Towards Connecting through Conflicting! Book Review - The Age of Unpeace: How Connectivity Causes Conflict by Mark Leonard

by Stephan Raab

Editors: Timoteo Cozzio & Jannis Gesemann

If there is one conclusion to be drawn from the Covid-19 pandemic, it is that we are connected through various, often conflicting worldviews. The “We” in this context describes various nations such as the USA, the European Union, or China. Simultaneously, worldviews can be understood through how such actors view their role in shaping and defining the global networks of connectivity, searching to set the guidelines for the future global world order. Contrary to the euphemistically promoted argument, that connectivity and interdependence will lead to more peace, in “The Age of Unpeace”, Mark Leonard argues that connecting contradictory worldviews more closely is the central factor tearing world regions more apart. 

A Critical Juncture for Connectivity or the Turning Point of Thinking about Globalisation

“There is no “top” to the World-Wide Web. You can look at it from many points of view.” The quote heading the first-ever website, created in 1991, welcomes the user to an age of digitisation, a world inhabited by billions of users each moment (Berners-Lee, 1991). Looking back to the 1990s, the euphoria and optimism of the decade are palpable. Remembering the historic pictures of people tearing down the Berlin Wall, protesting for freedom and democracy, one further recalls how European borders were gradually opened and abolished, opening not just windows but entire gates of opportunities. After the end of the Cold War, nothing seemed impossible - except for a future full of distrust, tensions and hardening fronts between neighboring European countries. In 2001, even one of the later protagonists of one such conflict, Vladimir Putin, was delivering a speech in the German Bundestag, partly even held in German, stating: “As for European integration, we not just support these processes, but we are looking to them with hope. We view them as a people who have learned the lesson of the Cold War and the peril of the ideology of occupation very well. But here, I think, it would be pertinent to add that Europe did not gain from that division either” (Putin, 2001). In light of current rising global tensions as well as war on the continent of Europe, this statement now rings rather hollow.

In the vein of the 90s euphoria, the author Mark Leonard founded the renowned think tank European Council on Foreign Affairs. Coming from a diverse European background, Leonard looked optimistically at the future when he published “Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century” (Leonard, 2005). Likewise, “The Age of Unpeace” was intended as “a plea for the defence of an open world” (Leonard, 2021, p. 171), yet, the historic moments of Brexit and the election of Trump in 2016 served as a critical juncture in his mind, forcing the conclusion: “The connections that knit the world together are also driving it apart” (ibid. p.3). Suddenly, the negative side effects of a world growing more aware of the differences between the members of the global community became visible. 

Bringing Together for Getting Apart - A Controversy in Connectivity 

During the 1990s, the Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells presented the concept of a “network society” (Castells, 1996), whereby societal actors’ search for being part of and claiming a distinct role in a network turned into a critical feature. In other words, the power of global actors, be they nation states, transnational corporations or cities of international importance - all managing “their internal contradictions and their external integration” (Brenner and Keil, 2014, p. 13) - depends on their networking skills. These international links have now been found to amplify not only positive, but negative forces as well. This additional dimension is revealed when one considers the societal impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic such as interrupted supply chains, fake news, and the polarisation of societies. Leonard states as much: “Unlike the virus which pits all of humanity against a disease, this new pandemic is being deliberately transmitted from human to human. It is not a biological force, but a set of toxic behaviours that are multiplying like a virus. The connections between people and countries are becoming weapons” (Leonard, 2021, p. 1). Leonard observes that instead of bringing diverse cultures and political systems together, the focus now lies on exploiting the weak points of networks, turning connectivity from something constructive into a hitherto unforeseen destructive force. 

But this observation raises the question where this conflict might come from. A possible answer is that, with rising interconnectedness, different regional and national societies become more aware of each other’s lifestyles. Already in the 19^th century, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called his time “the age of comparison”. Through means of increasing mobility and nascent modern mass media, suddenly - and in contrast to local hierarchies - various cultures could be experienced and compared at the same time. Nietzsche postulated that consequently, drawing direct comparisons could leave people with a feeling of deficit, making them painfully aware of their lifestyles’ comparative lack of comfort, leisure, or opportunity. (Nietzsche, 1910, 38ff.). This echoes the ideas of French philosopher René Girard, nicknamed “the prophet of envy”, who theorised that people learn and develop their identity by imitating others in a kind of mimetic process: “Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires” (Girard, 1988, p. 122). Building on that learning contains certain norms and values, we search to follow in order to become what we want or think we should ideally be. Those curricula in the age of connectivity are defined by the principles of German entrepreneur Werner von Siemens, arguing that whoever will own the standards, those will be the owners of the market. In other words, learning is about change and who sets the normative standards decides upon the direction into what people and societies as a whole will be striving for in the future. 

 On the Move, on the Rise - Symptoms and Challenges of Connectivity

Looking from a hypothetical extraterrestrial perspective, it seems there might be more that unites the global community than dividing it. “Globalization literally has strung us together: 64 million kilometers of highways, 2 million kilometers of pipelines, 1.2 million kilometers of railways and 750.000 kilometers of undersea internet cables. By contrast, there are just 250.000 kilometers of international borders dividing us” (Leonard, 2021, p. 10). As the Internet became accessible for more and more parts of society, tremendous hopes were associated with that development; digitisation was thought to promote democratisation and contribute to the pacification of global conflicts. However, Leonard disproves this assumption by showing that connectivity has changed the patterns of conflicts without extinguishing them. Therefore, considering the networks spanning the globe, a close reading of the book encourages the reader to rethink the concept of war. Whereas the old paradigm of war describes two sovereign states declaring, waging, and ending a war, nowadays - keeping in mind the powers of nuclear weapons - such conventional wars have become unfathomable and extremely cost intensive. Nowadays, the clear front of two foes fighting each other has become mostly obsolete. Modern wars are usually not fought on the battlefield anymore, but in cyberspace or through connectivity war. More than that, drones such as deployed in Afghanistan or the famous Chinese wolf warriors shape the future of warfare. Instead of body bags and corpses, the costs of war and conflict are paid by dependence that arises as a result of connectivity. The symptoms of such conflict are to be found in digitisation, the rise of China, and migration. Modern war is fought with the precision of a surgeon. Instead of massive destruction, certain vulnerable points are attacked, proclaiming an unbloody form of warfare. In this context, the war in Ukraine appears like a strange exemption, combining both conventional and hybrid warfare. While on the one hand there are troops on the ground fighting each other, on the other hand fake news and disinformation determine the perception of current events. Obviously, tradewars for instance have existed long before globalisation, nevertheless, it has never been easier to harm another country by weakening its economy at such low costs.. This also applies to attacking critical infrastructure such as hospitals and power plants through hacking, which could imply energy shortages, food shortages, and the loss of lives at low expenses (ibid. p.6).

Starting with the buzzword digitisation, the book appeals to the “Collingridge dilemma” of technology. On the one side, there is an information problem, on the other side, there is a power problem. According to the information problem, when a new technology is introduced, the impacts and consequences of the technology cannot be foreseen. Once the technology is established in the mainstream, more reliable information about its consequences can be provided, yet the power problem states that it is now too late to effectively control the specifications and use of the technology; this is easier to do at its introduction. Following up on this reasoning, one may say that policymakers are facing a pacing problem, anxious to act at the correct point in time to set adequate legal standards. For a technology not to turn from a tool into a weapon, they must act when there is enough information available about it, but before it becomes entrenched and immutable (Collingridge, 1982). When technology and cutting-edge artificial intelligence takes control of more and more decisions, Leonard does not see progress but leap backward to the times of the Oracle of Delphi, with humans left clueless, without the knowledge to interpret the predictions produced by intelligent machines (Leonard, 2005, p. 76).

As visiting scholar at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, the author discusses the rise of China and the connectivity endeavours manifested in the Belt and Road Initiative. After the end of the Cold War, the West perceived China as a country in its transition of “becoming sameness”, which was not yet a democracy, but on its way to becoming one. However, by the time the effects of the pandemic became visible, this had long turned into perceiving China as an “other”, something at odds with and even hostile to democratic systems (Meinhof, 2020, 244f.). China is considered an expert in networking, making use of financial aid to render other countries and regions dependent on China through debt policy. Similarly, while the early days of the Internet were dominated by US policy and private actors, nowadays an ever more growing part of the digital world is turning Chinese, leading to a convergence and intensifying competition (Leonhard, 2005, p. 48). “Many countries have understood that if they cannot be independent, the next best thing is to make their partners dependent on them. If all roads lead to Rome, countries are best served to become Rome'' (ibid. p.111). The rising tension with China affects the European Union as well. Hungary is trying to become a hub for Chinese investment in Central and Eastern Europe, preferring to be a locus of Chinese activity rather than part of the wider periphery of Europe (ibid. p.113)

Eventually, drawing on the example of the migration influx of 2015, flows of people are posted as a symptom of the fragilities of connectivity. Some countries are considered “Generators” of migrations, such as Libya, who has implemented a profitable model of keeping migrants away from the European continent in exchange for monetary compensation. Other countries, such as China or India can be considered “New Colonialists”, who make use of their diaspora to gain access to markets, technology, and knowledge beyond their borders. A third category is defined as “Go-Betweens”, who, like Turkey, use refugees in their country as a weapon for extracting certain concessions from the European Union (ibid. p.120f.). Here, the mobility of people is used as a weapon for enforcing certain national interests against other regions and global actors.

Where to Connect and Why - The Identity of Global Actors in a World of Networks

Looking upon a globally interconnected world requires a new worldview. Different from what is presented in old simulation games, global actors do not move like tokens on a chessboard, but rather act as central figures in a network of possibilities and potential vulnerabilities. Looking upon a satellite image of the world at night, every bright dot stands for several human connections. Actions within these networks can be described according to the following features: Centrality is about deciding who is in the centre of the network; Gatekeeping defines who is empowered to decide who will be part of the network and who will not; Data-mining concedes the power to anticipate reactions, while subversion can force a change of behaviour somewhere else. Most essential is the power of rule-making, denoting who is authorised to set the standards to be applicable within the system. Finally, independence-seeking deals with resilience, how to make your own system less fragile to foreign influences (ibid. p.139ff.). Consequently, the challenge facing competitors consists less in figuring out what kind of weapons their rivals might use, but in gaining an understanding of how those actors think about the world (ibid. p.146). Herein, Leonard elaborates three major perspectives for what he calls “empires of connectivity”, referring to the USA, the European Union and China, as shown in the table below. 

	EU	China	USA
Philosophy	Normative	Relational	Instrumental
Power Indicator	Wellbeing of EU consumers and companies	Number of ties and centrality	Capacity (GDP, military, tech)
Currency	Rules	Relationships	Resources
Precautionary Principles	Banning GMOsGDPR regulation	Pre-crime arrestsSocial Scoring	Preventive warGuardian of Global Order

(Leonard 2021 p.164)

Regarding traditional superpowers, he argues that the USA considers power and influence mostly in terms of hard power, referring to technology and military power. Their role consists in serving as gatekeeper to define who is part of the democratic free world and who is not (ibid. p.149f.). In contrast to this, China is depicted as an actor focussing mostly on soft power relations. Instead of focussing on hard power and capacities, China perceives its influence according to the qualities of its relations with other countries, building on Confucianism harmony (ibid. p. 151ff.). Eventually, the European Union - regarded as too weak in military power - is considered as a normative power. Building on the precautionary principle, the European Union searches to influence through setting standards for trade and technology (ibid. p. 160). The “fourth world” is located between these blocks, leaving actors to attempt to navigate their worldviews between the big three.

A New Outlook into an Old Insight - The Need to Rethink Networks

At the end of this virtual voyage around the world, the “The Age of Unpeace” provides one central message: “We have developed technology which give us the power of Gods, but more than a master builder, a therapist is needed to help us cure to accept who we are!” (ibid. p. 17). Due to an ever-increasing interconnectedness of cultures, political systems, the global community, and its worldviews are brought steadily closer together. During this process, people and regions become aware of each other, providing opportunities for comparison, which bear the potential to lead to conflicts. Put differently, the book lays bare that connecting does not only reveal what there might be in common, but also what might be different - in a negative and in a positive sense. 

“The Age of Unpeace” could be misread as gloomy prophecy of a world in disorder, searching desperately for order that paradoxically becomes harder to achieve the more it organises. Conversely, in its conclusion, a whole chapter is provided that gives advice on how to deal with connectivity. Positive effects of globalisation are acknowledged by the author, who goes further, including an appeal to cultivate consciousness about the dependencies and fragilities created through a global system of interconnectedness. Being part of a network, ideally, will force us to reconsider who we are and who we want to be in the future. Reflecting upon these precise questions, several contexts are explained that provide an understanding of what makes the world turn round, searching for methods to de-weaponise connectivity. New challenges are about to arise in an ever more complex world that keeps on changing swiftly. Now seems the time to connect (or reconnect) incongruent mindsets, because in dealing with change, it is not the self-proclaimed strongest or smartest players who write the rules, but rather those who are open to change. In adapting to and growing with global change, they might be the central players in defining the standards and codes of conduct in the future of connectivity.

References

Berners-Lee, T. (1991): The first Website . Available at http://​info.cern.ch​/​hypertext/​DataSources/​Top.html.

Brenner, N. and Keil, R. (2014) ‘From Global Cities to globalized Urbanisation’, Globalism: Journal of Culture, Politics and Innovation, vol. 3, pp. 1–17.

Castells, M. (1996) The Rise of the Network Society, Hoboken, Blackwell Publishers.

Collingridge, D. (1982) The Social Control of Technology., London, St. Martin's Press.

Girard, R. (1988) ‘Generative Scapegoating’, in Hammerton-Kelly, R. (ed) Violent Origins: Walter Burkert, René Girard, and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation,, Stanford, Stanford University Press, pp. 73–145.

Leonard, M. (2021) The Age of Unpeace-How Connectivity causes conflict, London, Bantam Press.

Leonard, M. (2005) Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century, Washington D.C., Fourth Estate.

Meinhof, M. (2020) ‘Das Virus der Anderen. Diskursive Ausschlussdynamiken und der neue Orientalismus im frühen Diskurs über Covid-19’, in Heidingsfelder, M: Lehmann, M. (ed) Corona: Weltgesellschaft im Ausnahmezustand?, Weilerswist-Metternich, Velbrück Wissenschaft, pp. 242–262.

Nietzsche, F. (1910) Human, all too human , London, T. N. FOULIS. Available at https://​digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu​/​main/​b20790001_​v_​1_​B000773557.pdf.

Putin, V. (2001) Speech in the Bundestag of the Federal Republic of Germany . Available at http://​en.kremlin.ru​/​events/​president/​transcripts/​21340.