The End of Power (20 page)

The havoc wreaked by the financial crisis in Europe is an extreme example of the power of bond markets and global financiers to impose conditions on governments and, as was the case of Greece, even to help bring them down when they resist the economic reforms demanded by financial markets.

But as discussed in the previous section, a new class of political activists unmoored from political parties and other traditional political organizations have also become the bane of governments. Today these activists are known as
hacktivists
(a term coined in 1996 by
Omega
, a member of a group of Internet hackers who called themselves
The Cult of the Dead
Cow). Hacktivism, defined as “the use of legal and/or illegal digital tools in pursuit of political ends,”
³⁷
forces governments to play an endless hi-tech game of cat and mouse—a game that includes and transcends efforts to penetrate and compromise computer networks. It also includes the use of a wide variety of information and communications technologies (ICTs) that Stanford professor Larry Diamond calls “Liberation Technologies.” As Diamond points out in his book by the same name:

If you are a career politician forged in the classic mindset of that craft, the combined effect of six decades of fragmentation in national political life has been devastating. The “prestige-feeling” that Max Weber identified as a politician's deep craving is fading for the stark reason that the underlying power of political office is ebbing away.

More nations, more governments, more political institutions and organizations reflect and shape our opinions, choices, and actions than ever before. Migration and urbanization have created new political, social, cultural, and professional networks, concentrating them in urban nodes invested with new and growing power. Global norms have achieved a new reach, and individual aspirations and expectations have been turbo-charged by social media, fiber optics, satellite dishes, and smartphones. It is as if a political centrifuge had taken the elements that constituted politics as we knew it and scattered them across a new and broader frame. Here are a few of its key effects.

For centuries, politics operated on the premise that it channels the interests of the masses (expressed through votes, or asserted by rulers) into coherent outcomes. Representative government meant the channeling of the public
will up from the neighborhood or town level, through regions or provinces, and, ultimately, to the sovereign state. Political parties, or organized groups within a single party, together with unions and civic associations, promised to represent ordinary people and convey their views up these channels.

Parties no longer perform this crucial role. Why? Because the channels are much shorter and more straightforward than they used to be. As Lena Hjelm-Wallén, Sweden's former deputy prime minister and foreign minister, told me, with a combination of exasperation and resignation in her voice: “People are mobilized more by single issues that affect them, rather than by the abstract, overarching ideologies espoused by parties.”
³⁹
New forums and platforms direct public support to political leaders or deliver back benefits and accountability without the need for a political party to serve as go-between. In a landscape of fragmented votes and parliaments, dominant political parties have lost much of their appeal. Joining, voting for, or even forming a new small party carries much less cost than before. Crucially, supporting one of these new parties carries less of an opportunity cost as well; in other words, we now forsake less by voting or supporting a small party instead of a big one, or by participating in the political process through other methods altogether. Large, well-established political parties continue to be the main vehicle for gaining the control of government in a democracy. But they are increasingly being undermined and bypassed by new forms of political organization and participation.

At every level the decay of power has limited autonomy of action. Even in presidential systems, the increased incidence of factional politics can make it harder to move legislation through the parliament. But the constraints on government come from outside the standard political system as well. The list of players with the ability to blow the whistle, remove key support, or successfully put forward a damaging storyline that holds up government action extends from bond holders and international activists to bloggers and celebrities. As Ricardo Lagos, the former president of Chile, told me: “The more power that NGOs have to pursue uni-dimensional goals, the less power the government has to govern. In effect, many NGOs are single-issue interest groups that are more politically nimble, media savvy and internationally agile than most governments. Their proliferation ties the government
machinery down and greatly limits the range of options. I experienced this myself when I was president and I see it in my travels when I talk to other heads of state and cabinet ministers. Overall, NGOs are good for society but their tunnel vision and the pressures they have to show results to their constituents and funders can make them very rigid.”
⁴⁰
In the past, governments could seek to reshape the political landscape—whether to satisfy public demand or, instead, to repress it—by altering election rules, passing constitutional amendments, or imposing emergency laws. They can still attempt these measures, but more and more, they must contend with scrutiny and action that comes from outside conventional politics.

With the scattering of political power has come a blurring of lines among categories of political player: political parties (major and minor, mainstream and extreme), advocacy groups, press, voters. Elected officials and government offices now are likely to produce their own media material or communicate directly with voters online. Single-issue interest groups now throw up their own candidates rather than participating in the political process at arm's length. With barriers to participation lower than they have ever been, the field of rivals has grown. An aspiring politician must consider alliances and anticipate attacks from a shape-shifting milieu of parties, activists, funders, opinion makers, citizen journalists, watchdogs, and advocates of all sorts.

The expanding role for individuals—nonpoliticians, nonprofessionals—may be the most exciting and challenging effect of the political centrifuge. It results from the collapse of the organizational and cultural barriers that separated people in the profession of politics from those outside. The declining relevance of major political parties and the proliferation of direct, plug-and-play ways to jump into the political discourse have made those barriers obsolete. This development invokes the promise of direct democracy, on the model of the Athenian agora or Swiss canton meetings taken into the digital age. By the same token, it invites great disruption, and examples abound already of the ability of a malevolent individual or outside group to distract or stymie the political process.

SO BRAZIL'S PRESIDENT FERNANDO HENRIQUE CARDOSO, GERMANY'S
Vice Chancellor Joschka Fischer, Sweden's Lena Hjelm-Wallén, and Chile's Ricardo Lagos are not just complaining gratuitously from a position of power and privilege. The power of their lofty government jobs is indeed ebbing, and not to the benefit of a particular rival politician or organization that they can counter, buy off, or shut down. It is not leaching from their personalities or platforms in ways they could correct by changing policy stances or hiring new advisers. Rather, it is draining from their office—from the high positions of power and prestige that have always been, for a political career, the ultimate reward. Again, power is not just shifting. It is also decaying and, in some cases, evaporating.

The political centrifuge challenges authoritarian regimes, rendering their enemies more elusive and throwing up new challengers and contenders. But its effects challenge democracies as well. To many advocates, democracy is a destination—and the decay of the power of authoritarian governments has helped push a great many countries toward that goal. But the effects of the decay do not stop there. The deep economic, technological, and cultural forces behind it empower a wide range of ideas and sentiments, not all of which are democratic in spirit. Regional separatism, xenophobia, anti-immigrant campaigns, and religious fundamentalisms all stand to benefit from the decay of power. The one common effect of the political centrifuge in every location is to complicate the political landscape and erase old patterns and habits. The one certainty is that it will continue to do so.

AL QAEDA SPENT ABOUT $500,000 TO PRODUCE 9/11, WHEREAS THE
direct losses of that day's destruction plus the costs of the American response to the attacks were $3.3 trillion. In other words, for every dollar Al Qaeda spent planning and executing the attacks, the United States spent $7 million.
¹
The costs of 9/11 equal one-fifth of the US national debt. In 2006, Hezbollah fired a precision-guided cruise missile at an Israeli ship during the Lebanon War. The missile struck, and almost sank, the
Hanit
(“Spear”), a corvette of the Israeli Navy equipped with missile defense systems. The cost of the Israeli ship was $260 million; the reported price of the missile, a mere $60,000.
²
In 2011, Somali pirates imposed costs of between $6.6 billion and $6.9 billion on the world. They launched a record 237 attacks—up from 212 in 2010—despite ongoing patrols by a multinational fleet that included some of the most technologically advanced warships ever built.
³

Terrorists, insurgents, pirates, guerrillas, freedom fighters, and criminals are nothing new. But to adapt a Churchillian turn of phrase: never in the field of human conflict have so few had the potential to do so much damage to so many at so little cost. Thus, also in the realm of armed conflicts, the micropowers, while seldom winning, are making life harder for the megaplayers—the world's large and expensive defense establishments.

The growing ability of small, nimble combatant groups to advance their interests while inflicting significant damage on much larger, well-established military foes is one way in which the exercise of power through force has changed; another is the diminished ability and willingness of
states with traditional militaries to make full use of the huge destructive powers they have at their command. While it is clear that today's micropowers cannot go toe-to-toe with the world's military powers, they are increasingly able to “deny” victory to the larger, more technologically advanced players in an asymmetric conflict—and that speaks to a fundamental change in how power operates.

John Arquilla is one of the most respected thinkers in the field of modern warfare. He believes the world has entered “an era of perpetual irregular warfare.” He writes: “The great captains of traditional forms of conflict have little to tell us about this. Nor can the classical principles of war provide much help, in particular the notion of the sheer power of mass, which has lived on until now in the form of Colin Powell's doctrine of ‘overwhelming force' and other concepts like ‘shock and awe.' Such ideas were already faltering at the time of the Vietnam War; today it is clear that attempts to retool them against insurgent and terrorist networks will prove just as problematic.”
⁴

When it comes to the display and use of power, military force represents the ultimate means. Whereas politics seeks to persuade, war—or the threat of war—aims to coerce. Military might, measured by the size of an army, along with its equipment and technical prowess, is the show-stopping stand-in for more complex ideas of power. Armed force is the blunt fact that remains when you strip away the niceties of diplomacy, cultural influence, and “soft power.” And when in doubt, according to the conventional wisdom, the balance of power tilts toward the fuller arsenal. As the journalist Damon Runyon put it (in another context), “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's how the smart money bets.”
⁵
Or as Joseph Stalin once famously asked when told he should help Catholics in Russia in order to curry favor with the pope: “The Pope? How many divisions has
he
got?” (Upon hearing of Stalin's question, Pope Pius XII sternly rebutted, “You can tell my son Joseph that he will meet my divisions in heaven.”)
⁶