From 'Connectedness' to Conflict
Washington Post; Wednesday, February 22, 2006; A15
By David Ignatius
One of the baseline assumptions of U.S. foreign policy is that "connectedness" is a good thing.
Linkage to the global economy fosters the growth of democracy and free markets, the theory
goes, and that in turn creates the conditions for stability and security. But if that's true, why is an
increasingly "connected" world such a mess?
This paradox of the 21st century is confounding the Bush administration's hopes for
democratization in the Middle East. It turns out that in Iraq, Iran, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority
and perhaps nations yet to come, the growth of democracy and technology has had the effect of
enfranchising pre-modern political movements -- ones linked to religious sects, ethnic minorities
and tribes. This trend astonishes Westerners who meet with Arab modernizers at events such as
the World Economic Forum or see the skyscrapers of Dubai and think the world is coming our
way.
Among military strategists, the bible of connectedness is a book called "The Pentagon's New
Map," by Thomas P.M. Barnett. He argues that the world today is divided between an "integrating
core" of orderly commerce, stretching from America and Europe across to China and India, and a
"non-integrating gap," which is his shorthand for the messy rest of the world. The task of U.S.
foreign policy is to connect the two. Thomas Friedman's influential book, "The World Is Flat,"
argues that technology is driving this process of integration, and that it's creating a richer, smarter
global community.
So why does the world feel so chaotic? Why is there a growing sense that, as Francis Fukuyama
put it in a provocative essay in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, "More democracy will
mean more alienation, radicalization and -- yes, unfortunately -- terrorism"? I have been
discussing this conundrum with friends, and I've heard two interesting theories worth sharing.
The first comes from Raja Sidawi, a Syrian businessman who owns Petroleum Intelligence
Weekly and is one of the most astute analysts of the Arab world I know. He argues that Barnett
misses the fact that as elites around the world become more connected with the global economy,
they become more disconnected from their own cultures and political systems. The local elites
"lose touch with what's going on around them," opening up a vacuum that is filled by religious
parties and sectarian groups, Sidawi contends. The modernizers think they are plugging their
nations into the global economy, but what's also happening is that they are unplugging
themselves politically at home.
Sidawi's theory -- that connectedness produces a political disconnect -- helps explain some of
what we see in the Middle East. Take the case of Iran: A visitor to Tehran in 1975 would have
thought the country was rushing toward the First World. The Iranian elite looked and talked just
like the Western bankers, business executives and political leaders who were embracing the
shah's modernizing regime. And yet a few years later, that image of connectedness had been
shattered by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution, whose aftershocks still rumble
across the region. The Iranian modernizers had lost touch with the masses. That process has
been repeated in Iraq, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority -- where the secular elites who talked
the West's line have proved to be politically weak.
A second explanation of the connectedness paradox comes from Charles M. McLean, who runs a
trend-analysis company called Denver Research Group Inc. (I wrote a 2004 column called
"Google With Judgment" that explained how his company samples thousands of online sources
to assess where global opinion is heading.) I asked McLean last week if he could explain the
latest explosion of rage in our connected world -- namely the violent Islamic reaction to Danish
cartoon images of the prophet Muhammad.
McLean argues that the Internet is a "rage enabler." By providing instant, persistent, real-time
stimuli, the new technology takes anger to a higher level. "Rage needs to be fed or stimulated
continually to build or maintain it," he explains. The Internet provides that instantaneous,
persistent poke in the eye. What's more, it provides an environment in which enraged people can
gather at cause-centered Web sites and make themselves even angrier. The technology, McLean
notes, "eliminates the opportunity for filtering or rage-dissipating communications to intrude." I
think McLean is right. And you don't have to travel to Cairo to see how the Internet fuels rage and
poisons reasoned debate. Just take a tour of the American blogosphere.
The connected world is inescapable, like the global economy itself. But if we can begin to
understand how it undermines political stability -- how it can separate elites from masses, and
how it can enhance rage rather than reason -- then perhaps we will have a better chance of
restabilizing a very disorderly world they alone will not get to settle.