The New Realities - #2: Referential Power

While mega-trends are producing hyper-freedom (see New Realties #1), the nature of power – how it is acquired and deployed – is changing as well.  Traditionally, power has been viewed as exclusively coercive – primarily through negative induction – to serve what the Athenian leader Pericles called “the most fundamental of human motivations: ambition, fear, and self-interest.”  Metrics of demographics, geography, and natural resources dominated.  As Thucydides observed during the Peloponnesian Wars, “the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.”[1]  Hard power dominated in a world considered ‘zero-sum,’ where every winner was matched with a loser.  In the latter twentieth century, Harvard’s Joseph Nye introduced the concept of soft power that includes both positive and negative influence by non-matériel means in a plus-sum (win/win) interdependent world.  Today, the world is changing further still, moving toward new processes that recognize the disaggregation and diffusion of power in a global, as opposed to state-centric, framework.  At the center of this phenomenon are the relative decline of U.S. power and the rise of free agency that enables a third form of power: referential power.

            The decline of U.S. power, even if only in a relative sense among other state powers, causes much debate and consternation. After the Soviet Union collapsed the U.S. stood as a ‘unipolar’ power, unrivaled in hard and soft power.  Following 9/11, U.S. foreign policy entered a period of hubristic overstretch that caused a self-inflicted degradation of power.  For many, even suggesting decline is profoundly unpatriotic and inherently foolish.[2]  If we are smart, however, it should not matter.  It is a waste of words and worry.  The paradox of power is that both too little and too much prove to be undesirable.  As foreign policy scholar Michael Mandelbaum recently illustrated, the “power problem” is similar to what economists call the “resource curse,” which occurs in countries that dominate a particular resource, like oil.  They invariably, as do countries with too much power (like the U.S.), adopt policies that weaken the state by over-reliance on the resource, or pernicious use of their power.[3] But again, this should not matter if we recognize our errors and master the concept of referential power.

            So what is referential power? As an admittedly exaggerated illustration, consider what it would be like if all NFL football players immediately became unrestricted free agents and were allowed to form new teams without the influence or control of the NFL, team owners, or the players union. Alliances and teams would be formed around particular interests and capabilities without the constraints imposed by the deposed oligarchy.  Disaggregated and diffused ‘power’ in this sense would be recognized, accumulated, and realigned through negotiation by each player based on how they complemented each other’s skills and capacities – to win the next Super Bowl.  Power in this sense becomes referential, granted by and between participants who rely on one another’s skills and capacities to realize the highest and best application of their own.

            In a much more gradual and constrained fashion, referential power is being deployed in the global system today, negotiated by both state and non-state actors around specific objectives that may be targeted at security, economics, or other social aims.  Actors are perfecting the art of coopetition, of competing to cooperate. China competes very effectively with the International Monetary Fund to cooperate with African political and business leaders on many industrial development projects.  According to Howard W. French of The Atlantic they do so without the heavy-handedness of the U.S. such that they are perceived as “our friends” throughout Africa.[4] As the metrics shift from demographics, geography, and natural resources towards intelligence-based metrics, so does the nature of power.  If the U.S. is to continue to enjoy a differential power advantage over the long term, our leaders must recognize this changing power paradigm. And, this model of networked, referential power can also be applied locally; you are your own free agent.

            On the local level, following the mantra of “think globally, act objectively” one must reconsider how to align with resources and authority to accomplish cherished goals.  Identifying like-minded people (through ‘relational’ networks) and forming a special-purpose, objective-specific network that defines the objective, designs the solution, and drives implementation is the basis of transcendent objectivism … ad-hoc, organically formed alliances where power is granted referentially and resources and authority follow the solution to its realization.  Attraction – not coercion.  Government in this process is not a ‘headliner.’  It plays a supportive role.  Transcendent objectivism is a design that is scalable – up or down – locally or globally – among individuals or states.  At its core is referential power.

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[1] John Baylis, and Steve Smith (eds.), The Globalization of World Politics (3^rd ed.), (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 50, 167.

[2] For a recent argument against ‘the declinists,’ who question the enduring primacy of American power, see Josef Joffe, “The Default Power: The False Prophecy of America’s Decline.” Foreign Affairs, (September/October, 2009): 21-35.  See also, Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987); and Jeremy Black, Great Powers and the Quest for Hegemony (London: Routledge, 2008).

[3] Michael Mandelbaum, “Overpowered: Questioning the Wisdom of American Restraint.” Foreign Affairs (May/June 2010): 114-119.

[4] Howard W, French, “The Next Empire.” The Atlantic (May 2010): 59-69.

The New Realities - #1: Hyper-freedom.

The collision of two mega-trends is creating a new level of freedom unprecedented in history.  The decline of state-centric social order – particularly in the global West – and the exponential proliferation of digital technologies means that boundaries and limits are rapidly disappearing.  This has extraordinary implications for all of us, but most of all for those engaged in activism and/or entrepreneurship. 

            Our state-centric, government-based form of social order – of collective action – is facing imminent decline. While new, networked forms of collective action will replace governments and their bureaucracies – avoiding social collapse – there will be periods of extreme discomfort marked by social upheaval and occasional  (and hopefully isolated) violence.  The rise of Tea Party anger on the one hand, and emerging social networks like Facebook on the other, are harbingers of this transformation.  The proliferation of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) is another.  This is not an ideological-driven transformation, although battle lines will be conjured along ideological lines by political aspirants; it is the result of an overburdened and dysfunctional system – an induced failure.  Government simply cannot and will not be able to continue to perform all the duties it has accepted via constitution and assumption. 

            In the United States, government’s structure, processes, and institutionalized corruption are rendering it obsolete.  It won’t go away completely by any means, but the scope of its duties will narrow, and functionally it will offer little more than resources and authority.  It can play a valuable, albeit limited, role.  In the future it will rarely design or implement policy.  It has lost those capacities.  It will more closely resemble what the Founding Fathers intended.  The most important thing for each of us is to be on the right side of the transformation.  Those who scream at government, stoke hatred, or choose violence will lose.  Those who embrace government’s new limited and redefined role – who view it as a precursor to hyper-freedom – will prevail.  Freedom always has.  Freedom always will.

            Meanwhile, the promises of digital technologies are just beginning to be realized.  The principal benefit: cheap and reliable connectivity that enables the communication of ideas from ‘alternate spaces,’ will produce previously unimagined alliances and solutions, operating at the margins of traditional or conventional institutions.  In short, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.  The world that columnist Thomas Friedman calls (simplistically) “flat” is in reality a complex of layered and vertically integrated networks; neither hierarchical nor unordered.  Advances in new forms of energy are just one area where hyper-freedom will be expressed.  The advancement of economies, security, healthcare, and education in developing countries is another likely category.  Intelligence-based security systems are a third.  The dominant ‘natural’ resource in all of this is intelligence, created out of a velocity of idea convergence that will create metrics of productivity one can only dream about today.

            The decline of government and the rise of technology do not change the nature of our issues or objectives, it simply allows us greater freedom through which to design and execute solutions.  At the door of this new reality of hyper-freedom lay two fundamental commitments.  We must first realize it is an opportunity, not a threat.  Then, we must take the leap of faith and put ourselves ‘out there’ in this new connected world and share our ideas, resources, and talents.  We don’t have to become digitized technocrats, but we must commit ourselves to new avenues of ‘work.’  Social activism and commercial opportunities must be pursued through professionally managed objective-specific networks, open to any worthy participant regardless of archaic qualifiers.  Those who feel threatened will most likely characterize this as socialism – many already have.  They will advocate policies of isolation.  But this is not socialism; it is transcendent.  It is a higher form of democracy, which echoes Abraham Lincoln’s  “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”  Those who see it as an opportunity – as hyper-freedom – will achieve great things for themselves and for society.  They will be the new stewards of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  Which side will you choose?

           

Silence and the Space Between

In the introduction of singer songwriter Natalie Merchant’s recent masterwork, Leave Your Sleep (Nonesuch Records, 2010), she suggests, “The poet’s work is putting silence around everything worth remembering.”  For me, Merchant’s claim summoned the lesson I learned (the hard way) to ski in the steep and deep forests of the Canadian Rockies: once you quit looking at the trees and focus on the white spaces between them you can manage quite well – and appreciate the trees all the more.  The poet’s silence and skier’s ‘space between’ are as important, if not more so, than the words and trees if we are to both navigate and enjoy an abundant life while making our particular contribution to our ‘place’ (however defined).  Making room for silence and focusing on where we want to go (rather than what might be in the way) requires a discipline of calm and confidence.  And, it opens our minds to new possibilities to face what may be unwelcome and unfamiliar challenges.

            Over the next few posts, I will be offering what I believe are necessary adjustments in our perspectives and practices as Americans and citizens of the world. I’ll discuss collective action, will, complexity & risk, power & security, and well being over net worth – as well as whatever else reveals itself in the process.  Tools to make sense of and maybe even succeed in a world that is presenting curious and perplexing risks.  The underlying premise is that most great things happen as a result of one person who has an idea that collides with passion to cause unforeseen and unimaginable transformation.  They are generally obscure no-names who become transformative leaders.  People like you and yours.  They operate in the silence and the space between until, as if by magic, they change the world.

            Until next week …

The Real BFD

I appreciate Vice President Joe Biden much the same way I do habanero sauce: in small quantities and few places.  While it can make a meal, it can also ruin it.  I expect President Obama shares my sentiment.  Notwithstanding Biden’s (nearly) off-mic proclamation about the passage of the recent healthcare bill, there was a much larger BFD this week (than non-reform-healthcare-reform) with the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty II (START II).  Those of you older than college age will remember this pesky thing we once called the Cold War, where our collective fears were frequently if not systemically stoked by the idea that the US and Soviet Union stood poised to annihilate each other with nuclear weapons.  (Remarkably, and an obvious illustration of how time flies, those college age or younger were born after the collapse of the Soviet Union.)

            The signing of START II is a BFD not so much by what it achieves, but by the relative ease with which it was accomplished and by the general lack of media attention it has received. Indeed, as Thomas Blanton and William Burr at the National Archives pointed out in an email to me today, “the new START treaty signed today in Prague represents ‘real’ but ‘modest’ cuts in strategic nuclear forces comparable to some Cold War alternatives but still higher than the most far-reaching proposals considered by Presidents Reagan and Carter.”  But, of course, this one got signed.  Having read the archived correspondence between Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev that surrounded the negotiation of predecessor Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty II (SALT II), I can assure you that these treaties don’t come easily. Correspondence and dialogue historically had all the trust and congeniality of an old married couple that have hated each other for the last forty years.  The US and the Soviet Union lived with each other in a quasi-psychotic symbiosis characterized by institutional schizophrenia. Fortunately, the Soviet Union collapsed under its own internal contradictions, and as a result Medvedev/Putin and Obama live with less, or different, demons.  If any president prior to Bush (41) had accomplished such an agreement in this manner, we would be witnessing a ticker tape parade similar to those that marked the end of World War II.  Today, the launch of the iPad received much greater attention.

            The larger issue of course remains: the ‘miracle’ of the Manhattan Project – nuclear weapons – remain in ample supply throughout the world and are the highest ambition of terror networks and unstable states. The next BFD is dealing with that reality. Next week, forty-seven nations will meet in Washington to sort out what might be done. As with his recent ‘re-conceptualization’ of the use of nuclear arms by the US, Obama deserves credit here too.  Sam Nunn, former senator from Georgia and former security hawk, who now laments his support of nuclear arms development and heads National Threat Initiative (working to rid the world of ‘loose’ nukes) would like us all to view a new documentary, Nuclear Tipping Point (www.nucleartippingpoint.org). The message is chilling but credible: Will we choose cooperation or catastrophe? Will we allow terrorist networks and/or unstable states to turn our ‘miracle’ into further madness?

            As much as we all wring our hands over domestic issues, and as much as they will decide short-term political futures, we need to take responsibility and attempt to put our ‘miracle’ back in the proverbial Pandora’s box.  It is a BFD, and as impossible as it might seem, we must try, try, and try again. 

One Ball. Two Games.

After watching the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, I have decided that the game might have a future again – if it embraces its past as finalists Butler and Duke seemed to do.  I had long ago given up on the sport even though it occupied many hours of my youth developing, among other things, a sense of discipline and self-respect.  I remain convinced basketball is one of the most difficult and, if played properly, most artistic of team sports.  In my admittedly passé and romantic contemplation of the game, I find the NBA’s version of the sport brutish, selfish, and inelegant.  My criticism goes beyond the big money, and gun-toting, over-commercialized superstars.  In the NBA they simply don’t play the game properly, but Butler and Duke (most of the time) did.

            The critical difference is this: in the NBA the game ‘flows’ around one or two players.  Offenses are designed to have the supporting cast (including the most important object: the ball) operate as subjects of the superstar who is the principal attraction.  In the NBA defenses are designed to, well, they’re not designed as far as I can tell; they are exercises in random motion. To NBA players defense is what the team not in possession of the ball does to occupy their time until it’s their turn to play offense again.  (The referee assures frequent transitions in possession and adequate protection of the superstar.)  In the men’s NCAA championship game both teams played real basketball, where the flow of the game occurs around one object: the ball.  And, they had obvious defensive assignments designed to interrupt the flow of the ball to affect possession.  There were two teams playing as composite entities, not a circus-like exhibition by the guy with the most sponsorships.

            At 13:02 left in the game, I declared (via text) that the game was over.  It was clear to me Duke would prevail even though the game was and remained close to the end.  Here’s why.  Butler’s star player, Gordon Hayward, had been quiet most of the game; working very hard without the ball, playing defense, opening the game up for his teammates, but statistically quiet.  At 13:02, Duke was up by a few points.  Butler’s Coach Stevens called timeout.  I certainly do not know what directions Stevens gave his players, but it marked the point in the game that Butler, obviously growing wary of the clock and inability to punch through Duke’s marginal lead, shifted their strategy away from real basketball toward the star-centered NBA version.  As the clock wound down Butler played the rest of the game around Hayward – not around the ball.  They gave it their all.  They got close, but Hayward couldn’t beat Duke – only Butler could have.  Butler has much to be proud of. But, as is too often the case, they may have beat themselves.

            Coach Krzyzewski knows basketball.  He will never leave college ball.  He knows better.  His players are routinely criticized for becoming failures in the NBA.  They don’t know how to play that game because they play the real one – the one invented by James Naismith who was tasked with coming up with an indoor game to exercise otherwise rowdy students through the seasonal oppression of New England winters in 1891.  The one made famous in the modern era by the Wizard of Westwood, Coach John Wooden at UCLA.  If coaches like Krzyzewski and Stevens honor the tradition of the game, maybe, just maybe, basketball is back.  In one small measure, America (and I) would be better off.