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Virtual Diplomacy Homepage >> Virtual Diplomacy Publications >> What if there is a Revolution in Diplomatic Affairs?

Released Online
25 February 1999

CONTENTS

Introduction

Information and the Emergence of the Noosphere

Growth of Three Information-Based Realms

Comparisons Lead to a Preference for the Noosphere Concept

The Emergence of Noopolitik-A New Paradigm for Diplomacy

Trends That Favor Noopolitik

Mutual Relationship between Realpolitik and Noopolitik

The Advance of Noopolitik

The Way Ahead

Endnotes

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WHAT IF THERE IS A REVOLUTION IN DIPLOMATIC AFFAIRS?

David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla*

Introduction

The next big revolution of the information age should occur in the realm of diplomacy. The United States has been undergoing a revolution in business affairs since the 1960s, and has also undertaken a revolution in military affairs (RMA) since the late 1980s. Now the time is ripe for a counterpart revolution in diplomatic affairs (RDA). A few voices have hinted at this for several years.1 But so far, they have been barely heard.

There are good reasons why the business and military worlds are in the throes of information-driven revolutions and the diplomatic world is not. A key reason is that those worlds are driven by internal and external competition, in the first case between corporations, in the second between military services. In addition, the business and military worlds are eager for technological enhancements that extend their global reach, even if that means radically altering their traditional ways of organizing and strategizing. Also, the U.S. military suffered a major defeat in Vietnam that opened it up to innovative rethinking, culminating in the AirLand Battle doctrine employed so successfully during the Gulf War.

None of this has been the case in the diplomatic world. The U.S. State Department, for example, has not been subjected to much organizational competition. It has shown little interest in technology, and lags in adopting it. Moreover, it has not suffered a defeat like Vietnam that would prompt a search for radical innovation. In short, it has had few impulses to cease being an elite preserve for classic diplomacy.

However, the diplomatic world is now beginning to feel the heat of competition, especially from agile nonstate actors that are being strengthened by the information revolution. These range from those with which foreign services want to cooperate, such as transnational nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) involved in disaster relief and humanitarian efforts, to those that spell conflict, such as transnational terrorist and criminal organizations. Moreover, although the U.S. military and diplomatic communities have yet to master real-time, close-in cooperation, the State Department recognizes a growing need for such cooperation (as in the cases of the Dayton Accords, and the effort to endure time under way in Kosovo). Dealing with information-age modes of conflict--notably, what we call "netwar"2 --will require much greater interagency, politico-military coordination than ever before.

Another significant change for the diplomatic world is that technologists are on the verge of producing new tools that are as relevant for the diplomatic world as they have been for the business and military worlds. Today, few diplomats even have computers with Internet connectivity or cellular telephones--devices that are common in the business and military worlds. The spread of these basic technologies is in the offing, but they alone may not amount to much of a change for diplomats. Just as significant may be new tools for information visualization--such as new geographic information systems (GISs)--that varied governmental and nongovernmental actors could consult at the same time. Also, before long, satellite and other surveillance systems producing high-resolution pictures will be widely available, and videocameras will easily upload to the Internet.

While the heat of competition, the quest for coordination, and the allure of new technology have so far motivated only a few diplomats to want an RDA, most are at least aware that the information revolution is roiling their world, with the same ambivalent, paradoxical effects that the business and military worlds recognized long ago. For example, there are tensions between the twin trends of, on the one hand, an increasing centralization of control over diplomacy (within governments), and on the other hand, an increasing decentralization of control (due to the emergence of many new nonstate actors). Moreover, like leaders in the business and military worlds, diplomats remark increasingly, even plaintively, that advanced communications and other aspects of the information revolution are altering the nature of diplomatic time and space--they are quickening the tempo of diplomacy and forcing open its once largely closed processes.3 Ambassadors find that ever more actors involve themselves in a variety of issues--often in a public fashion--making it difficult for the ambassadors to speak with authority. They have to engage more numerous, and more diverse, actors early on. Their once orderly world is thus being altered by the deep dynamic to which we (and others) repeatedly call attention: the dual shift in power (a) from large, hidebound actors to smaller, more agile ones, like NGOs; and (b) to actors, large or small, that can move from stand-alone to networked forms of organization and behavior.4

Against this background, our paper assumes that an RDA will get under way in the United States within the next few years. Much analysis remains to be done as to why and how this may--and should--be the case, and to identify good ideas for implementation. Our intent here cannot be so broad; we focus instead on making two future-oriented points that we believe will matter if there is to be an RDA:

  • Diplomats will have to rethink what is "information," and see that a new realm is emerging--the noosphere, a global "realm of the mind"--that may have a profound effect on statecraft.
  • The information age will continue to undermine the conditions for classic diplomacy based on realpolitik and "hard power," and will instead favor the emergence of a new diplomacy based on what we call noopolitik (nü-oh-poh-li-teek) and its preference for "soft power."

Information and the Emergence of the Noosphere

Information has always been important to statecraft. But it is moving from being a subsidiary to becoming an overarching concern; "information" matters more than ever for reasons that did not exist even twenty years ago.

One reason is technological innovation: the growth of a vast new information infrastructure--including not only the Internet, but also cable, cellular, and satellite systems, etc.--in which the balance is shifting from one-to-many broadcast media (e.g., traditional radio and television) to many-to-many interactive media. A huge increase in global interconnectivity is resulting from the ease of entry and access in many nations, and from the growing interests of so many actors in using the new infrastructure for all manner of interactions.

Thus, a second reason is the proliferation of new organizations: Vast new arrays of state and nonstate organizations are emerging that directly concern information and communications issues. The new organizational ecology is richest in the United States, with NGOs like the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) exemplifying the trend. These groups span the political spectrum and have objectives that range from helping people get connected to the Net to influencing government policies and laws and advancing particular causes at home or abroad. This trend is spreading around the world, and it is not only the proliferation of individual NGOs but also their interconnection in transnational networks that is raising their influence. As the strength of networked nonstate actors grows, the nature of world politics promises to become less state-centric.

A third reason is ideational: a spreading recognition that "information" and "power" are increasingly intertwined. Across all political, economic, and military areas, informational "soft power" (Nye, 1990; Nye and Owens, 1996) is becoming more important, compared to traditional, material "hard power." This trend may take decades to unfold; and, in the interim, traditional methods of exercising power may remain at the core of international politics. Yet, the rise of soft power provides another reason for attending to the rise of information strategy--power, security, strategy, and diplomacy are increasingly up for redefinition in the information age.

Growth of Three Information-Based Realms

As information and communication have come to matter more, so have the realms or domains defined by them. Three that matter most are: cyberspace, the infosphere, and the noosphere. All are about information, and reflect the kinds of technological, organizational, and ideational developments noted above. But each has a different emphasis--and thus significance. They are discussed below in a progression, from the most technological (cyberspace), to the most ideational (the noosphere). Our point is that diplomats should be thinking in terms of the noosphere as much as the other two.

Cyberspace. This, the most common of the terms, refers to the global system of internetted computers, communications infrastructures, on-line conferencing entities, databases, and information utilities generally known as "the Net." This mostly means the Internet; but the term cyberspace may also be used to refer to the electronic environments and critical infrastructures of a corporation, military, government, or other organization. "Strategic information warfare" is largely about assuring "cyberspace security and safety" at home, and developing a capacity to exploit vulnerabilities in systems abroad.

Cyberspace is the fastest growing, newest domain of power and property in the world. The Internet now embraces some 20 million computer hosts, nearly 100 million users (expected to exceed a billion by the year 2000), and billions if not trillions of dollars worth of activities. Further developing this realm, nationally and globally, is one of the great undertakings of our time.

The term has a more technological connotation than infosphere or noosphere. Yet, there has always been a tendency to treat cyberspace as more than technology, from the moment the term was proposed by cyberpunk writer William Gibson (1984), through recent notions of cyberspace as a realm for building "virtual communities" (Rheingold, 1993), creating a "global matrix of minds" (Quarterman, 1990, 1993), and strengthening people's spiritual bonds around the world (Cobb, 1998). Such views implicitly portend an overlap of cyberspace with the noosphere.

Infosphere. Knowing the limitations of the cyberspace concept, some analysts prefer the term infosphere. Sometimes the two terms are used interchangeably, but when viewed distinctly, the infosphere is far larger than cyberspace--it encompasses the latter, plus information systems that may not be part of the Net. In the civilian world, this often includes broadcast, print, and other media (the mediasphere), as well as institutions such as libraries, parts of which are not yet electronic. In the military world, the infosphere may include command, control, computer, communications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems--the electronic systems said to comprise the "military information environment" of a battlespace.

According to Jeffrey Cooper (1997), the infosphere is emerging, like cyberspace, as a "truly global information infrastructure and environment" in which traditional notions of space and time no longer prevail. The term has merit because it focuses on "information environments," rather than computerized infrastructures. The term is also favored because it "carries resonances of biosphere"--meaning the infosphere is "a distinct domain built on information, but one intimately related to the rest of a set of nested globes in which we exist simultaneously." This implicitly entertains a view of the world that partakes of the next concept.

Noosphere. The most abstract--and so far, least favored--of the terms is the noosphere. This term, from the Greek word noos for "the mind," was coined by French theologian and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in 1925, and spread in posthumous publications in the 1950s and 1960s. In his view, the world first evolved a geosphere, and next a biosphere. Now that people are communing on global scales, the world is giving rise to a noosphere-which he variously describes (1964, 1965) as a globe-circling realm of "the mind," a "thinking circuit," a "stupendous thinking machine," a "thinking envelope" full of fibers and networks, and a planetary "consciousness." In the words of Julian Huxley (in Teilhard, 1965, p. 18), the noosphere is a "web of living thought."5

According to Teilhard, forces of the mind have been creating the noosphere for ages. Before long, a synthesis of its pieces will occur in which peoples from different nations, races, and cultures develop minds that are planetary in scope, without losing their personal identities. Fully realized, the noosphere will raise mankind to a high, new evolutionary plane, one driven by a collective devotion to moral and juridical principles. However, the transition may not be smooth; a global tremor and possibly an apocalypse may characterize the final fusion of the noosphere (1964).

Although this concept is less technological than the other two, Teilhard identified increased communications as a factor that would foster a universal consciousness. As John Perry Barlow, a frequent writer for Wired and a cofounder of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, observes (in Cobb, 1998),

What Teilhard was saying can be summed up in a few words. The point of all evolution to this stage is to create a collective organism of mind. With cyberspace, we are essentially hardwiring the noosphere (p. 85).

The noosphere concept thus encompasses cyberspace and the infosphere. It also relates to an organizational theme that has constantly figured in our own work about the information revolution: the rise of network forms of organization that strengthen civil-society actors. Few state or market actors, by themselves, seem likely to have much interest in fostering the construction of a global noosphere, except in limited areas having to do with international law or political and economic ideology. The impetus for creating a global noosphere is more likely to emanate from activist NGOs, other civil-society actors (e.g., churches, schools), and individuals dedicated to freedom of information and communications and to the spread of ethical values and norms.6 We believe it is time for state actors to begin moving in this direction, too, particularly since power in the information age will stem, more than ever before, from the ability of state and market actors to work conjointly with civil-society actors.

Comparisons Lead to a Preference for the Noosphere Concept

As the three realms grow, cyberspace will remain the smallest, nested inside the other two. The infosphere is the next largest, and the noosphere encompasses all three (see figure 1). As one realm grows, so should the others.

 

Three realms of information graphic

Figure 1. Three Realms of Information

None of the concepts should be dismissed--all are useful. But their biases should be recognized. Each has an inherent, metaphorical image that may affect how a person thinks about information.7 Of the three, the image for cyberspace is the most technological, the noosphere the most idealized. When a person thinks "cyberspace," what comes to mind is usually a computer screen logged onto the Internet--whether the content on the screen is civilized or uncivilized is beside the point. When a person thinks "infosphere," the image is likely a television showing a CNN broadcast conveyed by a satellite. When a person thinks of the "noosphere," the image may not be of a technology, but probably of an idea floating in a cultural ether--and the content is likely civilized.

The realms all have technological, organizational, and ideational levels--and these are somewhat different for each. While discussions about the expansion of cyberspace tend to be technological, discussions about the infosphere often emphasize commercial considerations. In contrast, discussions about the future of the noosphere, although they remain few and far between, are bound to be philosophical. Table 1 lays out some of the ideational, organizational, and technological aspects of each of the realms. The box that often gets the most attention is at bottom-left; the box that may need the most attention in the future is at upper right.

 

Cyberspace

 

Infosphere

 

Noosphere
Ideational tenets Interconnectivity and democracy Prosperity and interdependence Primacy of information sharing
Organizational exemplars Internet Society, EFF, CPSR CNN, BBC, Radio B-92 (Yugoslavia) Activist NGOs, USAID, UN
Technological conduits Internet, WWW, NII, GII Radio, TV, cable, FLAG project8 Educational institutions, (GIS)
Table 1.
Information Realms across Three Levels

In being the most ideational realm, the noosphere has a comparative strength. Cyberspace, the infosphere, and the noosphere are all based on "information" in all its guises, from lowly bits of data to the highest forms of knowledge and wisdom. Thus these realms all amount to information-processing systems. Yet, in being more about ideas than technologies, the noosphere, more than the other realms, also concerns what we call "information structuring" or "structural information" (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1997 and 1998a). The noosphere, like the mind, is an information-processing and an information-structuring system--and this is an important distinction. The processing view focuses on the transmission of messages as the inputs and outputs of a system. In contrast, the structural view illuminates the goals, values, and practices9 that an organization or system may embody--what matters to its members from the standpoint of identity, meaning, and purpose, apart from whether any information is really being processed at the time. While the processing view tends to illuminate technology as a critical factor, the structural view is more likely to uphold human and ideational capital.

We believe that strategists should begin attending as much to the dynamics of information structuring as to information processing. Grand strategists rarely ignore the role of values and practices. But this role tends to be downplayed in rhetoric about the information revolution. New concepts can provide a corrective. Adoption of the noosphere concept could help strategists focus on the significance of information structuring, including with regard to the illumination of value-laden conflicts.

Against this background, should any of the concepts--cyberspace, the infosphere, or the noosphere--be preferred by information strategists? To date, such strategists, including those in the diplomatic world, have worked mostly in terms of the first two.10 Our recommendation is that they turn to work equally, if not mainly, in terms of the third. The noosphere concept has appealing features: Little is lost analytically and much may be gained by focusing equally on the noosphere as on the other two realms. It is the broadest of the three--and broader tends to mean better for strategic thinking and planning. The noosphere presents information in terms of an expanding realm where the emphasis is on the ideational and organizational dimensions, without ignoring the technological one. It inclines the analyst and the strategist to think in terms of the roles of ideas, values, and norms, rather than in terms of Internet hosts, Web sites, and baud rates--that is, in terms of structural information rather than in terms of information processing. More to our point, preferring the noosphere concept sets the stage for our second major point: The time is ripening to develop a new approach to diplomacy and strategy, one we call noopolitik.

 

The Emergence of Noopolitik-A New Paradigm for Diplomacy

The end of the Cold War has brought two major shifts that appeal to grand strategists. The first concerns political and military dynamics. The bipolar system has expired, and the world is returning to a loose, multipolar, balance-of-power system, with possibilities for U.S. dominance in key military areas. Since this shift is largely about interstate relations, it arouses the theorists and practitioners of realpolitik. The second shift is economic: the enormous growth of market systems woven together in global trade and investment webs. This shift began long before the Cold War ended and is now ascendant. Its dynamics appeal especially to the liberal-internationalist or global-interdependence schools of strategy, whose proponents argue, contrary to realists and neorealists, that statist dynamics matter less than in the past, and that the prospects for peace depend on multilateral cooperation through international regimes that transcend the state.

In the United States, these shifts spell not only a changing world, but also a continuing interplay between our two main schools of diplomacy and grand strategy: realpolitik and liberal internationalism.11 Meanwhile, a third, emerging shift is often noted: the intensification of the information revolution, with its implications that knowledge is power, that power is diffusing to nonstate actors, and that global interconnectivity is generating a new fabric for world order. Many theorists and strategists do not seem to know quite what to do with this shift. Some view it as spelling a paradigm change, but most still try to make it fit into either of the paramount paradigms about realpolitik and internationalism.

Our view--and our second major point for this paper--is that the structures and dynamics of world order are changing so deeply that neither realpolitik nor liberal internationalism suits the new realities of the information age well enough. A new paradigm is needed; indeed, it is already emerging, especially in nongovernmental circles consisting of civil-society actors. Our term for it, noopolitik,12 extends from our earlier finding that a noosphere is taking shape--the development of cyberspace, the infosphere, and the noosphere make noopolitik possible.

By noopolitik we mean an approach to statecraft, to be undertaken as much by nonstate as by state actors, that emphasizes the role of informational soft power in expressing ideas, values, norms, and ethics through all manner of media. This makes it distinct from realpolitik, which stresses the hard, material dimensions of power and treats states as the determinants of world order. Noopolitik makes sense because knowledge is fast becoming an ever stronger source of power and strategy, in ways that classic realpolitik and internationalism cannot absorb.

In the coming years, diplomats and strategists will be drawn to both realpolitik and noopolitik. As noopolitik takes shape and gains adherents, it will serve sometimes as a supplement and complement to realpolitik, and sometimes as a contrasting, rival paradigm for policy and strategy. As time passes and the global noosphere swells, noopolitik may provide a more relevant paradigm than realpolitik. Noopolitik has much in common with liberal internationalism, but we anticipate that the latter is a transitional paradigm that can and will be folded into noopolitik.

Looming Limitations of Realpolitik. Realpolitik is foreign policy behavior based on state-centered calculations of raw, material power and the national interest, guided by a conviction that might makes right (see Kissinger, 1994). Classic realpolitik--as put into practice by Cardinal Richelieu, Prince Metternich, and Otto von Bismarck--depends on raison d'etat, whereby "reasons of state" (including maximizing the state's freedom of action) take precedence over individual rights. It advances state interests by aiming to create and preserve a balance of power that keeps any state from becoming hegemonic or otherwise too powerful, in the expectation that balancing behavior by all parties can produce a self-regulating equilibrium. In a multipolar environment, realpolitik regards balancing acts as the essence of strategy, the way to keep order and avoid chaos (see Waltz, 1979). And it requires that alliances and other balancing acts be based strictly on power calculations, with little regard for whether an ally has similar or different beliefs. In this light, realpolitik tends to be amoral. But it can work best at constraining adversarial behavior if the players do share some common values, as some leading theorists have admitted (see Kissinger, 1994; Morgenthau, 1948, esp. pp. 160-66). Finally, since realpolitik is state-centric, it admits only a grudging, selective recognition of nonstate actors.

Realpolitik retains a strong hold on statecraft today, but there are many signs that realpolitik is reaching its limits as a reflection of underlying realities. It works best where states fully rule the international system--but nonstate actors from the worlds of commerce and civil society are gaining strength and reshaping the global environment. It works best where states can maneuver freely and independently--but complex transnational interconnections increasingly constrain this freedom. It works best where national interests dominate decision making--but a host of "global issues" is arising that transcends national interests. It works best where states respond mainly to coercive calculations involving hard power--but state and nonstate actors are increasingly operating in terms of soft power. It works best where ethics matter little--but ethics are increasingly coming to the fore as global civil-society actors gain a voice through all types of media. It works best where there is no such thing as a global noosphere to take into account--but one is emerging. Furthermore, realpolitik works best where diplomacy can be conducted mainly in the dark, away from public scrutiny, under strong state control, and without necessarily having to share information with many actors--but the information revolution is making all that increasingly difficult and favors actors who can operate in the light and gain advantage from information sharing. Indeed, the information revolution underlies most of the transformations noted above--it is this revolution, above all else, that is delimiting the appropriateness of realpolitik.

Realpolitik can be modified and adapted to the information revolution, so that it remains an active paradigm.13 As the international political system returns to a loose multipolarity, state-centric balance-of-power games will surely remain crucial at times and in places (e.g., in the Middle East and Asia). But seeking favorable balances of power in a multipolar system is only one process that U.S. diplomacy and strategy should take into account. Global interconnection, combined with the prospect that the United States is becoming a global power, as distinct from a national one, suggests that no ordinary balance-of-power game-of-nations lies ahead. American diplomats and strategists will need more than realpolitik in their tool kits.

Liberal Internationalism--A Transitional Paradigm . Liberal internationalism (or global interdependence)--the principal paradigm that has aspired to moderate if not supersede realpolitik--also does not provide an adequate basis for American diplomacy and strategy. A more recent paradigm, since it requires high levels of economic transactions that did not exist when realpolitik first emerged in the 16th century, internationalism has roots in 19th century liberal views that held that increases in trade openness would foster harmonious, prosperous interdependence among nations, and thereby ultimately make war unthinkable. Also, this paradigm--under the rubric of "Wilsonian internationalism" (named for U.S. President Woodrow Wilson)--aspired to replace raw power calculations with an understanding that the spread of democratic values, and their enshrinement in international institutions, could prevent conflict, in part by encouraging ever greater economic interdependence and openness.

The seminal writings about "complex global interdependence" (especially Keohane and Nye, 1972 and 1977) fleshed out this paradigm, showing that the state-centric balance-of-power paradigm neglects the growing influence of transnational ties. Indeed, the trends heralded two decades ago by the prognosticators of interdependence are still unfolding: the global diffusion of power, the erosion of national sovereignty and international hierarchy, the growth of transnational economics and communications, the internationalization of domestic policy, the blurring and the fusion of domestic and foreign policy, the rise of multilateral diplomacy, and the need to broaden security concepts beyond their military dimensions (Nye, 1976). In general, the interdependence paradigm furthers the Wilsonian quest to create state-based global regimes to regulate and resolve specific issues.

Meanwhile, the notion that interdependence will tamp down conflict and ensure peace has not fared well--even though the record is mixed, the world remains very turbulent. This has left the door open for critics to reiterate the realpolitik mantra: Statecraft based on realpolitik may not be any better at preventing conflict, but at least power balancing can restore an equilibrium once it has been disturbed. Indeed, the interdependence paradigm has been subjected to heavy criticism by realists and neorealists who argue that, on essential matters, states continue to rule the international system, and that international regimes merely reflect this (Mearsheimer, 1994-1995; Waltz, 1979).

Nonetheless, the interdependence paradigm has kept pace with the new realities of the information age better than realpolitik has. But it too has some notable weaknesses and shortcomings. Although it correctly emphasizes the spread of transnational ties, it does so mainly in economic terms, despite some nods to increased information and communication flows. And although it recognizes the growth in influence of actors besides states, including NGOs, it mainly spotlights multinational corporations and international organizations composed of state representatives, while barely keeping up with the growth in influence of global civil-society NGOs. Last, although it heralds the rise of network forms of organization, it takes more of a top-down than a bottom-up approach to them.

On the positive side, a leading American proponent of the interdependence paradigm has responded to the information revolution with a major contribution: the concept of soft power (Nye, 1990; Nye and Owens, 1996). This concept contravenes realpolitik's emphasis on raw, material power. It also contravenes realpolitik's inherently guarded orientation toward the information revolution by favoring postures of openness and sharing with allies and other actors. Moreover, even where guardedness is needed, soft power allows for less pronounced statist options than does realpolitik--for example, in relation to freedom of encryption.

Liberal internationalism is so close in spirit and substance to noopolitik that it may gradually be absorbed by it. A line runs from Wilsonian internationalism, through interdependence theory, to noopolitik, although it is more a broken than a straight line.

Trends That Favor Noopolitik

An old metaphor about realpolitik views world politics in Newtonian terms as though states, as the only important game pieces, were the only billiard balls moving around on a pool table. What would be more accurate now is a post-Newtonian metaphor, or at least a changed understanding of this old one. The new metaphor should not only add balls for nonstate actors, but also show that what happens on the table depends on the dynamics of the table fabric as well as the interactions among the balls. And, metaphorically speaking, that fabric is changing in ways that make it--the fabric itself--a new and important factor.

Noopolitik makes sense because trends exist that make it increasingly viable. We identify five: the growing web of global interconnection, the continued strengthening of global civil-society actors, the rise of soft power, the importance of "cooperative advantages," and the formation of the global noosphere. These trends do not spell the obsolescence of realpolitik, but they are at odds with it. To a lesser degree, they are also at odds with the tenets of liberal internationalism. We discuss them at length elsewhere (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1999) and will offer only passing commentary here.

Global Interconnection. The era of global interdependence began in the 1960s, and many trends its theorists emphasize continue to come true. However, the term "interdependence" retains a primarily economic connotation; it is overly associated with recommendations for the creation of state-based international regimes; and it connotes the rather traditional, even negative, dynamics of "dependence," as in the contrast between interdependence and independence. The coming age may be defined better by the term "interconnection." America and Americans are moving out of the age of global interdependence into one of global interconnection.

Interdependence was spurred by the rise of transnational and multinational actors, especially multinational corporations and multilateral organizations. Now, a new generation of actors--such as news media, electronic communications services, and human rights organizations--are increasingly "going global," some to the point of claiming that they are "stateless" and denying that they are "national" or "multinational" in character. They are redefining themselves as global actors with global agendas, and pursuing global expansion through ties with like-minded counterparts.

This is resulting in myriad, seamless networks of economic, social, and other relationships, and a multitude of state and nonstate actors are acquiring interests in the growth of these networks separate from their national and local interests. This growth requires continued interconnection. For some global actors, building and protecting the new networks are becoming more important than building and protecting national power balances--as the networks themselves become sources of power for their members. Some global actors are even looking at the world more in terms of widespread networks than in terms of distinct groups and nations located in specific places.

In sum, interconnecting the world may be the most forward-looking "game" in the decades ahead, as important or more important than the balance-of-power game. Barring a reversion to anarchy or other steps backward--such as endemic ethnonationalism, or neofascism--interconnection is likely to deepen and become a defining characteristic of the twenty-first century. The information revolution is what makes this possible--it provides the capability and the opportunity to circuit the globe in ways and to degrees that have never been seen before. This is likely to be a messy, complicated process, rife with ambivalent, contradictory, and paradoxical effects. An ambitious actor may have to enter into, and manage, many crosscutting connections and partnerships--and many of these may involve transnational civil-society actors.

Growing Strength of Global Civil Society. No doubt, states will remain paramount actors in the international system. The information revolution will lead to changes in the nature of the state, but not to its "withering away." What will happen is a transformation.14 At the same time, nonstate actors will continue to grow in strength and influence. This has been the trend for several decades with business corporations and international regulatory regimes. The next trend to expect is a gradual worldwide strengthening of transnational NGOs that represent civil society. As this occurs, there will be a rebalancing of relations among state, market, and civil-society actors around the world--in ways that favor noopolitik over realpolitik.15

Noopolitik upholds the importance of nonstate actors, especially from civil society, and requires that they play strong roles. Why? NGOs (not to mention individuals) often serve as sources of ethical impulses (which is rarely the case with market actors), as agents for disseminating ideas rapidly, and as nodes in networked apparatuses of "sensory organizations" that can assist with conflict anticipation, prevention, and resolution. Indeed, because of the information revolution, advanced societies are on the threshold of developing a vast sensory apparatus for watching what is happening around the world. This apparatus is not new, because it consists partly of established government intelligence agencies, corporate market-research departments, news media, and opinion-polling firms. What is new is the looming scope and scale of this sensory apparatus, as it increasingly includes networks of NGOs and individual activists who monitor and report on what they see in all sorts of issue areas, using open forums, specialized Internet mailing lists, Web postings, and fax machine ladders as tools for rapid dissemination.16 For example, using these tools to provide early warning about crisis is a burgeoning area of attention and development among disaster-relief and humanitarian organizations.

Against this background, the states that emerge strongest in information-age terms--even if by traditional measures they may appear to be smaller, less powerful states--are likely to be the states that learn to work conjointly with the new generation of nonstate actors. Strength may thus emanate less from the "state" per se than from the "system" as a whole. And this may mean placing a premium on state-society coordination, including the toleration of "citizen diplomacy" and the creation of "deep coalitions" between state and civil-society actors (latter term from Toffler and Toffler, 1997). In that sense, it might be said that the information revolution is impelling a shift from a state-centric to a network-centric world (which would parallel a potential shift in the military world from traditional "platform-centric" to emerging "network-centric" approaches to warfare).17

This is quite acceptable to noopolitik. While realpolitik remains steadfastly imbued with notions of control, noopolitik is less about control than "decontrol"--perhaps deliberate, regulated decontrol--so that state actors can better adapt to the emergence of independent nonstate actors and learn to work with them through new mechanisms for communication and coordination. Realpolitik would lean toward an essentially mercantilist approach to information as it once did toward commerce; noopolitik is not mercantilist by nature.

Rise of Soft Power. The information revolution, as noted earlier, is altering the nature of power, in large part by making soft power more potent. In the words of Nye, writing with Admiral William Owens (1996, referring to Nye, 1990),18

"Soft power" is the ability to achieve desired outcomes in international affairs through attraction rather than coercion. It works by convincing others to follow, or getting them to agree to, norms and institutions that produce the desired behavior. Soft power can rest on the appeal of one's ideas or the ability to set the agenda in ways that shape the preferences of others (p. 21).

This does not mean that hard power and realpolitik are obsolete, or even in abeyance. According to Josef Joffe (1997),

Let's make no mistake about it. Hard power--men and missiles, guns and ships--still counts. It is the ultimate, because existential, currency of power. But on the day-to-day level, "soft power" . . . is the more interesting coin... .Today there is a much bigger payoff in getting others to want what you want, and that has to do with the attraction of one's ideas, with agenda-setting, with ideology and institutions, and with holding out big prizes for cooperation, such as the vastness and sophistication of one's market (p. 24).

The rise of soft power makes noopolitik feasible. Whereas realpolitik often aims at coercion through the exercise of hard power (whose essence is military), noopolitik aims to attract, persuade, and enjoin with soft power (whose essence is nonmilitary). In keeping with the point that the root word noos refers to the mind, noopolitik means having a systematic ability to conduct foreign interactions in knowledge-related terms. It requires the development of the new field of information strategy to work--indeed, at its indivisible core, noopolitik is information strategy.

The relationship between information strategy and the traditional political, military, and economic dimensions of grand strategy can evolve in basically two directions. One is for information strategy to develop as an adjunct or component under each of the traditional dimensions. This process is already under way--as seen, for example, in metaphors about information being a military "force multiplier" and a commercial "commodity" that benefits the United States. The second path--still far from charted--is to develop information strategy as a distinct, new dimension of a grand strategy for projecting American power and presence. To accomplish this, information strategists may be well advised to look beyond existing notions of soft power and consider Susan Strange's (1988) related notion of "knowledge structures" as a foundation of power:

More than other structures, the power derived from the knowledge structure comes less from coercive power and more from consent, authority being conferred voluntarily on the basis of shared belief systems and the acknowledgment of the importance to the individual and to society of the particular form taken by the knowledge--and therefore of the importance of the person having the knowledge and access or control over the means by which it is stored and communicated (p 118).

Proponents of realpolitik would probably prefer to stick with treating information as an adjunct of the standard political, military, and economic elements of diplomacy and grand strategy; the very idea of intangible information as a basis for a distinct dimension of statecraft seems antithetical to realpolitik. Realpolitik allows for information strategy as a tool of propaganda, deception, and manipulation, but seems averse to accepting "knowledge projection" as amounting to a true tool of statecraft. However, for noopolitik to take hold, information will have to become a distinct dimension of grand strategy. The rise of soft power is essential for the emergence of the second path, and thus of noopolitik.

Importance of Cooperative Advantages. States and other actors seek to develop "comparative advantages" vis à vis each other. This has mostly meant competitive advantages, especially when it comes to great-power rivalries conducted in terms of realpolitik. But in the information age cooperative advantages will become ever more important. Indeed, societies that improve their abilities to cooperate with friends and allies may also gain competitive advantages against rivals.

Some U.S. strategists have begun to see the value of "cooperative competition" in regard to global economic, political, and military relations:

From this network perspective, national strategy will depend less on confrontation with opponents and more on the art of cooperation with competitors... .The new strategy of cooperative competition would be defined more in terms of networks of information flows among equals that provide for enhanced cooperation on technological developments and potential responses to international crises in a framework of shifting ad hoc coalitions and intense economic competition... .The strategy of the United States, then, would be to play the role of strategic broker, forming, sustaining, and adjusting international networks to meet a sophisticated array of challenges (Golden, 1993, pp. 103, 107, 108).

Thinking along these lines could advance via soft power and noopolitik. In the military area, for example, where advanced information systems give the United States an edge for building international coalitions, "selectively sharing these abilities is therefore not only the route of coalition leadership but the key to maintaining U.S. military superiority" (Nye and Owens, 1996, p. 28). Martin Libicki's (1998 and forthcoming) idea for creating an "open grid" for militarily illuminating the world--a global command, control, communications, computing, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) system, installed and sustained by the U.S. military, whose information would be available to any country's military so long as it accepts illumination of its own military deployments and other activities--is very much in line with noopolitik. Similar notions are being fielded about global cooperation to address economic, social, judicial, and other issues (e.g., Gompert, 1998; Joffe, 1997; Mathews, 1997; Slaughter, 1997).

The United States, with its diversity of official, corporate, and civil-society actors, is more disposed and better positioned than other nations to build broad-based, networked patterns of cooperation across all realms of society, and across all societies. This surely means moving beyond realpolitik, which, unlike noopolitik, would avoid information sharing, define issues and options in national rather than global terms, prefer containment to engagement, and focus on threats and defenses rather than on mutual assurances.

Formation of a Global Noosphere. As was discussed earlier, the point should be reiterated that the formation of a noosphere is crucial for noopolitik. Without the emergence--and deliberate construction--of a massive, well-recognized noosphere, there will be little hope of sustaining the notion that the world is moving to a new system in which "power" is understood mainly in terms of knowledge, and that diplomats and other actors should focus on the "balance of knowledge," as distinct from the "balance of power."

Figuring out the noosphere will require years of prodigious analysis. The structures and processes that are shaping its emergence will surely be no simpler than has been the case with the geosphere, biosphere, and Noosphere. Once fully developed, the noosphere will surely be an enormous, complex realm of activity that, like the other spheres, has its own dynamics. Even so, aspects of its nature may be molded, at least in part, by determined actors operating inside it, and by what happens outside it, especially in the Noosphere. Thus, as the noosphere emerges on its own, in ways not easy to analyze, it may also, to some extent, be responsive to deliberate efforts at design and construction.

What would a full-fledged noosphere encompass? What ideas, values, and norms--what principles, practices, and rules--should it embody? We presume that these would include much that America stands for: openness, freedom, democracy, the rule of law, humane behavior, respect for human rights, a preference for peaceful conflict resolution. The growth of the noosphere will depend not only on increased flows of ideas and ideals, but also on growth in the stocks of ideas and ideals to which people subscribe. In addition, a noosphere may require complex organizational and technological bases to support its ideational essence.

The following conundrum should be thought through. States can assist with the construction of a noosphere, for example, through policies that assure openness, information sharing, and the rule of law. Yet the noosphere cannot be an artifact of states, much less the instrument of any single state. Indeed, a true noosphere, given its global nature, may serve to restrict some state actions. Here, once again, is a difference between what is favorable to noopolitik versus realpolitik.

Mutual Relationship between Realpolitik and Noopolitik

Realpolitik, no matter how modified, cannot be transformed into noopolitik. The two stand in contradiction. This is largely because of the uncompromisingly state-centric nature of realpolitik. It is also because, for an actor to shift the emphasis of its statecraft from realpolitik to noopolitik, there must be a shift from power-maximizing politics to power-sharing politics. Nonetheless, the contradiction is not absolute; it can, in theory and practice, be made a compatible contradiction (rather like yin and yang). Indeed, true realpolitik depends on the players sharing and responding to some core behavioral values; a bit of noopolitik may thus lie at the heart of realpolitik (see Morgenthau, 1948, pp. 224-231). Likewise, true noopolitik may work best if it accords with power politics--however, this perspective should be less about might makes right, than about right makes might.19 Understanding this may help in persevering through the transitional period in which realpolitik and noopolitik are likely to coexist.

The relationship between realpolitik and noopolitik may be dynamic in another sense. Patterns of development remain uneven around the world; parts of it are already quite steeped in the dynamics of the information age, while other parts still seem more medieval than modern. Thus, noopolitik will be more pertinent in some parts of the world than in others, and pertain to some issues more than others. We surmise that it will be most pertinent where advanced societies predominate (e.g., in Western Europe and North America). It will be less so where conditions remain traditionally state-centric, and thus ripe for the continuation of realpolitik (e.g., much of Asia). Moreover, noopolitik will be most effective where all manner of media are prevalent, where civil-society NGOs have an edge in generating attention to issues, where government-NGO relations are quite good, and where issues are intricate rather than strictly economic, political, or military.

One way to balance the models of realpolitik and interdependence has been to theorize that world politics is bifurcating into two worlds that coexist, overlap, and interact. In this view, as explicated by James Rosenau (1988, 1990), a "multicentric world" of "sovereignty-free" actors concerned with "autonomy" is growing in parallel to the old "state-centric world" of "sovereignty-bound" actors concerned about "security." The latter world corresponds to the traditional nation-state system, the former to the nonstate actors whose numbers, diversity, and influence are increasing--including global corporations, international regimes, and civil-society advocacy groups. This bifurcation may persist for quite some time.

The point we draw for noopolitik, however, is that this kind of world requires governments to learn to work conjointly with civil-society NGOs engaged in building transnational networks and coalitions. Even a geopolitical strategist as traditional as Zbigniew Brzezinski realizes this. At the end of his latest book (1997), after treating the world as a "chessboard" to be mastered through statist realpolitik, he turns to postulate that efforts to build a new transnational structure for assuring peace would have the

... advantage of benefiting from the new web of global linkages that is growing exponentially outside the more traditional nation-state system. That web--woven by multinational corporations, NGOs (non-governmental organizations, with many of them transnational in character) and scientific communities and reinforced by the Internet--already creates an informal global system that is inherently congenial to more institutionalized and inclusive global cooperation... . (p. 215).

In his view, the United States should work for the creation of such linkages because we are the only ones who can pull this off. Even if U.S. primacy were ultimately to wither away--which is likely in his view--this web of linkages would remain "a fitting legacy of America's role as the first, only, and last truly global superpower."

For cases in which it is not easy to bring realpolitik and noopolitik in line on ethical grounds, and in which there are contradictions and trade-offs that may result in accusations of hypocrisy, the relationship between the two may break down. U.S. policy toward Iraq offers an example. In the 1980s, when Iraq seemed to be losing the Iran-Iraq war, the U.S. government supplied intelligence to Iraq, ignoring Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops, as well as against its own Kurdish minority. This was a realpolitik posture. Realpolitik allows for taking the position that a leader may be a heathen but he is "our" heathen--a position that would be inconsistent with noopolitik. Today, U.S. policy opposes Iraq's development of chemical weapons on grounds that mix aspects of realpolitik and noopolitik. In other parts of the world--for instance, Algeria, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia--there also appear to be trade-offs between supporting democracy (an important goal for noopolitik) and supporting an authoritarian or theocratic regime because it rules a country with strategic value (an important goal for realpolitik).

The Advance of Noopolitik

in sum, noopolitik is an approach to diplomacy and strategy for the information age that emphasizes the shaping and sharing of ideas, values, norms, laws, and ethics through soft power. Noopolitik is guided more by a conviction that right makes for might, than the obverse. Both state and nonstate actors may be guided by noopolitik; but rather than being state-centric, its strength may well stem from enabling state and nonstate actors to work conjointly. The driving motivation of noopolitik cannot be national interests defined in statist terms. National interests will still play a role, but should be defined more in societywide than state-centric terms and be fused with broader, even global, interests in enhancing the transnationally networked "fabric" in which the players are embedded. While realpolitik tends to empower states, noopolitik will likely empower networks of state and nonstate actors. Realpolitik pits one state against another, but noopolitik encourages states to cooperate in coalitions and other mutual frameworks. In all these respects, noopolitik contrasts with realpolitik. Table 2 summarizes some of the contrasts discussed herein.

Realpolitik

Noopolitik

States as the unit of analysis

Nodes, nonstate actors

Primacy of hard power (resources, etc.)

Primacy of soft power

Power politics as zero-sum game

Win-win, lose-lose possible

System is anarchic, highly conflictual

Harmony of interests, cooperation

Alliance conditional (oriented to threat)

Ally webs vital to security

Primacy of national self-interest

Primacy of shared interests

Politics as unending quest for advantage

Explicitly seeking a telos

Ethos is amoral, if not immoral

Ethics crucially important

Behavior driven by threat and power

Common goals drive actors

Very guarded about information flows

Propensity for info-sharing

Balance of power as the "steady-state"

Balance of responsibilities

Power embedded in nation-states

Power in "global fabric"

Table 2
Contrasts between Realpolitik and Noopolitik

Kissinger may be said to epitomize the zeitgeist and practice of realpolitik. Who may stand for the zeitgeist of noopolitik? One name that comes to mind is George Kennan. He has always been mindful of realpolitik; yet, his original notion of containment was not (as he has pointed out many times) essentially military. Rather, it was centered on the idea of creating a community of interests, based on shared ideals, that would secure the free world while dissuading the Soviet Union from aggression, and eventually persuading it to change. This seems an early expression of noopolitik, geared to a state-centric system. Today, leaders like Nelson Mandela and George Soros, not to mention a host of less renowned individuals who have played leading roles in civil-society activist movements, reflect the emergence of noopolitik.

Some of the best exemplars of its emergence involve "social netwars" waged by civil-society activists. (Netwar is an information-age entry on the spectrum of conflict that is defined by the use of network forms of organization, doctrine, and strategy, made possible by the information revolution.)20 While all-out military wars, such as World Wars I and II, represent the conflictual heights and failures of realpolitik, nonmilitary netwars may prove the archetypal conflicts of noopolitik. The Nobel Prize-winning campaign to ban land mines;21 NGO-led opposition to the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI);22 the Greenpeace-led campaign against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific; the swarming of transnational NGOs in defense of the Zapatista insurgents in Mexico;23 and recent information-age efforts by Burmese and Chinese dissidents, with support from U.S.-based NGOs, to press for human rights and political reforms in these countries24 all exemplify how transnational civil-society networks, in some cases with strong support from states, can practice noopolitik, with varying degrees of success, to change the policies of states that persist in emphasizing the traditional politics of power.

These cases substantiate that the practice of noopolitik is already emerging and that traditional ideas about "peace through strength" may give way to new ideas of "peace through knowledge." These cases also show that ideas themselves, particularly ones with deep ethical appeal, may be fused with new communications technologies and organizational designs to create a new model of power and diplomacy that governments will increasingly encounter and have to heed. Activist NGOs, perhaps because they lack the resources for realpolitik, appear to be ahead of states in having the motivation and ability to apply noopolitik and to seek the construction of a global noosphere.

Yet what if states, or other actors, regard noopolitik as attractive, without caring about the emergence and construction of the noosphere? In the hands of a democratic leader, noopolitik might then amount to little more than airy, idealistic rhetoric with little or no structural basis; while, in the hands of a dictator or a demagogue, it could be reduced to manipulative propaganda and perception-management campaigns.25 Or narrow versions of noopolitik might be attempted for private gain: In the commercial worlds of advertising and public relations, this already occurs when companies develop media blitzes and plant testimonials to "spin" public opinion. These are among the risks that may have to be faced.

 

The Way Ahead

If an American RDA gets under way, diplomats will find themselves having to focus on how best to develop the noosphere and conduct noopolitik. Much as the rise of realpolitik depended on the development and exploitation of the geosphere (whose natural resources enhance state power), so will the rise of noopolitik depend on the development and exploitation of the noosphere. The two go hand in hand. To pursue this, measures will have to be identified that, in addition to fostering the rise of a noosphere, are geared to facilitating the effectiveness of soft power, the deepening of global interconnections, the strengthening of transnational civil-society actors, and the creation of conditions for governments to be better able to act conjointly (in terms of cooperative advantages), especially with nonstate actors.

In another writing (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1999), we note some measures for U.S. policy and strategy that could assist with the development of the noosphere and noopolitik. All are taken from ongoing discussions about issues raised by the advance of the information revolution--and diplomats would be well advised to take an interest in them. These measures include the following:

  • Supporting the expansion of cyberspace connectivity around the world, including where this runs counter to the preferences of authoritarian regimes;26
  • Promoting freedom of information and communications as a worldwide right;27
  • Developing multitiered information-sharing systems, not only to ensure cyberspace safety and security, but also to create shared infospheres for openly addressing other issues;28
  • Creating "special media forces" that could be dispatched into conflict zones to help settle disputes through the discovery and dissemination of accurate information29 ; and
  • Opening diplomacy to greater coordination between state and nonstate actors, especially NGOs.

These are just some preliminary ideas. Ultimately, there will be much more to developing the noosphere and noopolitik than just asserting, sharing, and instituting the particular values, norms, ethics, laws, and other ingredients of soft power that an actor wants to uphold. Specific policies, strategies, and mechanisms will have to be elaborated that make noopolitik significantly different from and more effective than realpolitik in dealing with issues that may range from "democratic enlargement," to the pressuring of regimes like those in Iraq, North Korea, and the Balkans, to the resolution of global environmental and human rights issues. Skillful diplomats and strategists are bound to face choices as to when it is better to emphasize realpolitik or noopolitik, or how best to alternate between them or apply hybrids, especially when dealing with a recalcitrant adversary who has been able to resist realpolitik types of pressures.

What may turn out to matter for all parties--the advocates and their audiences and adversaries--is the "story" being told, implicitly or explicitly. Realpolitik is typically about whose military or economy wins. Noopolitik may ultimately be about whose story wins.30

The story for the United States may involve recognizing the wisdom of paying a price in hard-power primacy, in exchange for the creation of a noosphere that enables us to practice noopolitik. In our view, this is a price worth paying, for it holds out the prospect of an America that leads without commanding and that proactively cultivates peace rather than resorting continually to threats of economic or military coercion--an America that engages in an RDA not so much to strengthen statist diplomacy as to build a global civil society that will serve all.

 

Endnotes

* This paper draws, often verbatim, on Arquilla and Ronfeldt (1997, chapter 19, 1998b, and 1999). These writings discuss at greater length our views about the prospects for a revolution in diplomatic affairs and for the emergence of noopolitik.

1. Burt, Robison, and Fulton, 1998; Cambone, 1996; Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, 1992; Nye and Owens, 1996; Project on the Advocacy of U.S. Interests Abroad, 1998; Shultz, 1997; Smith, Virtual Diplomacy Conference presentation, 1997; Solomon, 1997; U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, 1997; U.S. Department of State Management Task Force, 1993; Wriston, 1997; and the aforementioned writings by Arquilla and Ronfeldt. Also see materials from the conference on "Virtual Diplomacy: The Global Communications Revolution and International Conflict Management," organized by the United States Institute of Peace, Washington, D.C., April 1-2, 1997.

2. For elaboration, see Arquilla and Ronfeldt (1996, 1997) and Ronfeldt, et .al. (1998).

3. See Shultz (1997), Solomon (1997), Toffler and Toffler (1993), and Wriston (1997).

4. For a military discussion, see Libicki (1994, or the extract reprinted in Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1997) on the importance of moving to military formations characterized by "the many and the few," who should be highly networked.

5. Readers who want to learn more about Teilhard's ideas, without struggling through his writings, can find sympathetic overviews in Cobb (1998) and Wright (1989, pp. 258-274). There are also many valuable writings--for example, in parts of Bateson (1972), Capra (1996), Castells (1996, 1997), and Dertouzos (1997)--that contain expositions about the rise of forces of the mind around the world, but without explicitly discussing Teilhard or the concept of the noosphere.

6. On this point, see Boulding (1988 and 1993) and Frederick (1993a and b).

7. On the roles of metaphors in thinking, see Lakoff and Johnson (1980).

8. FLAG is a projected 28,000-kilometer fiberoptic link around the globe. Neal Stephenson, "Mother Earth, Mother Board," Wired, vol. 4., no.12 (December 1996), pp. 98-160.

9. Compared to traditional concepts like ends, values, and norms, the concept of "practices" is a recent addition in the literature on social thought and behavior, and it goes to the heart of what is meant by "structural information." For example, Bellah et al. (1996) state, "Practices are shared activities that are not undertaken as means to an end but are ethically good in themselves (thus close to praxis in Aristotle's sense). A genuine community--whether a marriage, a university, or a whole society--is constituted by such practices."

10. But an important caveat is in order--diplomats at the United States Information Agency (USIA) and elsewhere who are concerned with public diplomacy implicitly work in and deal with the noosphere.

11. Informative manifestations of this appear in the spring 1998 issue of Foreign Policy, whose cover theme is "Frontiers of Knowledge: The State of the Art in World Affairs," and in the autumn 1998 issue of International Organization, whose theme is "Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics." While these (and other) journals emphasize the interplay between the academic schools of realism and liberalism, they have also, in the past few years, begun addressing the emergence of a third school known as constructivism (or social constructivism). It holds that ideational factors--for example, social identities, norms--determine the nature of international reality, as much as do material factors. Thus, the concepts behind constructivism are much like those behind noopolitik. However, we do not discuss constructivism here, mainly because, unlike realism and liberal internationalism, this new academic school does not yet figure in the worlds of policy analysis. For good overviews of constructivism, see Hopf (1998), and Ruggie (1998).

12. In our view, alternative terms like cyberpolitik or infopolitik are not appealing. We considered and rejected the term cyberpolitik, because we wanted to focus attention on the noosphere, not cyberspace, and because we wanted a term whose connotation would be less technological and more ideational, which is in keeping with the noosphere concept. Also, we felt that yet another term with a cyber prefix would not take hold. However, see Rothkopf (1998) for an illumination of why "the realpolitik of the new era is cyberpolitik, in which the actors are no longer just states, and raw power can be countered or fortified by information power" (p. 326).

13. Maynes (1997) discusses the prospects for "ethical realpolitik." Rothkopf (1998) aims to modify realpolitik under the rubric of cyberpolitik and analyzes how the information revolution is altering the traditional political, economic, and military pillars of U.S. policy and strategy--but his essay is less clear as to what cyberpolitik may actually consist of in the future.

14. There is an ongoing debate about the implications of the information revolution for the future of the state. Our own view is summarized rather than elaborated here. Some reasons for our view, and literature citations, are provided in Arquilla and Ronfeldt (1996b and 1997, chapter 19) and Ronfeldt (1996). Also see Sassen (1998, chapter 10) and Skolnikoff (1993).

15. For elaboration, and citations to the literature, see Arquilla and Ronfeldt (1996) and Ronfeldt (1996). For an early elucidation of the concept of "global civil society," see Frederick (1993a and b). For recent statements, see Clark, Friedman, and Hochstetler (1998), Sassen (1998, chapter 9), Simmons (1998), and Slaughter (1997).

16. In making related points, Schudson (1998, pp. 310-311) argues that it is time for America to give rise to a new (in his history, a fourth) model of citizenship that will emphasize civic monitoring. This means environmental surveillance--keeping an eye out--more than it means trying to be knowledgeable about all things (his third model).

17. The phrase "network-centric" is from discussions about whether future military operations should be "platform-centric" or "network-centric." See Cebrowski and Garstka (1998).

18. For a recent iteration, see Keohane and Nye (1998).

19. The point about letting right make might has a long history. In America, this includes a statement by President Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address: "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it." Gompert (1998) also reflects this point.

20. The concept is from Arquilla and Ronfeldt ( 1996a and 1997) and is further elaborated in Ronfeldt et al. (1998) and Lesser et al. (1999).

21. For an academic analysis of this movement that treats moral suasion and organizational networking as important factors in the growth of transnational civil society, see Price (1998).

22. Kobrin (1998) views this opposition to the MAI as a "clash of globalizations"--between the type of globalization favored by investors and a newer type represented by electronically networked global civil society actors who oppose economic globalization.

23. On the Zapatista movement in Mexico, see Cleaver (1998) and Ronfeldt et al. (1998).

24. On Burma, see Tiffany Danitz and Warren P. Strobel, "Networking Burma: Cyber-Activists Use the Internet to Promote Democracy in Burma." January 31, 1999; 1997 USIP grant product presented at the 1997 Virtual Diplomacy conference as a case study; also presented as part of the "Virtual Diplomacy: A Revolution in Diplomatic Affairs" panels at the International Studies Association Conference February 18, 1999. On China, see dissidents' declarations posted at sites maintained by Human Rights in China and the Digital Freedom Network. Periodic articles in the Los Angeles Times have also provided excellent coverage of efforts by Chinese dissidents to use the Internet to spread their views.

25. It has been suggested that a Hitler would like the concept of noopolitik. Our rejoinder is that noopolitik must be based on the existence of a noosphere, and that the openness and interconnectedness that comes with a noosphere would expose and constrain a Hitler. Additionally, some religious and other cults may appear to practice a version of noopolitik to attract adherents and assail their critics and opponents -- but our point is that at base these cultists operate from a closed, even isolating ethos that really contradicts the notion of an open, global noosphere.

26. See Kedzie (1997) for the argument that communication, interconnection, and democracy reinforce each other.

27. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "everyone has a right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." But this is not enough. Activists on the left have drafted a "Peoples Communications Charter." Something along these lines, made suitable for people across the political spectrum, seems essential for the evolution of a global noosphere. This point, with variations, has adherents in Japan, as well as in America and Europe. For example, Kumon and Aizu (1993, p. 318) write: "[T]he emergence of hypernetwork society will require not only physical/technical infrastructure but also a wide range of new social agreements binding the infostructure that is the social/human network. We propose that the core of such infostructure will be 'information rights,' a new concept of human rights that will supplement, and in part replace, property rights that have been widely accepted in modern industrial society." Also see Frederick (1993a and b). On the related matter of allowing freedom of encryption, see Dyson (1997).

28. This point is from work by RAND colleague Robert H. Anderson.

29. For related ideas, also see De Caro (1996), Metzl (1997), and Toffler and Toffler (1993). An earlier idea, fielded by Anderson and Shapiro (1992), is that of creating "deployable local networks to reduce conflict," which could be rushed into conflict situations in the expectation that increased communications may foster conflict resolution. Still earlier, Keohane (1984, p. 121) proposed that "data sovereignty," if it could be established, would ease environmental debates.

30. If so, this paper barely begins to address the challenges ahead. Further analytical elaboration of noopolitik may benefit from inquiring into the postmodernist literature about the importance of narrative and discourse in the exercise of power, as exemplified by the writings of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida; and into a new academic literature about "story modeling," as exemplified by Pennington and Hastie (1986).

 


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