Month: April 2009

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.

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.