In the previous post,  I argued that the short-lived era of unipolar American hegemony has given way to  a new international dispensation best characterized as heteropolar rather than multipolar. This metamorphosis may be attributed mainly to a series of colossal strategic misjudgements and the profusion of diverse sources of power and influence globally. The implications for security and diplomacy are profound.

To be sure, and as was the case with the multipolar world dominated by the European Empires from the 15th to 19th centuries, there are once again many poles. But this time the differences between them far outweigh the similarities. These players share little in common.  Unlike in previous eras, the heterogeneous nature of today’s competing actors renders comparison difficult and measurement even more so.

That said, and although this is very much a new order in the making, we can begin to trace the contours and discern the content of heteropolarity, a condition which I believe will increasingly define international relations. New poles are forming, and old poles are evolving. In terms of identifying the major heteropoles in the early years of the 21st century, the following thoughts come immediately to mind.

The USA, even with a slightly leaner (but still growing) defence budget, will for the foreseeable future remain the world’s leading military, or hard power. It will continue as a leading centre of R&D, innovation, private enterprise, and post-secondary education; the notion of broad decline is hotly contested. However, as predicted by President Eisenhower in his farewell address over 50 years ago, an increasing reliance upon military strength is rendering America the praetorian pole. Its fundamental economic and industrial position in relative terms is fading fast, a trend accelerated by the hollowing out of its manufacturing sector, and compounded by the continuing financial crisis and the cost of foreign wars. Within a decade or two the mantle of leadership, and pride of place as the epicentre of the world economy, may well pass to the Asia-Pacific region generally, and to China in particular – with India not that far behind.

Together, these two countries will soon represent over one half of the world’s population. China is already the fastest growing manufacturing and industrial economy and the largest provider of consumer goods. With an increasing reliance upon advanced technologies, China is moving rapidly up the value-added chain. For its part, India is now the world’s back office, call centre and software incubator, offering services in the English language at prices no one can match.  Each of these poles is looking for increased recognition and for ways to advance their growing interests. Unlike the old superpowers, however, their middle classes are burgeoning rather than shrinking, and they are not rattling sabres.

Elsewhere, post-tsunami Japan, though often overlooked, is still the world’s third largest economy and a huge participant in international trade, investment and finance. Overtaken in GDP terms last year by China, the prospect of having to accommodate new rivals throughout the rest of rising Asia is likely to present Japan with significant political and cultural challenges.

Brazil today is closer than ever to the realization of its enormous potential. That country has secured its place as the political and economic dynamo of Latin America, and has become much more assertive in the international arena, and particularly in organizations such as the WTO. Brazil’s newfound heteropolar identity may find expression as a champion of cultural diversity or as the leader of the Global South.

Russia, as a residual empire with still-extant nuclear capability, seems intent upon consolidating its role as Eurasia’s energy and resource pole. These ambitions are abetted by its vast geo-strategic presence, memories of greatness and the perceived need to reassert its influence both in the “near abroad” and beyond. Europeans, especially, are wary of their growing dependence.

And, speaking of Europe… Beset by the current debt and monetary crisis, it is easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. While it will take time, and likely another recession, the Euro-zone’s present problems will eventually be worked through. Over the longer term, the continent’s strong suit of peace, prosperity, safe and livable cities, excellent public infrastructure, a rich historical heritage and thriving artistic and cultural life suggests that the EU is destined to lead the world in soft power, the power of attraction. The source of the Europe’s strength and the basis of its comparative advantage will reside not in a common defence and security policy, but in the demonstration effect, in the ability of Europe to project its success by example internationally.

Heteropoles are forming in all shapes and sizes. Certain countries, such as Turkey, Iran, South Africa, Egypt and Mexico, as well as regions, such as Southeast Asia and the Gulf states, will almost certainly figure in this new order.  Yet the emergence of a heteropolar world, one in which the drivers and ends of power and influence are no longer easily meshed, will inevitably cause friction. Among and between poles, edges are sharp, competition fierce, objectives divergent and interests difficult to align. Direct connection on issues of mutual concern, such as trade, the environment, and intellectual property, has already become difficult. Finding the basis for bargaining will be tough, the identification of trade-offs elusive and the act of balancing dizzyingly complex.

As has happened with the global economy, volatility in international relations is likely to become the new normal. Fragile states will fail. Sparks will fly. The trick will be to find ways to prevent fires. In that regard, while deterrence may still have a role, the actual use of armed force is unlikely to be of much utility.

Ready or not, heterpolarity means that it is now diplomacy which must be placed front and centre.

Almost a decade ago, at an annnual conference of the International Studies Association, I heard my colleague James Der Derian from Brown University use the word heterpolar to describe the new world order. I had not come across the term before, and was uncertain as to its precise meaning. Still,  it struck me at the time as an original idea, and those are rare. It lodged in my mind.

I took a first crack at developing the concept in Guerrilla Diplomacy, where I defined heterpolarity as: An emerging world system in which competing states or groups of states derive their relative power and influence from dissimilar sources – social, economic, political, military, cultural. The disparate vectors which empower these heterogeneous poles are difficult to compare or measure; stability in the age of globalization will therefore depend largely upon the diplomatic functions of knowledge-driven problem solving and complex balancing.

In preparation for a forthcoming conference at the London Academy of Diplomacy, I have been trying to further elaborate the implications associated with the emergence of a heteropolar world order. Those with an interest in the evolution of international relations may find the line of argument worth pursuing.

For the past few hundred years, high-level statecraft has been concerned mainly with attempts at balancing power in an ever-changing world.  From the age of European empires through to the end of the Cold War, the indicators of national power – armies, navies, missiles, warheads, economies, populations, territories – were carefully calculated, and then balanced and codified in an attempt to engineer stability. Numbers were important; alliances were made and treaties entered into for purposes of expressing or extending agreed balances. When imbalances arose, as they inevitably did, negotiations were re-opened. If the talks failed, war usually ensued.

And so was world order, however punctuated by periods of great upheaval, fashioned.

From the Congress of Vienna through the Treaty of Versailles and beyond, the search for international security turned on the efforts of diplomats to calibrate power in a manner which produced a workable form of equilibrium.  The threat or use of armed force served as the international policy instrument of choice and the ultimate arbiter in dispute resolution.  For the likes of Metternich, Castlereagh and Bismark, not to mention Churchill, Stalin and Kissinger, power was essentially a function of the ability to compel your adversary to submit to your will. Stability was engineered by fine tuning relationships within and between alliances, first in a multipolar, and then, following World War II, in a bipolar system dominated by the US and USSR.

All of this changed with the implosion of the Soviet Union and the advent of American uni-polarity in the early 1990s. This was a triumphal, if fleeting moment when history was said to have ended and the neoliberal Washington Consensus of decontrol and market freedom was imposed wherever it was not embraced. For large corporations, financial entrepreneurs, those with surplus capital, and more than a few felons, these were halcyon days.

But nothing lasts forever.  By the autumn of 2008, with the global economy heading into the worst recession since the 1930s, it had become clear that the one size fits all prescription of wholesale privatization and deregulation was not going to end well. That realization – in conjunction with a string of disastrous strategic choices perhaps best symbolized by the violent starburst of shock and awe unleashed over Baghdad in 2004 and the subsequent failed occupation – resulted in the end of American hegemony. Today, America’s prestige and influence are haemorrhaging. In the Asia Pacific and elsewhere, new poles are rising and the epicentre of global power is shifting.

Among the commentariat, and in both the academic and scholarly press, the mainstream view is that world politics have returned to some kind of a multipolar dispensation. The prefix multi suggests the existence of multiple poles of more or less the same type, as was the case in Europe, for example, in the 19^th century. From that observation it follows that traditional means can again be used to establish some kind of new balance, one based largely upon conventional assumptions about the nature of power and the use of influence.

As is so often the case with the received wisdom, there are good reasons to doubt this proposition.  With the advent of globalization, international power and influence have become atomized. Not only are they highly dispersed geographically, but the sources and substance of power and influence – hard or soft, smart, whatever – now vary enormously. The times when well-acquainted  negotiators came to the table with similar cards in their hands have gone forever.

New players. New rules.

This is a whole new game, one characterized not by similarity, but by difference;  not by the return of multipolarity, but by the advent of heteropolarity.

We will look more specifically at the shape of our heteropolar world order in the making in the next post.

In the last entry, I tried to illustrate how changes in domestic Canadian politics, in combination with the imposition of capacity reductions on the Department of Foreign Affairs, had contributed to a turn away from this country’s internationalist traditions. Today, I continue that line of inquiry with an exploration of the profound shifts in the nature and orientation of media coverage, as well as the impact of Canada’s rapidly changing demography.

As the Euro-zone’s continuing debt and monetary crisis has underscored, growing global economic interdependence means that all nations are vulnerable and exposed to events unfolding beyond their frontiers. At the same time, travel, tourism, immigration and the Internet have contributed to a vast increase in cosmopolitanism. These realities, however, are rarely reflected in the overall news mix, and less so in the content behind the headlines. Even as Canada’s increasingly diverse and multicultural  population charges ahead ever more completely into the culture and ethos of globalization, the coverage of international affairs in the mainstream media – television, radio, newspapers – continues to slide. To the extent that the media informs and conditions the public and political spheres, this paradox will have broader implications.

Why the general pullback from international affairs reporting? Among the explanations: the crisis in journalism associated with the rise of on-line publishing, and the resulting budget and personnel cuts; media multiplication and fragmentation; a loss of institutional memory; the closing or consolidation of foreign bureaux; a preference for shorter and less complex stories; an absence of analysis; a fixation on personalities the visually and emotionally sensational… earthquakes, tidal waves, family tragedies, plane and train wrecks.  Fewer journalists, with increasingly stretched resources, are covering the IR ‘beat’, and those that do tend to prefer writing about the military, especially if they have been embedded. Meanwhile, citizen reporters with hand held digital devices provide an increasing amount of the raw feed – think about the dominant images of  9/11, the Indian Ocean tsunami, the Arab Spring or the storming today of the British Embassy in Tehran. Crowdsourcing rules. For these reasons and more, there appears to be a widespread conviction among media managers that Canadians, for example, just aren’t as interested as they once were in receiving professional reporting on world affairs.  Those who are have little choice but to rely upon specialized sources and the web for anything but the most basic information.

These changes in media structure and reporting priorities have both prefigured and reflected major shifts in the public environment.  From roughly the end of WWII until the late 1980s, the notion of a bi-lingual, bi-cultural, ‘true north strong and free’ was one of the mainstays behind Canadian internationalism. There existed in Canada a broad, comfortable, middle class consensus around the most central aspects of international policy, which included containment and deterrence, but also a commitment to development assistance and peacekeeping. Such was the essence of Cold War comfort. But those old verities no longer fit. In the intervening years, that entente has been riven, and its demise hastened by the emergence and growing popularity of highly particularistic, single interest lobbies. The pre-occupations of these groups range from from Timor to Tibet, from rainforests to reefs, and from alternative energy to “ethical” oil. They include gender, human rights, small arms, and child soldiers, to name a few.  It is difficult just to reach, let alone attempt to draw together such a fragmented constituency.

The crumbling away of a cohesive and supportive domestic  foundation for Canadian internationalism – and Canadian diplomacy – seems also to be associated with the rise of non-state actors. Trends in the domestic polity are now deeply influenced by the activities of all sorts of new players – philanthropic NGOs, transnational businesses and religious extremists come immediately to mind.  All compete for attention. So, too do the international machinations of prominent individuals such as Bono, Bill Gates, Angelina Jolie and George Soros. States and statesmen have had to make room for celebrity diplomats and civil society.

In recent years, and especially since the Great Recession of 2008-10, job insecurity, stagnant or shrinking incomes, and a growing disquiet over matters closer to home have joined with the rise of issue-driven advocacy and generational change to increase levels of discomfort. They have also induced fatigue, apathy, and cynicism.

Today many citizens, perhaps feeling adrift in this turbulent and confusing world, appear to have redrawn the lines of their individual moral engagement in closer proximity to the front door. Beset by lingering doubts about governance at home and facing a range of vexing, if not intractable challenges abroad, many seem to be re-scaling their engagement in the world. In most  OECD countries the majority of people now see their government’s priorities as overwhelmingly domestic – health care, education, the environment and managing the economy dominate, with most issues related to international affairs (defence, aid and foreign policy) barely registering in comparison.

Whether anaesthetized by spin doctors, spoon fed by embedded journalists, or turned off by endless streams of infotainment, people everywhere seem to be paying less attention to either the world or to their place in it. There are occasional spikes -  the invasion of Iraq, the ISAF mission in Afghanistan, echoes from events in Iran or North Korea. But these are at best minor peaks in a valley of indifference. Global issues, including the hardy perennials of peace, development and human rights are rarely rated among the most pre-eminent of popular pre-occupations.

Now the province mainly of specialists and experts, international policy has come to exist in a kind of floating world, a disconnected bubble somehow severed from the everyday and animated more by a sense of visceral values than an appreciation of concrete interests. It has become somewhat of an exotic, far removed from more pressing or immediate concerns. As was demonstrated convincingly during Canada’s spring 2011 election campaign, citizens are looking inwards, just when they should be looking out, and this bodes ill for any kind of a broadly-based internationalist revival.

Looking back over decade since 9/11, what events and developments stand out globally? Among others:

• The ongoing Global War on Terror and associated Western military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

• The hollowing out of the middle class, the financial crisis and the continuing Great Recession.

• The lost opportunities to support non-violent political reform during the Arab Spring.

9/11 changed everything, and the carnage and consequences engendered by that day haunt us still.

The Twin Towers episode was tragic, but not just on account of the mass fatalities. It provided the neoconservative ideologues in the Bush administration with the pretext they needed to seize control of the domestic and international agendas, and entrench the politics of fear. On their watch, human rights were systematically violated and torture legalized, while military and intelligence spending increased vastly. With this came not only Guantonamo Bay and Abu Ghraib; a network of “black” prisons and interrogation centres was established world-wide, and “extraordinary renditions” kept up the flow of detainees.  On the home front, taxes were cut, civil and constitutional rights were rolled back, and the national security and surveillance state constructed. Meanwhile, and as demonstrated indelibly during the failed response to Hurricane Katrina, the federal government’s program and service infrastructure was gutted.

For the USA, 9/11 was the trip wire which marked the beginning of the end of the unipolar moment. Its aftermath has bankrupted America’s economy, destroyed its reputation, squandered its global leadership, and ensured that the country remains the object of anger and resentment throughout the Arab and Islamic world.

Remarkably, some elements of this misguided response – the drone strikes, covert operations and targeted assassinations – have been ramped up under President Obama. Despite some new packaging, the past four years have seen more continuity than change in American policy.

For friends of the USA, that is worrisome.

Still reaching for the gun

Take, for instance, the Arab Spring. We have witnessed a convincing expression of the people’s thirst for reform. Moreover, that conviction has been expressed in an overwhelmingly secular manner, with the more extreme iterations of radical Islamism notable mainly for their absence. That observation, which not coincidentally relates directly back to the implications of 9/11, may represent the Arab Spring’s most enduring legacy. Either way, one would have thought that lending support to the forces of democratic progress, particularly in the face of concerns over violent Islamic extremism, would have been an obvious choice.

Instead, the West stood by as Tunisia and Egypt erupted, and chose to intervene militarily in the Libyan civil war. The result in most cases has been that beyond cosmetic changes in the top level leadership, very little of substance has really changed.  Labels notwithstanding, these uprisings are a far cry from revolution. And meanwhile, confronted by the stirrings in Jordan, revolts in Bahrain and Yemen, and a full scale rebellion in Syria, NATO’s response has been mute or incoherent.

There is a better way. In the age of globalization, development – long term, equitable, sustainable – has become the new basis for world security. At the level of grand strategy, that means that diplomacy must replace defence at the centre of international policy.

Until that lesson is taken to heart, the toll of 9/11 will continue to mount

True north in transition

How has 9/11 changed Canada? Profoundly, but – like so much else – in a manner mainly resembling a miniature replica of the USA..

Although the metamorphosis here began well before the change of government in 2006, the nature and orientation of contemporary Conservative foreign policy differs significantly from that of previous Liberal and Progressive Conservative  governments.

At the highest level of analysis, it could not be clearer that the overall international policy emphasis and mix associated with this country has shifted. Adulation of the military, and a general preference for the use of armed force has been placed front and centre, at the expense of both diplomacy and development assistance. Ten years ago the rallying cry for defence recruitment was “There’s no life like it”. Now, it’s “Fight”. Accordingly, there has been an acceleration in the transformation of the structure of the Canadian Forces, away from peacekeeping in favour of expeditionary war fighting. This redirection has been evident in both the prosecution of an ambitious – if ill-fated – counter-insurgency campaign in Kandahar, and in the enthusiastic participation in the NATO bombing and embargo in support of regime change in Libya.

At a speech in Trapani Italy delivered on September 1^st to members of the (Royal) Canadian Forces, Prime Minister Harper averred that “a handful of soldiers is better than a mouthful of arguments”. The following week in an interview he stated that “Islamicist” terrorism represents the foremost threat facing Canada.

So much for any kind of preference for nonviolent conflict resolution… not to mention according priority to the pressing need to address global issues such as climate change, diminishing biodiversity, nuclear proliferation, and environmental degradation. Unlike terrorism, any one of these threats could take down not just Canada, but large swathes of the world.

The Conservatives have emphasized Canada’s relations with the Americas – for the first four years at the expense of relations with China and India, which were ineptly managed. Free trade agreements have been pursued with a number of Latin American countries, while relations with African states have been marked by embassy closures and the concentration of aid expenditures on a more limited number of countries. A tilt towards the unconditional support for Israel has become the hallmark of Canadian policy on issues of Middle East politics and the regional peace process more broadly.

Under the Conservatives the foreign ministry (DFAIT) does not appear to enjoy the confidence, trust and respect which it once did. Once a leader in public diplomacy, the imposition of the – chillingly Orwellian – Message Event Proposal requirement means that the department’s staff cannot have an unscripted conversation outside the Pearson building and are now effectively gagged. There seems to be little appetite for the Department’s advice, and it is not being called upon to develop new international policy initiatives.

All of this may well have contributed to Canada’s shocking failure to win a seat on the UN Security Council.

Breaking with the past

The extent of the remaking of Canada’s role and place in the world becomes especially clear when the meagre international policy content of the last four years (under four foreign ministers) are compared, for instance, to the three and a half years of activist diplomacy in the late nineties under Lloyd Axworthy. During that period, with a lot of assistance from DFAIT, Canadian leadership helped to achieve a treaty to land mines, an International Criminal Court, and major initiatives on blood diamonds, children in conflict and humanitarian intervention (The Responsibility to Protect).

The contrast between the pursuit of the Human Security Agenda and the current level of inactivity is striking. Yet the post-9/11 departure from previous foreign policies has deeper roots.
Under PM Mulroney, Canada spearheaded the organization of the UN’s Rio Conference on Environment and Development, which produced the Framework Convention on Climate Change; the Statement of International Forestry Principles; the Biodiversity Convention, and; Agenda 21. Canada negotiated the FTA and NAFTA; it concluded treaties on acid rain and the protection of the ozone layer (Montreal Protocol), and; it worked within the Commonwealth to end apartheid in southern Africa.

These were significant diplomatic enterprises; the extent of the discontinuity with the present is unmistakable.

Grand strategy?

Moving forward, we are entering uncharted territory. As power and influence diffuse to other parts of the planet, the key challenge will be to manage the necessary accommodation more successfully in this century than was the case during the last, which was marked by two world wars and a Cold War.

Initial indications, however, are not encouraging.

There are few signs of any kind of grand strategy guiding Canada’s response to the re-emergence, after 400 years, of the Asia-Pacific region as the dynamic centre of the global political economy. Next year, in order to save $10 million, Canada will be alone among G-20 countries in its absence at  the Expo 2012 world’s fair in Yeosu, Korea. The theme of the Expo is “The Living Ocean and Coast” with sub themes of “Preservation and Sustainable Development of the Ocean and Coast,” “New Resources Technology,” and “Creative Marine Activities.”

Canada has the longest shoreline in the world, with frontage on three oceans…

Identity makeover

Over the course of the decade since 9/11, and more drastically over the past five years, Canada’s international image and reputation – our brand – have been fundamentally recast.  The once familiar helpful fixer, honest broker, generous aid donor and boy scout to the world has today become something quite different.

It would be in the interest of all Canadians – and perhaps even beyond – if the reconstruction of the Canadian brand were to be more widely acknowledged, debated and discussed.

One of the defining characteristics of globalization is its tendency to produce winners and losers by polarizing, economically, socially and politically, within and between nations.

Globalization’s benefits have been privatized, while its costs have been socialized.  The appearance of severe inequalities – in incomes, opportunities, and future prospects – after decades of generally narrowing gaps, has been one of the most worrisome consequences. With the triumph of neoliberalism,  social democracy on the run most everywhere, and not least in Canada. However much this may please special interests such as business groups and the wealthy, a smaller state almost inevitably translates into program and service reductions for the disadvantaged and those least able to defend their interests.

For the past several years I have spent  about a month a year teaching at the London Academy of Diplomacy. During those very pleasant interludes, it has struck me that London has become a world city primus inter pares, a cosmopolitan global crossroads and network node for business, finance, culture and education.

If you are lucky enough to find yourself in a position to benefit from it’s status as a world city,  London presents vast possibilities and is a wonderful place to live and work. There is really no place quite like it.

For those stuck on the bottom, however,  with little to lose and less to look forward to,  none of these features are enough to generate an interest in the status quo.  Amont disenfranchised and alienated, desperate measures hold considerable appeal.

On the surface the disturbances which rocked urban Britain may appear as thuggery and criminality. But those were not merchant bankers or international financiers in the streets. It was mainly the underclass, and at a more profound level, the violence may be interpreted as a response to growing distributive injustice and a failure of political vision. While the parallel is not exact, the rioters bore many similarities to those who torched schools and cars in the Paris suburbs in the fall of 2005.

Meanwhile, most of the culprits behind the financial crisis of 2008 which triggered the Great Recession got off without penalty, and the institutions in which they worked were bailed out at enormous public expense. Many are now back up to their same old tricks. It is not too difficult to understand that cutting social support for the poor while shovelling out public money to the rich  is a recipe for unrest.

With the combination of last week’s global market  market meltdown, the near complete political dysfunction in the USA which led to the sovereign debt rating downgrade, and the extreme vulnerability of the highly centralized systems upon which globalization depends,  we are entering uncharted territory.

Think Fukushima, or the occasional collapse, in recent years, of large sections of the North American power and communications infrastructures.

Resilience is receding as our reliance upon technology increases.

Think as well of the larger context. Climate change, the increasing frequency of  extreme weather incidents, rising food and water insecurity, the approach of “peak oil”, and diminishing biodiversity have in combination created conditions of acute volatility and insecurity.

On top of all this are the still uncertain implications of power shift to the Asia-Pacific, and the huge issue of whether or not the emergence of that that new order can be peacefully accommodated.

Taken together, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that  we may be sitting on a powderkeg, with the urban violence in the UK symptomatic perhaps only of the fuse igniting.

If that observation is even close to the mark, then things may actually get worse, and possibly very much so if the world reaches some still indeterminate tipping point.

Something has to give.

A radical course correction seems essential… if it is not already too late.