The Naked Diplomat

by Tom Fletcher

  Europe meanwhile is in decline, if not free fall. Former UK Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd suggests that ‘in the penny-farthing relationship with the United States, the farthing is getting smaller’.6 The European Union as an institution is unpopular with its citizens, and too often bossed about on the world stage. Europe is getting greyer – it is the only continent with a rising proportion of the population over sixty-five, and its birth rates are half of those in the Muslim world. President Obama is not just pivoting to Asia – he is pivoting away from Europe.

  Meanwhile, nations with emerging economies such as Brazil and India are beginning to dominate economic growth. This is making them more politically assertive, and readier to challenge the post-1945 settlement that attempted to stall the decline of the former colonial powers. Some previously pioneer democracies such as Thailand, Sri Lanka, Turkey or Bangladesh are slipping backwards.7

  So the balance between East and West is shifting, and the American unipolar moment, what Henry Kissinger called ‘a triumph of faith over experience’, looks to be passing.

  But it is too early to say how long that will take, or what will replace it. The US is still spending almost as much on defence as the total spend of the next fourteen powers.8 The Chinese model rests on sustaining improbably high growth rates, and China spends more on internal policing than external defence. So it would be rash to bet on the US resembling China in fifty years rather than China resembling the US. Much depends on whether successful Chinese Internet companies – Alibaba is bigger than eBay and Amazon combined – can win the argument for openness, and outward-looking confidence. Economies that don’t base themselves on property rights, innovation and the rule of law will not win in the long run. China is the West’s greatest challenge. And its greatest opportunity. There is all to play for.

  Instead of a balance of power, we perhaps look set to be heading, faster than we realise, towards a period characterised by the absence of any hegemonic power. States, even the biggest and strongest, are discovering the limits of their influence. Syria has been a grim example of the limits of global reach, stomach and compassion. Assad has been a fortunate man – his brutality coincided with a period of global economic weakness, inwardness and war-weariness, and a moment when Russia was looking for painless – for Russia at least – ways to bite at the heels of the US. A leaderless world might sound attractive in theory, but it will not be pretty in practice.

  Meanwhile, the international architecture is weakening fast, corroded from outside and rotting from within. The post-Second World War institutions such as the United Nations, World Trade Organisation, International Monetary Fund and World Bank are seen by most of the world as increasingly unrepresentative, irrelevant and powerless. Aspirations by many Western policymakers for the collective use of limited force to protect the most vulnerable – enshrined in what the UN at a more optimistic moment called Responsibility to Protect (R2P) – have been buried by austerity and Iraq. Once again, the Syrian people have been the main victims of this trend.

  Emerging powers such as India, Singapore or Brazil that feel under-represented in these international institutions are likely to continue to mount an increasingly effective guerrilla war against them. Most want many of the same things as the powers who locked down control of the global structures after the Second World War – free-ish trade, economic growth, avoidance of terrorism or nuclear proliferation. But they also want a louder voice at the top table, and they will be disruptive until they get it.

  This will threaten the entrenched powers. The privileged position in international structures of countries such as the UK and France will come under further attack. The states that dominated the nineteenth century need to lead reform before it is too late for them to influence it. Former prime minister John Major warns that the UN Security Council is ‘grotesquely out of date’, having been created ‘in a world that bears no relationship to today’.9

  The nation state has been the main arbitrator of global power since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The Europeans exported the model, drawing lines – often randomly10 – in the sand across the Middle East and Africa to create new nations. A century later, across the region, but most potently in Iraq and Syria, we can now see the rivets popping. But this is also part of a broader drive for decentralisation of authority, captured closer to home in the independence debates of Catalonia and Scotland.

  At previous points of such power transition, protracted war or violent revolution reset the global structures. The 1815–1914 system, based on the concert of powers agreed in Vienna, was destroyed in the mud and blood of the two world wars. The post-1945 system then sought, with great idealism, to establish clearer rules to manage power, reduce the risk of military confrontation, and create space for economic cooperation.

  That scaffolding looks pretty shaky now. The resources that China needs to fuel its continued growth (iron, copper, cobalt, timber, natural gas, oil) are located in the unstable crescent from North Africa to Afghanistan. The Ukraine crisis has shown that Putin’s Russia is more robustly nibbling away at the edges of US authority, picking its moments to strike when it believes the US is distracted or turning inwards. The powers with most to gain from retaining the status quo are struggling to resource that aspiration. Those with most to gain from its destruction are not offering an alternative vision.

  Meanwhile, post-1989 globalisation has meant that the major threats on the international agenda are now more cross-border and transnational – terrorism, climate change, weapons of mass destruction, disease. Most of the twenty-first century’s wars so far have been fought on those issues rather than to secure territory or resources. Conflict is predominantly inside rather than between states.

  This demands global action and global leadership. Yet, faced with these global challenges, more countries look set to prioritise unilateral interests over multilateral cooperation. As we have seen with the debate on migration from the Middle East and North Africa, the reflex is all too often defensive and nationalist.

  The international architecture may be collapsing. But the answer to the twenty-first century is not another brick in the wall.

  So if states are on the wane, and the US is ceding ground, who is really in charge? In the absence of an agreed methodology, the 2015 Forbes list of the world’s most powerful leaders, businessmen and other players is not a bad place to start.

  Of those in the top seventy-two of the list, only twelve can be said to have gone through some form of democratic election (three of them are in the top ten), though we can argue as to whether that really includes the leaders of China, the Vatican and Russia. Nine of the top seventy-two (with two in the top ten) are international functionaries, central bankers or heads of United Nations agencies. One is a drug lord. (Sepp Blatter, who continues to fight corruption charges, appeared in previous lists – FIFA is now having a long overdue spring clean, and how Blatter will fare remains to be seen.)

  Only two of the top seventy-two had parents in the list – the king of Saudi Arabia and Kim Jong-un. There are now nine women, still too low, but up from three in 2009. There are twelve entrepreneurs, and their average age is dropping. But those seeing US decline will be disappointed – though Forbes caught headlines by replacing Barack Obama with Vladimir Putin at the top of the league table, thirty-two of the slots are still held by Americans.

  The list also shows the continued hold of business over power. The twenty-seven CEOs in the list turn over $3 trillion annually. Fortune magazine says that the three largest companies in the world have assets worth $550 billion and employ more than 1.8 million people. It is much too soon to write off big business.

  What will the Forbes list look like in 2025?

  It will surely be more geographically diverse – more than the one African, two Indians, three South Americans and six Chinese in the 2015 list. The US will still dominate. On this trajectory, the Europeans probably can’t increase their pitiful contribution from five (three of them heads of government).
<
br />   The list will also surely be more gender diverse, though still some way from parity. The business quota (roughly half) will probably remain about the same, but with a higher proportion of entrepreneurs. New kinds of networks have not changed the underlying nature of power, just how it is exercised. Successful businesses have always been able to evolve to succeed in new contexts. If the new platforms for power are the places where we connect, create and most importantly consume, successful corporations will migrate to them. The Internet will not be tearing down barriers as quickly as we think. It may even erect new ones.

  So who are the new emperors?

  When hosting Google senior executives in Lebanon in 2014, I was struck by their pulling power. Ministers who were hard to pin down for meetings with government counterparts dropped whatever they were doing to make time. I saw the same trend at the Hay Festival in 2013, where Google were able to gather many of us for a dinner with the chairman, Eric Schmidt. Google were able to hold court. As we rely more heavily on the Internet for our social and professional lives, those who run it will become the new emperors.

  This trend alarms many. Blaming the fact that ‘democracy and capitalism have both been hacked’, Al Gore predicts ‘the transformation of the global economy and the emergence of Earth Inc.’11

  But I’m not so sure. Google would not be the first company in history to be ambitious and creative, with megalomaniac tendencies. Companies like them are actually creating the freedom of choice and manoeuvre that limit the power of any single institution, including their own. We are unlikely ever to see again a company as powerful as the East India Company, which ruled much of Asia, funded a massive army and set the imperial agenda.

  Some of the new emperors will be NGOs. As power becomes less like a hierarchy and more like a spider web, new actors will fill some of the vacuum. The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF, formerly the World Wildlife Fund) has over 5 million members, and a budget three times that of the World Trade Organisation. Greenpeace has 2.8 million members, many more than any political party in the UK. Increasingly, such NGOs are punching at their weight, with advocacy arms and stronger coordination of lobbying and campaigning.

  Some of the new emperors will be mayors. The rebirth of the city state is a key feature of this new landscape. More than half of the world’s population live in cities, and the population of megacities has increased tenfold in forty years. By 2030, that figure will be 5 billion, or 60% of the population, and forty cities will have a population of over 10 million. By 2050, there will be more city-dwellers than the entire the population of the world in the 1990s.

  Many mayors – Sadiq Khan in London, Yury Luzhkov of Moscow, Wolfgang Schuster in Stuttgart – argue that the city is already the most effective government unit. Mayors may draw strength from helping to reduce the growing trust deficit in politics, being close enough to citizens to engage, but with increasing powers to shape lives. The hungry politician may choose municipal over national politics.

  Cities will compete in the way that countries do, and that city states used to. The Pearl River Delta in China would be a G20 member if it were a country. Our identities may become shaped by the city of residence more than the country of origin: look at New Yorkers, Londoners, Beirutis or Parisians. Already, cities are often ahead of governments on urban regeneration, citizen engagement, energy and transportation. Cities can succeed even in failed states. But no state succeeds without successful cities.

  How long before cities appoint their own diplomats, just like their Renaissance predecessors?

  The rise of the super-mayor presents other challenges. Like the early gentleman diplomats, many require their own wealth to succeed. The personal cost to Michael Bloomberg of his twelve years as New York mayor was in the region of $650 million. He flew aides at his expense, running up a $6 million bill. His estimated tab for a multiday trip to China, with aides and security in tow: $500,000. For the New York Times, ‘Mr Bloomberg’s all-expense-paid mayoralty was, depending on the vantage point, exhilarating (for his aides), infuriating (for his rivals) cost-saving (for his constituents) or selfless (for the beneficiaries of his largesse).’12 Maybe we are moving back towards the age of the public representative who can pay their own way. This might be superficially tempting, but it will make government more distant and impenetrable.

  Power is shifting, from west to east, north to south, and from traditional actors to newer ones. But not as fast or predictably as many suggest. And we need to be as vigilant in establishing checks and balances on the new emperors as the old ones.

  But more dramatic, and I would argue exciting, are the power shifts away from states to individuals. Power is diffusing. Power as we know it has been disrupted by individuals – the likes of Steve Jobs – just as it was in the past by the likes of Alexander the Great. And by innovations – by the integrated circuit as it was by the stirrup.

  This technology tsunami is changing the relationship between governments and citizens. As we have seen, this new hyper-connectivity reduces trust in traditional political and media elites, and empowers citizen commentators. We’re using these devices to become creators and distributors. YouTube has more video content uploaded in a single month than the three main US channels broadcast in their first sixty years. More photos were taken in 2013 than in the rest of history. The digital generation beams out its triumphs and humiliations, not caring who is watching. As marketers have long realised, people trust the voices of their peers more than they trust elites. Increased access to information gives citizens more power than ever before, and therefore governments less. MIT’s Moisés Naím characterises it not just as a shift in power but ‘The End of Power’.

  The generation now coming to positions of influence in much of the world is the first to have spent their entire career with the Internet. They will be even better prepared to shine a light into dark corners and comfort zones. They will get to positions of influence faster than any generation before them – but lose those positions faster too.

  This shift in power is a big deal. Our comfort zones are being disrupted. New ways of thinking and living are fundamentally changing what it means to be human. The transformation of how we meet our needs for security, dignity and community will shatter the political equilibrium, and haemorrhage power away from governments towards citizens.

  The printing press was the last innovation remotely comparable to the Internet in its ability to diffuse and spread knowledge. Like the Internet it reduced the entry barrier for access to information. As a result, as we’ve seen, it triggered the modern world.

  States will still be around for some time. We haven’t yet come up with a better idea. But they are becoming weaker and less trusted. Ironically, at a time when the world faces a more dramatic combination of change and challenge than ever before, we are overwhelmed by that change. At a time when we have the tools to react globally, we are failing to use them. We face massive global transition at a time when there is a lack of global leadership, and a growing realisation that we are leaderless. No one has a plan. We have not begun to adapt our institutions to the new realities.

  If we are witnessing the birth of the first truly global, connected civilisation, where are decisions to be taken to protect our basic human needs? The world is becoming less like a formal traditional British banquet and more like a Lebanese meze: unstructured, free, sometimes chaotic.

  The next fifty years are the most important in history. We are going to need to find ways to wing it intelligently. Or as Toy Story’s charismatic spaceman Buzz Lightyear puts it, ‘This isn’t flying, this is falling with style.’

  This is why diplomacy matters so much. These challenges are not just about the Internet, but about how information, and the power that goes with it, is distributed. Diplomats must help deliver the benefits of the digital century, while helping to ease its birth pangs. Statecraft does not get you far without states or craft. Ask the leaders of the forgotten empires of Byblos.

  Nowhere will this challenge be
more evident than in the future of work, and what that means for society. Technology has always changed the nature of the work we do. My ancestors were arrow-makers who would have had to dust off the equivalent of their CVs when gunpowder came along. The Industrial Revolution destroyed the job prospects for weavers. We are now much more likely to be employed for our brains than our brawn.

  The impact of this next phase of innovation is going to destroy jobs more quickly than we can create them, with huge implications for politics. In January 2014, The Economist sounded the alarm for the global labour market. Automation and robotics are driving the outsourcing of jobs in all sectors of the economy to developing countries. You are as threatened as a lawyer or sports commentator as you are on a car-assembly plant, camera film factory or security desk. Today, 47% of jobs in the US are at high risk.13 When computers can perform more complicated tasks more cheaply and effectively than humans, the public sector should also be quaking.

  We want this innovation to replace the work we don’t want to do. But we don’t want it to replace us altogether. We’ll need to find new ways to work. Since 2008, over 333,000 people in Britain alone have registered as self-employed.14 There will be push factors, as competition for jobs increases. And pull factors – more people will be attracted to the idea that they are masters of their own fate.

  Innovation should create new and better jobs, while farmers become office workers, secretaries become computer programmers, diplomats become waiters. But less dramatic transformations of the labour market have ruptured politics and societies in the past. The costs are always felt faster than the benefits. Inequality will grow. ‘Technology’s impact will feel like a tornado, hitting the rich world first, but eventually sweeping through poorer countries too’, The Economist concluded. ‘No government is prepared for it.’