[wordup] The Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head

[Adam Shand]

Via: Brett Shand <brett at earthlight.co.nz>
From: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/jmoore/secondsuperpower.html

The Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head

James F. Moore
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
jmoore at cyber.law.harvard.edu
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.