by Tom Fletcher
This repression is increasingly sophisticated and well resourced. Censors have always been ingenious and well funded. But for everyone trying to build a wall around the Internet, there are smart people building the Internet around their wall. Governments should support the effort to end Internet censorship in a decade.
Of course, this effort will be driven by activists and the Internet companies themselves, who have most to gain. The idealistic technology pioneers who designed the Internet saw it as a way to share information freely and without restraint. Sir Tim Berners-Lee famously declared after founding the World Wide Web that ‘this is for everyone’. He must surely be right. We will have to fight hard to defend a single Internet that can benefit humanity as a whole, rather than one broken down by repressive states and censors.
The networked world has undermined traditional authority and hierarchy, destroying the claims of leaders and governments that they can control information. Everyone is now watching everyone, and the digital tools available to an increasing proportion of humanity will increasingly enable them to hold those watching them to account. These questions are bigger than the intelligence agencies involved.
So who runs the Internet?
Every three months a number of the Internet’s fourteen keyholders meet in the US. Each has a key to a safety deposit box and a smartcard, which together contain the code that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) uses to maintain Internet security. Journalist James Ball describes the ceremony as ‘one part The Matrix (the tech and security stuff) to two parts The Office (pretty much everything else)’.10 No one can say who put ICANN in charge. In governance terms it is the Internet’s equivalent of FIFA, though without the brown envelopes. It is an imperfect system, but no one has come up with a better one.
Meanwhile, an Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is meant to set the ground rules. But I suspect most Internet users have never heard of it, and do not see it as in any way representing them. The acronym-rich, process-dominated and jargon-heavy attempt to structure the Internet looks like trying to shut the door long after the horse has bolted. It is hard to see how either governments or the big technology firms will feel obliged to cooperate, let alone citizens.
Big data is going to be one of the most contested areas. With the right guidelines, we can use it to evaluate better how we live as a society, for example in assessing our levels of happiness. But science is already running into ethical dilemmas over big data. With the ability to search all tweets – which are after all public documents – they can ask more sophisticated questions. But what about the rights of those who have generated the tweets? Do they need to be consulted, as they might if they were photographed in a public place? Or have they forfeited that right by putting their material in the public domain?
On these huge questions, many activists have long dismissed ‘the government’ as some sort of monolithic, conservative block on freedom, captured by big business and traditional elites. Fight the system. But it should be increasingly obvious to anyone that, as power diffuses rapidly and digital-information transfer accelerates, governments have long lost anything vaguely resembling a monopoly on information and influence. We have seen that secrets are becoming harder to justify and harder to keep.
There will always of course be reactionary pockets of governments, and many are dominated by them. But increasingly in freer societies, those pockets simply do not call the shots. Policymaking is much more fluid, flat and free. Just as governments need to get past an elitist ‘us and them’ or ‘we know best’ view of society, so activists need to look again at which parts of government to work with and, yes, trust.
This can provide the basis for a serious debate about how society adapts to the Internet in a way that maximises liberty and transparency. Governments will need to show that they have sufficient safeguards in place for the data that they can and will need to collect. Individuals will need to lead the debate about how we shape the digital services we use.
These are fundamental questions. We can’t just mooch through them. The Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves has called for a ‘John Locke of the Digital Age’ to set the balance on the role of the state in defending freedoms and rights of citizens online. Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said that we need a ‘Magna Carta for the Internet’. American poet (and retired cattle rancher) John Perry Barlow has produced a ‘Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace’, an attempt to establish an Internet nation, with its own community and identity.
Some countries are already trying. The Brazilian ‘Statute of Liberty’, a bill drafted with full public participation, sets out a ‘Bill of Rights’ or Internet constitution, safeguarding freedom of expression, limiting government collection of data and setting out the parameters of ‘net neutrality’. But we are still some way off a set of global standards.
Technological bling and must-have gadgets aside, the answers to these questions on the balance between digital freedoms and oversight pre-date the digital era. We still need to understand where authority begins and ends; what issues fall under the rule of law; and how to balance the rights of individuals and communities. The Internet won’t solve all our problems, but we can’t win without it.
We behind the wall cannot dismiss or play down the views of those outside the wall. Hoarding information can be even more dangerous than sharing it. Government depends on the consent of the governed, and that demands trust. Security and rights must be two sides of the same coin.
We are living in the age of distrust. People are losing confidence in those in traditional positions of authority. So those who wish to exercise power will need to be more open, authentic, humble and responsive. To do that, they will need to get smarter about using the power they have. Or continue to watch it slipping through their fingers.
* In 1932 Compton Mackenzie was fined under the Official Secrets Act for using ‘C’ in one of his books.
9
Building New Power: Bombs, Books and Beckham
Diplomacy is the art of letting other people have your way.
Daniele Varè (1880–1956), Italian diplomat and author
As the Second World War raged across Europe, a diplomatic adviser approached Josef Stalin tentatively, as most people did.
Stalin despised diplomats, and indeed most people. He had no wish to understand diplomacy, which he saw as characterised by compromise and capitulation. Instead, Stalin wanted to understand power, so that he could have more of it.
Nevertheless, his nervous adviser wanted to make the case that the Soviet leader should stop repressing Catholics in order to reduce hostility to Russia in Europe. This would in turn help curry favour with the Vatican, aiding Russia’s diplomatic strategy.
But Stalin was underwhelmed by the idea he need consider such a feeble compromise with the Vatican. The adviser was put back in his place as Uncle Joe exploded with rage: ‘The pope? How many military divisions does he have?’
Throughout history, many leaders have seen power in this way: as the pure martial strength to conquer, intimidate and subdue. Across the contemporary Middle East, those such as the Assads in Syria, several Israeli prime ministers, Yasser Arafat, or the warlords of Lebanon, have viewed politics as the art of survival. They live by what journalist Tom Friedman calls ‘Hama rules’, after the Syrian town that President Hafez al-Assad levelled in 1982. When you have power, you use it. When you’re strong and winning, why compromise? When you’re weak and losing, why compromise?
The Vatican had no tanks. But, unlike Stalin’s system and Stalin’s statues, it is still standing. History is not always won by those with the biggest armies and economies. This century is the first where power is not founded on how many people your army can kill.
Of course, military might still matters. Wars are not going away anytime soon. A country unwilling or unable ever to use force gets pushed around. As nineteenth-century British jingoists sang of those they colonised, ‘Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim gun and they have not.’
As we have moved from hunter-gathering to the European Union – not a positive thing in the eyes of all Europeans, of course – conflicts along the way have often helped humanity increase our life expectancy and raised our collective living standards. (The Second World War accelerated the creation of the United Nations, the National Health Service and the liberation of women, for example.)
But this is easier for a statistician or historian to argue than anyone actually experiencing conflict and times of momentous change. There is limited patience from those who experienced the Arab Spring for the idea that the violent backlash against them was vindication that they were on the right side of history. Increasingly we also find that populations retain great affection for those serving in the military, but don’t necessarily want them to fight. Sir Jeremy Greenstock, a former UK ambassador to the United Nations, sees this as due to the moral force of the concept of self-determination, the growing power of the people’s voice, and increasing distaste for humanitarian consequences of warfare. It is also due to the evident limits of military power, as insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated. People tend not to want to be at war for long, and the willingness of Western populations to tolerate the deaths of soldiers is rapidly decreasing. Defence spending by non-NATO countries will be greater than that by NATO countries by 2021.
However, well-meaning diplomacy without the threat of war tends to fail. As President Theodore Roosevelt thundered, ‘nothing could more promote iniquity for free and enlightened peoples than to render themselves powerless while leaving every despotism and barbarism armed … righteousness unbacked by force is as wicked and more mischievous than force diverted from righteousness’.1 Without the threat of hard power, diplomacy quickly becomes ‘Speak loudly and carry a small stick.’ ‘We will not stand idly by’ quickly becomes ‘watch us standing idly by’. As the 2014 Russia/Ukraine crisis demonstrated, ‘you must not invade your neighbour’ becomes ‘you should not invade your neighbour’, and then becomes ‘let’s discuss how we can ensure that you don’t invade another neighbour’. Traditional diplomacy often fell into the trap of assuming that silver-tongued ambassadors alone could prevent conflict – ‘when dictatorship is harsh, beware our démarche’ as the motto on many foreign ministries could have read. Former UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says the European Union often gets bullied because it lacks real hard power.
However, military power alone does not generate the results we want. We discovered in the first decade of the third millennium that you can’t deliver democracy on the tip of a missile. Between 2009 and 2012, as US drone attacks increased, public support in Pakistan for US aid to militant areas dropped from 72% to 50%, while those regarding the US as an enemy rose from 64% to 74%.2 Many people globally know as much about Guantanamo as the Statue of Liberty. Even modern dictators who pose with muscles flexed on horseback have recognised that hard power alone is not enough.
We are not the first generation to make this discovery. Even the most brutal empires got it. Genghis Khan would have been unlikely to describe anything he did as soft, nor appoint a soft-power guru, but he realised that it was easier to maximise his own influence if people felt that they were better off with him than without him. The Romans were also weak when they forgot the importance of bread and circuses, relying on subjugation alone. Instead, Rome was at its strongest when it offered people a sense of magnetism (the early version of John F. Kennedy’s and Ronald Reagan’s references to American exceptionalism symbolised as a ‘shining city on a hill’, watched by the world). The Jewish rebels in Monty Python’s Life of Brian debate ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’, before cataloguing a long list of popular Roman innovations.
So modern power depends on offering something more sophisticated than force alone. It now requires a savvier combination of cultural and economic tools.
It should be a rule of modern diplomacy that a British embassy can never have too many pictures of David Beckham on the wall. Ditto Argentina and Messi, Portugal and Ronaldo. When you have individuals whose faces are known the world over, it is insane not to deploy them.
While I was in Beirut, we never missed the chance to fly the largest flag we could find over a Bond car, premiership footballer, or visiting celeb. This wasn’t because we were star-struck (though perhaps we were a bit) – it gave us the best possible platform for our message about Britain’s global role.
Our largest soft-power experiment in Lebanon was a massive ‘Britweek’ to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012. Over six days, with over sixty events, hundreds of thousands of participants and a £1 million budget – all raised from sponsors – we showcased a Britain that was modern, outward-looking and attractive. We threw a party for over 2,000 people, the first event at Beirut’s iconic new marina. I gave my speech from the bow of a British super-yacht. Elsewhere in the city, we held a fashion show inspired by the Queen’s style; a film festival; live cooking shows with chefs from the Dorchester; an art exhibition of Union Jacks; a concert of British music ‘from Elgar to Adele’ hosted by the Lebanese prime minister; Manchester City FC training sessions for kids; and exhibitions of touch-screen technology, British inventions and classic and modern British cars. A Lebanese brewer concocted a Jubilee beer, local design companies repackaged everything from ice creams to bags to taxis, and Time Out ran a special supplement. British Airways returned to Beirut. Wedgwood and Lush cosmetics opened branches.
We could not have hoped for better coverage across Lebanese and regional TV and newspapers. Our favourite piece was a generous editorial in An-Nahar, one of the top Arabic dailies, exhorting other embassies to follow the UK lead. I presented a Radio 1 show of the best British music. Online, our website saw a 43% increase in visits. A #Britweek hashtag was second only to the football throughout the week in Lebanon. I had a tweetup (sadly, virtual only) with Lebanese diva Haifa Wehbe (‘the Middle East’s Madonna’) on British music.
Britweek was exhausting and exhilarating. It wasn’t treaties, Ferrero Rocher or protocol. But it was diplomacy. And, in a less obvious way, it was modern power.
Of course, soft power – the Beckhams and the Beatles – is also insufficient on its own. Like hard power, it has its limits, as photos of jihadists drinking Pepsi in Levi’s jeans remind us. On visits to universities in the Middle East, I am often harangued about Western cultural imperialism by students in Premiership football kits.
Instead, the most effective approach combines hard and soft power. The American political scientist Joseph Nye calls this smart power: ‘a powerful blend of defense, diplomacy and development … which underscores the necessity of a strong military, but also invests heavily in alliances, partnerships, and institutions of all levels to expand influence’.3 Any government now needs to think far more strategically about how to harness that smart power. David Cameron describes Britain as ‘the smart-power superpower’. The UK topped the table, put together using statistics and panel scores, in 2012, on the back of the London Olympics, and came second to Germany in 2013.4 The US won in 2014. This is a competition that should matter, and not just to diplomats.
Like soft power, the concept is a new phrase rather than a new idea: the modern version of Roosevelt’s ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.’ Smart power is basically common-sense diplomacy, albeit using new ways of working. Nye’s idea got as much attention as it did because of its place and time – a rejection of the neocon approach of the George W. Bush administration and its cheerleaders.
So how do nation states harness their magnetic power in the Digital Age? In my experience, it comes down to three ideas: having a strong national story; knowing how to tell it; and knowing how and when to mix the tools at your disposal.5
Firstly, know thyself. A nation needs to tell a good story.
That story is most effective when it is aspirational, inclusive, and doesn’t rely only on killing people from other nations. It makes it easier to persuade others to support our agenda, on the basis that it is theirs too. It makes it simpler
to persuade others to share our values, because those values work for them too. And it makes it more likely that they buy our goods, because they want them too.
Defining the story is easier said than done. But as Professor Simon Anholt is right to ask, ‘If the hand of God should accidentally slip on the celestial keyboard tomorrow and hit delete and Britain went, who would notice and why?’ Scottish film director Danny Boyle’s brilliant telling of Britain’s island story during the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony was an attempt to answer that question. As a result, it moved many of us to tears, and a small number of the usual suspects to rage. History is rightly contested, and any attempt to define a nation even more so. The national message does not need to be sophisticated or detailed, but it does have to be something that people can buy in to, and that other countries can take as an authentic and attractive vision. Sometimes others will define it for us, for better or worse.
In 2005, the UK tried to build a narrative around creativity, innovation and quality. In the 1990s, the ‘Cool Britannia’ campaign was much derided and parodied, but captured a sense of why Britain was climbing the soft-power league. More recently, the ‘GREAT Britain’ campaign developed both these ideas to highlight the key national features we want to project: green, technology, business, creativity, sport. The government estimates that it has added £500 million to the tourism economy. Other countries have their own narratives. China’s ‘peaceful growth’ attempts to place its recent rapid development in a broader context. France has a hard-fought national brand of liberty, equality and fraternity.
Successful country branding uses stereotypes and national symbols rather than fights them, recognising that people want some familiarity. The British royal family understand the importance of their brand (though they would be horrified to hear it described in that way): ‘The Firm’ has put powerful symbols in place, established a clear story about itself and its place in society, and works relentlessly to reinforce that, and neutralise challenges to it.