media as a central player in the conduct of world politics.

Cyberpolitik: David Rothkopf, suggests that “the realpolitik of the new era is cyberpolitik, inwhich the actors are no longer just states, and raw power can be countered or fortified by information power.”

Noopolitik: John Arquilla and David Ronfeld coined this term from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of noosphere, the sphere of ideas. Noopolitik is an approach to statecraft,to be undertaken as much by non-state as by state actors, that emphasizes the role of soft power in expressing ideas, values, norms and ethics through all manner of media. It incorporates not only mass and cyber media but also the
concept of soft power and thought leadership in developing srategy on the world stage.

Netpolitik is still an unfolding doctrine. It seems to be characterized, however, by a higher velocity of information, new time pressures on thoughtful policymaking, a more robust pluralism in international affairs, and new challenges to the power of the nation-state and traditional diplomacy. Netpolitik seems to be a volatile force because of its great reach: affecting everything from the exercise of state power and military might to issues of deep personal identity and social values. We barely understand how the Internet is being used across the world; understanding how it is
remaking the conduct of international politics will require much more research, study, and debate.

Perhaps the most important imperative in Netpolitik is to recognize that it exists. The Internet and other information technologies are no longer a peripheral force in the conduct of world affairs but a powerful engine for change. Global electronic networking is not only remaking economies, but transforming people's values, identities, and social practices. Moreover, these changes are not just occurring within the boundaries of nation-states but in all sorts of unpredictable transnational communications.

It has been a gradual and subtle process, but the skillful use of new Internet venues by nonstate actors is altering some traditional notions of power in international relations. New types of soft power involving moral legitimacy and respect, credibility as an information source, and cultural values are coming to the fore. Military and financial powers that traditionally have belonged to the dominant nations are now constrained in new ways by soft power and the politics of credibility. A tighter skein of global interdependence may mean that unilateralism by any single nation, especially the United States, could be a more problematic policy approach.

Thanks to the Internet, more segments of the earth's inhabitants can now tell their stories. This is a significant development in human history. What may matter most in the future is our ability to hear each other's stories, learn from them, and perhaps develop a new global story.