Reason #2: Free Global Communication and Social Networking
Posted on May 17th, 2009 in Guest bloggers, Nuclear non-proliferation |
Our Nuclear-Free Opportunity: Top Ten Reasons Why a World Free of Nuclear Weapons is Now Achievable
by Nathan Pyles
Internet Cafe Hanoi, Vietnam (Photo: AFP)
At the height of the Cold War my father went to Vietnam in the first of many waves of U.S. servicemen. In 1965 international telephone service was unreliable and incredibly expensive. While he wrote letters home daily, I remember him calling only twice. His miraculous calls sent me and my brothers bouncing around our mother impatiently waiting our turn.
Last year while our daughter was studying in Asia, my wife’s and my weekly high point was our Skype video chat. It was free and easier than dialing a phone. My daughter and her friends are more than the first internet generation – they are a nascent global generation. Of her nearly two hundred Facebook friends, nearly half are from countries other than the U.S.
All these communication advancements in less than two generations. The number of transnational Facebook or Linked-In relationships will only grow. Business and science colleagues work daily on international projects in real time using instant messaging to exchange quick thoughts and gather immediate feedback. Gamers from every country, between plotting gory headshots, are pausing long enough to build global friendships.
Free instant global communication is more than just a convenience or a cost savings. It is a sledgehammer to our cultural and national boundaries. Our lives are already laced with virtual artifacts from this splintering blow. A surprised world turned to YouTube to witness candidate Obama win a most unlikely victory, won in part by his supporters’ viral creativity. Susan Boyle of Scotland is being cheered on by over 100 million people from every country in a four minute real-life Rocky recreation. Our shared experiences are now global, not just national, not just local.
Increased transnational exchanges, while also exposing our darker undersides, do far more to dissolve barriers and perceived differences. So much so that I’m going out on a limb with a prediction – that Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, will one day receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Berners-Lee’s innovation and decision to make web access unfettered and free, has been a diplomatic tsunami. The web and social networking have democratized foreign relations. Affordable travel brings us into more frequent international contact – free global communication makes it easy for these relationships to last.
Meanwhile, there are policy makers within the nuclear weapons states who continue to make the case that we are somehow made safer by wielding weapons which can annihilate us at any time. While they talk targeting strategies, counterforce versus countervalue, and extended deterrence – global communication technologies are racing ahead of them obliterating borders and eroding national differences. These nuclear proponents seem oblivious to how these communication innovations are rapidly remaking our social, economic, and political worlds. Their worldviews still shaped as if the Cold War were a current event.
Nearly 180 nations already get it. These nations have renounced nuclear weapons and any attempt to acquire them. Several South American nations abandoned their fledgling nuclear weapons programs years ago. Just this spring the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone entered into force with five more nations agreeing to forever forgo nuclear weapons. South Africa once achieved nuclear capability and subsequently dismantled both their warheads and their nuclear weapons program. And in doing so, they demonstrated to others that the nuclear genie can indeed be coaxed back into its bottle when accompanied by genuine political will.
It is the nuclear weapons states who are now the risk-taking minority. To have any chance of marshalling global consensus for effective sanctions to halt North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, the current nuclear weapons states must simultaneously turn their sights on their own nuclear arsenals.
The nuclear weapons states will need to lead by example if we are to finally halt proliferation and reduce our nuclear risks.
This is the third post by guest blogger Nathan Pyles in a 12 part series on “Our Nuclear-Free Opportunity”.
This article is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
4 Responses
I really don’t get what you’re saying here. I’ve read it several times and I’m just not seeing an argument that has anything to do with nuclear weapons, although you’re making some good points about the proliferation of internet-based communications in the developed parts of the world.
First of all, the premise of your entry’s title doesn’t pass the reality test. Global communication (at least the way you’re defining it, which seems to be “the internet”) is not “free” in any sense. Want to communicate globally on the internet? That costs money! You either access the net through an internet service provider (ISP) that you pay for the service (for example, my cable company, to which I pay $45 a month for broadband), or you get to it from a public computer/ISP arrangement (as in a public library) in which case, someone else is paying for it somewhere down the line (usually through state and local taxes), even if you’re not forking over cash yourself. You also need a computer or compatible hardware device, suitable telecommunications infrastructure, and consistent electricity. These are all complete gimmes in most parts of the U.S., Western Europe, and developed Asia, but not so everywhere. (And this presupposes that you don’t live in a country where your government heavily filters or censors the content you are able to view online, as China does, for example, in which case your internet access is neither “free” nor “free” in both senses of the word.)
Well, anyway. I buy that for the 23.8% of the world’s population that has regular internet access, online communication is indeed breaking down national and cultural barriers, at least between those individuals who can communicate in some semblance of the same language (which for us in the U.S. means “foreigners who can type in English”). I’ve seen this happen in my own life and I celebrate it as a positive development.
And, I also accept that “affordable travel brings us into more frequent international contact.” Well, that is, for those who do find it affordable, that is. Before the economic crisis that mostly meant “the rich,” thanks to the surge in travel costs associated with the skyrocketing price of oil; after the economic crisis, well, that still means “the rich” since everyone else is coping with layoffs, desperately searching for a new job, and saving to pay their health insurance premiums instead of jetting off to Jakarta for a cultural exchange. (Most in Jakarta, meanwhile, never could afford the trip to begin with.)
OK, so barriers are breaking down and reasonably well-off people with consistent internet access are now aware of a much wider world than they were before. What does this have to do with nuclear weapons? I’m interpreting that you’re asserting that because of this phenomenon, the feasibility of armed conflict between states is dropping or has dropped to the point where nuclear weapons, specifically, can (and therefore should) go away.
You state: “Meanwhile, there are policy makers within the nuclear weapons states who continue to make the case that we are somehow made safer by wielding weapons which can annihilate us at any time.” Presumably what you’re getting at is that we are instead made safer by 23.8% of the world having internet access and Facebook friends in other countries. If we’re all friends, we’ll never fight; if we’ll never fight, weapons of global reach are redundant. But I think you’re trying to prematurely generalize the experiences of a well-off few to a global trend. Maybe if 85% of the world (I’d settle for 50%!) were regularly using the internet and experiencing the new global nirvana of international/intercultural blending to which you refer, we’d be there, but what I really think you’re illustrating is the massive gap between those who have this and those who don’t.
I do agree that the revolution in global communications capacity is nothing short of amazing. When I was a kid my father served two cruises on an aircraft carrier and we got occasional letters, very seldom phone calls; most communications was through telegraph, believe it or not (and this was in the early 1980s). Now he could send email, chat on Skype or IM, and share digital photos from his deployments - but, then, he can do that because the U.S. Navy is paying for it.
I did not connect the dots very well. I’ll try again. I should have used affordable or readily accessible internet access instead of free.
Our global social and economic activity, accelerated by affordable communication technology, is simply moving much faster than our dated nuclear weapons policies which continue to threaten each other’s existence. It is as though we are all at a dinner party saying nice things and while sharing food and dishes with our right hands - our left hands still hold a loaded gun to the others’ temple. It makes for an awkward, and unnecessarily risky, dinner.
Canada is currently our largest trading partner. China is now our second largest trading partner, and gaining fast. My guess (hope?) is we never programmed Quebec as a potential nuclear weapon target. Why not? Conversely, is the Shanghai of today more deserving of a nuclear target designation than Quebec? Why?
As global trade, social interactions and exchanges increase - our cultural barriers and differences diminish. The U.S. and Canada used to maintain rival naval fleets in the Great Lakes. As the countries relations grew closer, and with mutual assurances reinforced by a treaty, these naval forces were long ago no longer necessary. Our defense and weapons policies should change as our relationships change.
With these accelerating global exchanges, and the shift from the ideological driven governments of China and Russia, the level of threat posed by our former arch enemies has become more, let’s say, Canadian, and rather less Stalin-ish. Does our present nuclear weapons policy acknowledge this seismic shift in our relationships? Or is our policy still more reflective of a carryover policy from when both Moscow and Beijing promoted a real ideological challenge to the free world?
I am not arguing that there remain no threats and no need for national defenses. I am arguing that in today’s world of relatively free economic and social exchange, there are no threats for which nuclear weapons would be the required or the appropriate response.
I’m late in responding to this. Nathan, your clarifications help quite a bit, especially your second paragraph. That’s an argument I can get next to.
I do still get hung up on:
“I am arguing that in today’s world of relatively free economic and social exchange, there are no threats for which nuclear weapons would be the required or the appropriate response.”
No threats for which nuclear weapons would be required or appropriate is a “never” argument; essentially you’re saying that X could never happen, where X is a military situation best resolved by applying nuclear weaponry. “Never” arguments (like “always” arguments) need rigorous analytical scrutiny to stand.
Now, one argument that you could make here (and you may be planning to make it in later posts) is that U.S. conventional weaponry has advanced to the point where we have global stike capability without needing nuclear munitions. That’s probably true. I’m willing to bet (although I do not know) that we can probably apply non-nuclear destructive power to just about any place on the earth’s surface that we deem necessary, enough to functionally defeat (if not physically destroy) whatever we’re aiming at. In fact, there definitely are some conventional bombs and munitions that produce a destructive yield greater than some nuclear bombs.
I still struggle with this question of “never.” I’ll need to think about it a bit to see if I can come up with a plausible situation in which nuclear response would be appropriate. The obvious one is an all-out attack by Russia on the U.S., but that’s incredibly unlikely for dozens of reasons that you could probably point out more clearly than I can. I don’t know if there’s something else. There might not be. I’ll think about it.
Richard Cohen made a strong case today in NYT for the ‘evolutionary’ political consequences of the wired world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/opinion/25iht-edcohen.html?_r=1&ref=opinion