The Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head

["Barry Brooks" <durable@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/jmoore/secondsuperpower.html
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jim/profiles/$1

James F. Moore

Berkman Center for Internet & Society

jmoore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Monday, March 31, 2003

As the United States government becomes more belligerent in using its power in 
the world, many people are longing for a ?second superpower? that can keep the 
US in check.  Indeed, many people desire a superpower that speaks for the 
interests of planetary society, for long-term well-being, and that encourages 
broad participation in the democratic process.  Where can the world find such a 
second superpower?  No nation or group of nations seems able to play this role, 
although the European Union sometimes seeks to, working in concert with a 
variety of institutions in the field of international law, including the United 
Nations.  But even the common might of the European nations is barely a match 
for the current power of the United States.

There is an emerging second superpower, but it is not a nation.  Instead, it is 
a new form of international player, constituted by the ?will of the people? in 
a global social movement.  The beautiful but deeply agitated face of this 
second superpower is the worldwide peace campaign, but the body of the movement 
is made up of millions of people concerned with a broad agenda that includes 
social development, environmentalism, health, and human rights.   This movement 
has a surprisingly agile and muscular body of citizen activists who identify 
their interests with world society as a whole?and who recognize that at a 
fundamental level we are all one.  These are people who are attempting to take 
into account the needs and dreams of all 6.3 billion people in the world?and 
not just the members of one or another nation.  Consider the members of Amnesty 
International who write letters on behalf of prisoners of conscience, and the 
millions of Americans who are participating in email actions against the war in 
Iraq.  Or the physicians who contribute their time to Doctors Without Borders/ 
Medecins Sans Frontieres. 

While some of the leaders have become highly visible, what is perhaps most 
interesting about this global movement is that it is not really directed by 
visible leaders, but, as we will see, by the collective, emergent action of its 
millions of participants.  Surveys suggest that at least 30 million people in 
the United States identify themselves this way?approximately 10% of the US 
population.  The percentage in Europe is undoubtedly higher.  The global 
membership in Asia, South America, Africa and India, while much lower in 
percentage of the total population, is growing quickly with the spread of the 
Internet.  What makes these numbers important is the new cyberspace-enabled 
interconnection among the members.  This body has a beautiful mind.  Web 
connections enable a kind of near-instantaneous, mass improvisation of activist 
initiatives.  For example, the political activist group Moveon.org, which 
specializes in rapid response campaigns, has an email list of more than two 
million members. During the 2002 elections, Moveon.org raised more than 
$700,000 in a few days for a candidate?s campaign for the US senate. It has 
raised thousands of dollars for media ads for peace?and it is now amassing a 
worldwide network of media activists dedicated to keeping the mass media honest 
by identifying bias and confronting local broadcasters.

New forms of communication and commentary are being invented continuously.  
Slashdot and other news sites present high quality peer-reviewed commentary by 
involving large numbers of members of the web community in recommending and 
rating items. Text messaging on mobile phones, or texting, is now the medium of 
choice for communicating with thousands of demonstrators simultaneously during 
mass protests.  Instant messaging turns out to be one of the most popular 
methods for staying connected in the developing world, because it requires only 
a bit of bandwidth, and provides an intimate sense of connection across time 
and space.  The current enthusiasm for blogging is changing the way that people 
relate to publication, as it allows realtime dialogue about world events as 
bloggers log in daily to share their insights.  Meta-blogging sites crawl 
across thousands of blogs, identifying popular links, noting emergent topics, 
and providing an instantaneous summary of the global consciousness of the 
second superpower.  

The Internet and other interactive media continue to penetrate more and more 
deeply all world society, and provide a means for instantaneous personal 
dialogue and communication across the globe.  The collective power of texting, 
blogging, instant messaging, and email across millions of actors cannot be 
overestimated.  Like a mind constituted of millions of inter-networked neurons, 
the social movement is capable of astonishingly rapid and sometimes subtle 
community consciousness and action.

Thus the new superpower demonstrates a new form of ?emergent democracy? that 
differs from the participative democracy of the US government.  Where political 
participation in the United States is exercised mainly through rare exercises 
of voting, participation in the second superpower movement occurs continuously 
through participation in a variety of web-enabled initiatives.  And where 
deliberation in the first superpower is done primarily by a few elected or 
appointed officials, deliberation in the second superpower is done by each 
individual?making sense of events, communicating with others, and deciding 
whether and how to join in community actions.  Finally, where participation in 
democracy in the first superpower feels remote to most citizens, the emergent 
democracy of the second superpower is alive with touching and being touched by 
each other, as the community works to create wisdom and to take action.

How does the second superpower take action?  Not from the top, but from the 
bottom. That is, it is the strength of the US government that it can centrally 
collect taxes, and then spend, for example, $1.2 billion on 1,200 cruise 
missiles in the first day of the war against Iraq.  By contrast, it is the 
strength of the second superpower that it could mobilize hundreds of small 
groups of activists to shut down city centers across the United States on that 
same first day of the war.   And that millions of citizens worldwide would take 
to their streets to rally.   The symbol of the first superpower is the eagle?an 
awesome predator that rules from the skies, preying on mice and small animals.  
Perhaps the best symbol for the second superpower would be a community of ants. 
 Ants rule from below.  And while I may be awed seeing eagles in flight, when 
ants invade my kitchen they command my attention.  

In the same sense as the ants, the continual distributed action of the members 
of the second superpower can, I believe, be expected to eventually prevail.  
Distributed mass behavior, expressed in rallying, in voting, in picketing, in 
exposing corruption, and in purchases from particular companies, all have a 
profound effect on the nature of future society. More effect, I would argue, 
than the devastating but unsustainable effect of bombs and other forms of 
coercion.

Deliberation in the first superpower is relatively formal?dictated by the US 
constitution and by years of legislation, adjudicating, and precedent.  The 
realpolitik of decision making in the first superpower?as opposed to what is 
taught in civics class?centers around lobbying and campaign contributions by 
moneyed special interests?big oil, the military-industrial complex, big 
agriculture, and big drugs?to mention only a few.  In many cases, what are 
acted upon are issues for which some group is willing to spend lavishly. By 
contrast, it is difficult in the US government system to champion policy goals 
that have broad, long-term value for many citizens, such as environment, 
poverty reduction and third world development, women?s rights, human rights, 
health care for all. By contrast, these are precisely the issues to which the 
second superpower tends to address its attention.

Deliberation in the second superpower is evolving rapidly in both cultural and 
technological terms.  It is difficult to know its present state, and impossible 
to see its future.  But one can say certain things. It is stunning how quickly 
the community can act?especially when compared to government systems.  The 
Internet, in combination with traditional press and television and radio media, 
creates a kind of ?media space? of global dialogue.  Ideas arise in the global 
media space. Some of them catch hold and are disseminated widely.  Their 
dissemination, like the beat of dance music spreading across a sea of dancers, 
becomes a pattern across the community.  Some members of the community study 
these patterns, and write about some of them. This has the effect of both 
amplifying the patterns and facilitating community reflection on the topics 
highlighted.  A new form of deliberation happens.  A variety of what we might 
call ?action agents? sits figuratively astride the community, with mechanisms 
designed to turn a given social movement into specific kinds of action in the 
world.  For example, fundraisers send out mass appeals, with direct mail or the 
Internet, and if they are tapping into a live issue, they can raise money very 
quickly. This money in turn can be used to support activities consistent with 
an emerging mission.

The process is not without its flaws and weaknesses.  For example, the central 
role of the mass media?with its alleged biases and distortions?is a real issue. 
 Much news of the war comes to members of the second superpower from CNN, Fox, 
and the New York Times, despite the availability of alternative sources.  The 
study of the nature and limits of this big mind is just beginning, and we don?t 
know its strengths and weaknesses as well as we do those of more traditional 
democracy.  Perhaps governance is the wrong way to frame this study. Rather, 
what we are embarked on is a kind of experimental neurology, as our 
communication tools continue to evolve and to rewire the processes by which the 
community does its shared thinking and feeling.  One of the more interesting 
questions posed to political scientists studying the second superpower is to 
what extent the community?s long-term orientation and freedom from special 
interests is reinforced by the peer-to-peer nature of web-centered ways of 
communicating?and whether these tendencies can be intentionally fostered 
through the design of the technology.  

Which brings us to the most important point: the vital role of the individual.  
The shared, collective mind of the second superpower is made up of many 
individual human minds?your mind and my mind?together we create the movement.  
In traditional democracy our minds don?t matter much?what matters are the minds 
of those with power of position, and the minds of those that staff and lobby 
them.  In the emergent democracy of the second superpower, each of our minds 
matters a lot.  For example, any one of us can launch an idea.  Any one of us 
can write a blog, send out an email, create a list.  Not every idea will take 
hold in the big mind of the second superpower?but the one that eventually 
catches fire is started by an individual.  And in the peer-oriented world of 
the second superpower, many more of us have the opportunity to craft 
submissions, and take a shot.

The contrast goes deeper.  In traditional democracy, sense-making moves from 
top to bottom. ?The President must know more than he is saying? goes the 
thinking of a loyal but passive member of the first superpower.  But this form 
of democracy was established in the 18th century, when education and 
information were both scarce resources.  Now, in more and more of the world, 
people are well educated and informed.  As such, they prefer to make up their 
own minds.  Top-down sense-making is out of touch with modern people.

The second superpower, emerging in the 21st century, depends upon educated 
informed members.  In the community of the second superpower each of us is 
responsible for our own sense-making.  We seek as much data?raw facts, direct 
experience?as we can, and then we make up our own minds.  Even the current 
fascination with ?reality television? speaks to this desire: we prefer to watch 
our fellows, and decide ourselves ?what?s the story? rather than watching 
actors and actresses play out a story written by someone else.  The same, 
increasingly, is true of the political stage?hence the attractiveness of 
participation in the second superpower to individuals.

Now the response of many readers will be that this is a wishful fantasy.  What, 
you say, is the demonstrated success of this second superpower?  After all, 
George Bush was almost single-handedly able to make war on Iraq, and the global 
protest movement was in the end only able to slow him down.  Where was the 
second superpower?

The answer is that the second superpower is not currently able to match the 
first.  On the other hand, the situation may be more promising than we realize. 
 Most important is that the establishment of international institutions and 
international rule of law has created a venue in which the second superpower 
can join with sympathetic nations to successfully confront the United States.  
Consider the international effort to ban landmines.  Landmines are cheap, 
deadly, and often used against agrarian groups because they make working the 
fields lethal, and sew quite literally the seeds of starvation.  In the 1990s a 
coalition of NGOs coordinated by Jody Williams, Bobby Muller and others managed 
to put this issue at the top of the international agenda, and promote the 
establishment of the treaty banning their use.  For this, the groups involved 
were awarded the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.  While the United States has so far 
refused to sign the treaty, it has been highly isolated on the issue and there 
is still hope that some future congress and president will do so.  

At the Kyoto meetings on global climate change, a group of  NGOs coordinated by 
Nancy Keat of the World Resources Institute joined with developing nations to 
block the interests of the United States and its ally, big oil.  The only way 
for the United States to avoid being checkmated was to leave the game entirely. 
 In the World Trade Organization, the second superpower famously shut down the 
Seattle meeting in 1999, and later helped to force a special ?development 
round? focused on the needs of poor countries.  That round is currently 
underway?and while the United States and others are seeking to subvert the 
second superpower agenda, the best they have achieved to date is stalemate.  

And finally, while George Bush was indeed able to go to war with Iraq, the only 
way he could do so was to ignore international law and split with the United 
Nations.  Had he stayed within the system of international institutions, his 
aims likely would have been frustrated.  The French and the Germans who led the 
attempt to stop him could not, I believe, have done what they did without the 
strength of public opinion prodding them?the second superpower in action. 

Now we all know that the Bush administration has decided to undermine, in many 
cases, the system of international law.  Some argue that by pulling out, the 
administration has fatally damaged the international system, and ushered in a 
new era where the United States determines the rules?hub and spoke 
style?through bilateral deals with other nations.  The result, some will say, 
is that the second superpower no longer has a venue in which to meet the first 
effectively.  In my view this is an overly pessimistic assessment?albeit one 
that members of the second superpower need to take seriously and strive to 
render false by our success in supporting international institutions.

International law and institutions are not going away.  Too many parties want 
and need them.  First, individuals around the world are becoming more globally 
aware, and more interested in international institutions. Global media, travel, 
and immigration all contribute to citizens being aware of the benefits of 
consistent approaches to everything from passport control to human rights. It 
is striking, for example, that up until the final days before the war, a 
majority of the US population wanted the president to deal with Iraq in concert 
with the United Nations.  Second, business organizations want global rule of 
law.  Global trade is now central to a vast majority of businesses and almost 
all nations?and such trade requires rules administered by multilateral bodies.  
Third, most nations want a global legal system.  In particular, European 
nations, wary of war, outclassed in one-on-one power confrontations with the 
United States, have become strongly committed to a post-national world.  They 
are pouring collective national resources of enormous magnitude into 
continuously strengthening the international system.

The key problem facing international institutions is that they have few ways to 
enforce their will on a recalcitrant US government.  And this is where the 
second superpower is a part of the solution.  Enforcement has many dimensions. 
When the United States opts to avoid or undermine international institutions, 
the second superpower can harass and embarrass it with demonstrations and 
public education campaigns. The second superpower can put pressure on 
politicians around the world to stiffen their resolve to confront the US 
government in any ways possible.  And the second superpower can also target US 
politicians and work to remove at the polls those who support the 
administration?s undercutting of international law.

Longer term, we must press for a direct voice for the second superpower in 
international institutions, so that we are not always forced to work through 
nations.  This means, as a practical matter, a voice for citizens, and for NGOs 
and ?civil society? organizations.  For example, the Access Initiative of the 
World Resources Institute is working to give citizens? groups the ability to 
influence environmental decisions made by international organizations such as 
the World Bank.  The Digital Opportunity Task Force of the G8 group of nations 
included a formal role for civil society organizations, as does the United 
Nations Information and Communications Technology Task Force.

Overall, what can be said for the prospects of the second superpower?  With its 
mind enhanced by Internet connective tissue, and international law as a venue 
to work with others for progressive action, the second superpower is starting 
to demonstrate its potential.  But there is much to do.  How do we assure that 
it continues to gain in strength?  And at least as important, how do we 
continue to develop the mind of the second superpower, so that it maximizes 
wisdom and goodwill? The future, as they say, is in our hands.  We need to join 
together to help the second superpower, itself, grow stronger.

First, we need to become conscious of the ?mental processes? in which we are 
involved as members of the second superpower, and explore how to make our 
individual sense-making and collective action more and more effective.  This of 
course means challenging and improving the mass media, and supporting more 
interactive and less biased alternatives.  But more ambitiously, we will need 
to develop a kind of meta-discipline, an organizational psychology of our 
community, to explore the nature of our web-enabled, person-centered, global 
governance and communication processes, and continue to improve them.

Second, and ironically, the future of the second superpower depends to a great 
extent on social freedoms in part determined by the first superpower.  It is 
the traditional freedoms?freedom of the press, of assembly, of speech?that have 
enabled the second superpower to take root and grow.  Indeed, the Internet 
itself was constructed by the US government, and the government could 
theoretically still step in to restrict its freedoms.  So we need to pay close 
attention to freedom in society, and especially to freedom of the Internet.  
There are many moves afoot to censor the web, to close down access, and to 
restrict privacy and free assembly in cyberspace.  While we generally associate 
web censorship with countries like China or Saudi Arabia, tighter control of 
the web is also being explored in the United States and Europe.  The officials 
of the first superpower are promoting these ideas in the name of preventing 
terrorism, but they also prevent the open peer-to-peer communication that is at 
the heart of the second superpower.  We need to insist on an open web, an open 
cyberspace, around the globe, because that is the essential medium in which the 
second superpower lives.

Third, we must carefully consider how best to support international 
institutions, so that they collectively form a setting in which our power can 
be exercised.  Perhaps too often we attack institutions like the World Bank 
that might, under the right conditions, actually become partners with us in 
dealing with the first superpower.  International institutions must become 
deeply more transparent, accessible to the public, and less amenable to special 
interests, while remaining strong enough to provide a secure context in which 
our views can be expressed.

And finally, we must work on ourselves and our community.   We will dialogue 
with our neighbors, knowing that the collective wisdom of the second superpower 
is grounded in the individual wisdom within each of us.  We must remind 
ourselves that daily we make personal choices about the world we create for 
ourselves and our descendants.  We do not have to create a world where 
differences are resolved by war. It is not our destiny to live in a world of 
destruction, tedium, and tragedy.  We will create a world of peace.

 

 

 



~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.