McNair Paper 59, Right Makes Might:  Freedom and Power in the Information Age, Chapter 1, May 1998

One World-Two Explanations

Testing the hypothesis that power depends on freedom requires an explanation of the general pattern of contemporary international politics. At the moment, we can pick between two such explanations: the relentless spread of free-market democracy ("globalization") and the ever-shifting concentration and interaction of geopolitical power ("power politics").¹

In the first view, a wave of economic and political openness travels eastward and southward from the West, moving world politics inexorably toward a peaceable commonwealth of responsible democracies, joined by commerce and liberal ideals, occupying most of the planet. In the second, the world's superpower maintains balance and manages security in the world's vital regions, grapples with two other economic giants, Japan and the European Union (EU), keeps a wary eye on the largest remnant of the Soviet Union, and anticipates the rise of a Chinese "peer challenger."

The two explanations emphasize such different phenomena as to seem contradictory. Globalization-economic integration and political convergence-is all about progress, porosity, norms, rules, networks of interest, devolution, transnational power, smaller and accountable government. It erodes centralized authority of all sorts. It favors international collaboration, inspired by common interests and principles-shared equity in the free market and in the ideals of free societies. Its prevailing values, especially the rule of law and the rights of the weak, not only enhance domestic tranquility but also temper international behavior.

Along this line of world development, the diffusion of technology uplifts and draws one after another emerging nation into a core political economy, based on the appreciation of human capital, economic efficiency, and political harmony. The diffusion of technology does not sap but instead strengthens the enterprises and nations that invent and export it. World affairs are shaped more by market forces than by government policies. State power is undercut by market power and bypassed by multinational enterprises, worldwide communications, and sundry nongovernmental actors.

As globalization proceeds and the information age unfolds, economic value becomes less tangible, more fluid, accessible, and portable across political boundaries. Technology and money spill into vast and ungovernable global pools. The world economy's markets, resources, capital, and human talent are readily available to those states that join it. Traditional objects of conquest, e.g., land and raw materials, become less important. Territorial dominion and international coercion, if not passé, are out of sync with globalization's promise. Power jealousies and plots seem anachronistic. What matters to societies, including elites, is not relative national standing but success, as measured by absolute progress in the quality of life. Even the lone superpower is not wedded to the status quo. The last two decades reveal that American interests are not harmed but instead helped by change because, for the most part, change enriches Americans and Americanizes the world.

Power politics, in contrast, is determined by the comparative strengths of the largest nations and the equilibrium or rivalries among them. If globalization distributes, power politics concentrates. At present, the all-around might of the United States and the weights of Japan, the European Union, China and India (increasingly), and Russia (in decline), give structure to international politics. Notwithstanding the diffusion of economic power and the erosion of the nation-state, it remains the Newtonian interactions among the great political-economic-military singularities that determine international conditions, calculations, strategies, war and peace. One power's rise marks another's decline. Being a superior power still has its rewards, especially as viewed by inferior ones, thus assuring unending cycles of hegemonic challenge and defense.²

From this vantage point, as technology spreads, the task of preserving commercial and military advantages-for the United States, unipolarity-grows ever more critical. For fear of great power conflict, power politics abhors instability. If change would mean a restless Japan, an obstreperous EU, or a China that is at once strong and revisionist, the United States will want to extend the status quo, or to govern change. It can try to do so by husbanding its superior capabilities and maneuvering internationally, as arbiter of global politics, to ensure that the world and its major regions are not destabilized by some challenger or by the recklessness of petty powers, thus ensuring both equilibrium and continued primacy.³

Globalization promises to fulfill the ambition, and hopeful prediction, of those who believe that history has a direction, with liberal ideals exerting a growing pull on politics within and among nations.⁴ In contrast, devotees of power politics regard history as open-ended, even pointless. They find the physics of competing power or patterns on geopolitical maps more satisfying, or at least more prudent, than societal progress as guides to international politics.

The power politics school got the upper hand, for obvious reasons, after World War II. The theory that history moves in a liberal direction then got a strong boost when communism self-destructed. However, in light of experience since the revolutions of 1989-Yugoslavia, the tenacity of surviving rogues, Russia's brutality in Chechnya, China's missile-test diplomacy, stirrings of power struggle in Asia-neither camp can be said to have carried the day. Thus progress toward a worldwide commonwealth of freedom now seems to be taking one step back for every step forward. Yet, theoreticians of geopolitics expound on new poles and alignments of power, as if globalization were happening on some other globe.

The catechism of official American foreign policy sidesteps the tension between globalization and power. Its priests chant "enlargement" of the sphere of democracy, but their refrain of America's "indispensable leadership" sounds to others like gentle hegemony. The United States, paragon of responsible power and champion of globalization, while not power-hungry, is power-conscious. There is not much room in Washington's world view for other equal powers, be they adversaries or partners. The amalgam of U.S. policies implies a sort of unipolarity-cum-globalization: a world without divisions in which the power, ideals, and output of one great and good nation, America, prevail.

Washington may fancy the mantle of leadership, but the American people seem unpersuaded. Now that their way of life is safe, Americans seem relatively uninterested in the fall and rise of other powers. Globalization satisfies the chief criterion by which they now judge U.S. engagement in the world: their quality of life. They seem unconvinced that U.S. participation in the global economy, which they support, requires the United States to act as the world's exclusive leader, which would seem to make every international problem theirs.⁵ Unless power politics spoils the world economy or serves up another life-threatening enemy, the relative standing of the United States seems to matter far less to its citizens than the absolute effects on them of U.S. policies and relationships.

The Americans are not the only ones of two minds. The Chinese plunge into the world economy, while also aspiring to expand China's relative power. The Russians are adamant about still being a great power; yet, as their national output is reduced to raw materials, they know their future depends on globalization. The Japanese exhibit an aversion to national power, except when it comes to their competitive specialties-technological prowess and exports-which they seek to maximize in the world economy. The Europeans, inventors of integration, cannot decide if they really want the EU to be a world power, since that would require further derogation of sovereign national power and greater collective responsibility. Overall, this tug of war between power and integration is the main reason why the general shape and direction of world politics in the new era is so hard to figure.

Along which track, then, is the world developing? The answer is both, for neither globalization nor power politics can be ignored. Classical great power theory does not explain the behavior of today's great powers. If it did, the relationship among the world's current leaders-the United States, Japan, and the EU-would be a tense triangle rather than the community of interest and trust that it is. China and Russia have not rushed into each other's arms to offset U.S. power, even after U.S. intervention in the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis and NATO's 1997 decision to enlarge. Instead, China and Russia remain far more interested in associating with the United States and its democratic partners than in aligning against them.⁶

On the other hand, globalization does not account for the way China, Japan, and the United States, though intertwined economically, are positioning for advantage in Asia in anticipation of Korean unification. Globalization does not explain the urge of France to rally fellow Europeans around a Middle East policy distinct from Washington's. For that matter, if globalization is spreading irresistible norms of free-market democracy worldwide, why does the United States keep spending $250 billion annually to maintain military superiority and its ability to project power anywhere it has interests?

In reality, both globalization and power politics are shaping the world and the future. Yet the relationship between globalization and power is not under-stood. The two explanations are orthogonal-the former horizontal, the latter vertical. It is unclear how power will be distributed and used in a world of expanding democracy, economic integration and homogenous norms, or conversely, how globalization will affect politics in a world where power remains lumpy and important. A synthesis is needed to reconcile the diffusion and concentration of power.

The key to that synthesis is information technology-the dominant force of the post-industrial, post-Cold-War age. Information technology is the sine qua non of both globalization and power-the locomotive on each track. It is integrating the world economy and spreading freedom, while at the same time becoming increasingly crucial to military and other forms of national power. Information technology thus accounts both for power and for the process that softens and smooths power.

The nucleus of this essay is that information technology connects freedom and power. The link between freedom and information technology, on the one hand, and information technology and power, on the other, explains the relationship between freedom and power-the key to world politics. In a nutshell, military and other forms of power depend increasingly on knowledge and thus on the openness and global integration that spawn and sustain information technology.

The essential reason for the new correlation of freedom and power lies in the nature of information technology: It springs from and adds to human knowledge. Once thought of as a utility needing regulation (at least in its telecommunications origins), it has proven to be the best way yet found to release human potential. Industrial technologies- metal-bending, machine-propelling, uranium-enriching-complement state power, even repressive state power. But information technology both arouses and relies on the inventiveness, aspirations, and irrepressibility of the citizen. If, as Woodrow Wilson said, democracy "releases the energies of every human being," information technology networks and thus mobilizes those energies. State power cannot produce and can even retard this technology. The information revolution liberates and requires liberation.

Because it utilizes and rewards human minds, not muscles, information technology provides unprecedented economic leverage in fields as diverse as financial services, civic activism, and warfare. The freer the market, the greater the leverage. As the role of information technology grows, so will the dependence of economic performance and national power on freedom.

Take the most striking example, the United States since 1980: reduced government involvement in the economy, deregulation of telecommunications and non-regulation of computer industries, leadership in key information technologies, corporate restructuring, improved international competitiveness, low unemployment and inflation, and military superiority-all parts of a package of freedom, knowledge, and strength. Americans, in their hubris, might think this is a unique package; but the conditions are being replicated on a less grand scale throughout much of the world.

By augmenting and distributing knowledge, information technology has (just) begun to transform industrial and military operations. It lets institutions decentralize, reduce their superstructure and, by bringing them into closer touch with their external worlds, become more adaptable. It can demolish organizational "stovepipes," defeat vertical control, and unlock the power of horizontal work. Just as corporations can enhance their competitiveness by distributing authority and building internal networks, countries in which power is spread out-i.e., democracies-have the greatest potential to mobilize human resources when given information technology.

Globalization is, in a way, decentralization at the planetary level. Information technology permits enterprises to operate worldwide systems of production, distribution, and finance that form the anatomy of the integrated world economy. Consequently, U.S., European, and Japanese firms can invest wherever their technology has the best match with local labor. Growing international acceptance of deregulation and free trade responds to the needs and encourages the further globalization of such firms. Thus, on a global scale, information technology thrives on openness and boosts efficiency.

In the military realm (addressed at length below), nations that master information technology have the potential to improve the mobility, lethality, and survivability of their armed forces. They can trade in mass for quality and come out way ahead. Those states with the technology and vision to modernize their forces this way can cover the fiscal costs of doing so by cutting manpower. Yet information technology, far more than mechanical technologies, can yield enduring military advantages only if it is flourishing in the larger economy and society. The core technologies for the military- semiconductors, data networking, and software programming-are propelled by the volume and requirements of civilian markets.

Only with vibrant markets and integration in the world economy will countries, however populous, be able to reap the full benefits of the information revolution, including in military affairs. As that revolution offers an improved ability to project power and destroy enemy forces while reducing one's own casualties, the edge, on both the field of battle and the field of world politics, will lie with those nations whose openness gives them an advantage in harnessing information technology.

This reasoning, if right, bears on how to regard the United States and the world's other current and future powers, especially Japan, the EU, and China.⁷ The pages that follow predict that the world's greatest powers-whether three, four, or more-will be free-enterprise nations with legitimate governments. They will be bound into the global core economy, motivated by shared interests in the health and security of that economy, and at least loosely aligned against threats to those interests from lesser states and non-state actors. As their values also converge, their shared commitment to international law and order will grow.

National standing will remain important, as both fact and ambition. But the deepening economic integration of the strongest nations, due in large part to information technology, will make hegemonic rivalry a high-cost/low-gain departure from their common pursuits and friendly competition. The military superiority of the United States and other democratic powers will not ensure uniform and permanent peace; outlying states can still carve out military niches, disrupt international security, and defy the great powers in some circumstances. But those countries that stay apart from the core and are hostile to its liberal values will find modern power hard to come by, precisely because such power depends on those values. So U.S. adversaries will tend to be weak; U.S. friends strong; and strong states friendly.

Such a state of affairs could be considered utopian were it not roughly the situation today. The military superiority of the United States is increasingly the result of its lead in information technology, which is based on its economic and political openness. That the world's strongest power is a strong democracy is not simply a consequence of the 20^th century but a natural condition of the 21^st.

The other leading democracies, Japan and the EU, trail only the United States in most important measures of actual and potential power.⁸ They also satisfy the preconditions of success in information technology-namely, freedom and integration-and they have the economic performance and military potential to show for it. The world's three leading powers are essentially as congenial now as they were when Japan and Europe depended vitally on U.S. protection from the Soviet Union. Japan and Europe do not loom as would-be strategic rivals of the United States, despite their capabilities, the absence of a unifying threat, and their reduced dependence on the United States. (The greater danger is that they will be free riders.) All three democratic powers have equity, figuratively and literally, in each other's success. As integration increases that equity and its dividends, their cooperation should deepen.

If great powers have compatible purposes and collaborative strategies, multipolarity-a term that has customarily connoted balance of power-will not produce hegemonic struggles, shifting alignments, and pecking-order politics. Imbalances in power need not be dangerous or destabilizing, any more than the current imbalances between the United States and Japan or the EU are. The good relations among today's leading powers are a model that can work in general and in perpetuity.

The need for and effect of information technology will cause rising powers to gravitate toward the interests, ways, and outlook of the United States and the democratic core, rather than to challenge them. Otherwise, even giant states, though potentially dangerous- rogues on steroids-will be chronically malnourished in the dominant technology. They will remain on the outskirts of not only the global economy but also the power structure of world politics.

Will China conform to the template? If this essay's thesis is valid, yes. China's paramount ambitions-stability, prosperity, modernity- require reform, integration, and comity with the democratic powers. There is no other way fully to join the information revolution. Growing Chinese reliance on information technology will intensify pressures for economic and political liberalization. If and as the Chinese state yields to these pressures, and is constrained by them, China will be drawn ever more into the community of democratic powers. Alternatively, a stubbornly authoritarian, nationalistic, and self-sufficient China will find it hard to compete in the very technology on which both its economic prospects and future military power depend.

Obviously, China will not be a replica of Japan or Western Europe. Nor will it adopt Ameri-can ways, lock, stock and barrel. But as China's mastery of information technology and its power grow, so should its qualifications to become a responsible partner of the United States and a source of regional and global security rather than of insecurity. There are signs that this process is underway.

If the analysis in this volume is valid, China can become a modern world power or China can reject the ideals and oppose the interests of the core; but China cannot do both. Power requires information technology, information technology requires freedom and integration, and freedom and integration create a community of values and interests.

While the prospect of harmony among the world's powers, established and emerging, offers great hope to U.S. and global security, there are pitfalls and countervailing trends. Openness creates vulnerability along with strength. Societies that enjoy political and economic freedom, rely heavily on networks, and are integrated into the world economy are inviting targets for states that oppose them. Moreover, democracies might lack the will to pay for military power or the nerve to use it when threatened. In any case, they will not have a monopoly on modern military power; so rapid and uncontrollable is the spread of information technology, thanks to the integration of the global economy, that even closed, marginalized states can acquire and use it selectively for military purposes. Finally, by wiring communities of interest and short-circuiting vertical authority, the information revolution is eroding hierarchies of all sorts, including democratic governments.

Granted, such factors will limit the power of even the most powerful nation-states and allow lesser, sinister actors-states and non-state groups-to do great harm. This essay does not argue that powerful states will be invulnerable or even that they will dominate world affairs. If anything, the operational and symbolic utility of national power, democratic or not, will be less in the information age than it was in the industrial age. At the same time, a world in which the most powerful states act jointly is more likely to fulfill the grand human promise of the information revolution than one in which they are trapped in costly and perilous power balances, machinations and conflicts. A world in which the established powers are not afraid of change-or of each other-could be a world of sustainable progress and security.

The thought that democracies do not wage war with each other is well-known.⁹ The argument that integration engenders common interests, promotes cooperation, and dampens conflict is also familiar, though less accepted, mainly because of the contrary example of European interdependence before World War I. The new idea here-adding the spice of information technology to the curry-is that democracies have the inherent capacity to be more powerful than undemocratic states, which was not the case when muscle-bound industrial powers strode the Earth. Paradoxically, although globalization diffuses power, it also strengthens its agents-the large free-market democracies that command the dominant technology.

Some have argued that humankind is drawn toward the magnet of democracy.¹⁰ What happened soon after the information revolution began-the sudden collapse of communism and the emergence of long-backward nations-tends to support this belief. Information technology has enabled free societies to mobilize greater human capital and to excel economically. If, as well, democracies are capable of achieving superior military power in the information age, this might not mean the end of war or " History," but it could permanently improve global security.

For these ideas to be right, several propositions-mere assertions thus far-must be valid: First, competitiveness in information technology depends on economic and political freedom and on integration into the core. Second, military power and other forms of national power depend on broad-based success in the creation and use of information technology. Third, integration into the core creates shared stakes that supersede power politics and point toward a multipolar community of interests and democratic values. The rest of this essay will examine these propositions.

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