[Mb-civic] From 'Connectedness' to Conflict - David Ignatius - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

 From 'Connectedness' to Conflict

By David Ignatius
Wednesday, February 22, 2006; A15

One of the baseline assumptions of U.S. foreign policy is that 
"connectedness" is a good thing. Linkage to the global economy fosters 
the growth of democracy and free markets, the theory goes, and that in 
turn creates the conditions for stability and security. But if that's 
true, why is an increasingly "connected" world such a mess?

This paradox of the 21st century is confounding the Bush 
administration's hopes for democratization in the Middle East. It turns 
out that in Iraq, Iran, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and perhaps 
nations yet to come, the growth of democracy and technology has had the 
effect of enfranchising pre-modern political movements -- ones linked to 
religious sects, ethnic minorities and tribes. This trend astonishes 
Westerners who meet with Arab modernizers at events such as the World 
Economic Forum or see the skyscrapers of Dubai and think the world is 
coming our way.

Among military strategists, the bible of connectedness is a book called 
"The Pentagon's New Map," by Thomas P.M. Barnett. He argues that the 
world today is divided between an "integrating core" of orderly 
commerce, stretching from America and Europe across to China and India, 
and a "non-integrating gap," which is his shorthand for the messy rest 
of the world. The task of U.S. foreign policy is to connect the two. 
Thomas Friedman's influential book, "The World Is Flat," argues that 
technology is driving this process of integration, and that it's 
creating a richer, smarter global community.

So why does the world feel so chaotic? Why is there a growing sense 
that, as Francis Fukuyama put it in a provocative essay in last Sunday's 
New York Times Magazine, "More democracy will mean more alienation, 
radicalization and -- yes, unfortunately -- terrorism"? I have been 
discussing this conundrum with friends, and I've heard two interesting 
theories worth sharing.

The first comes from Raja Sidawi, a Syrian businessman who owns 
Petroleum Intelligence Weekly and is one of the most astute analysts of 
the Arab world I know. He argues that Barnett misses the fact that as 
elites around the world become more connected with the global economy, 
they become more disconnected from their own cultures and political 
systems. The local elites "lose touch with what's going on around them," 
opening up a vacuum that is filled by religious parties and sectarian 
groups, Sidawi contends. The modernizers think they are plugging their 
nations into the global economy, but what's also happening is that they 
are unplugging themselves politically at home.

Sidawi's theory -- that connectedness produces a political disconnect -- 
helps explain some of what we see in the Middle East. Take the case of 
Iran: A visitor to Tehran in 1975 would have thought the country was 
rushing toward the First World. The Iranian elite looked and talked just 
like the Western bankers, business executives and political leaders who 
were embracing the shah's modernizing regime. And yet a few years later, 
that image of connectedness had been shattered by Ayatollah Ruhollah 
Khomeini's Islamic revolution, whose aftershocks still rumble across the 
region. The Iranian modernizers had lost touch with the masses. That 
process has been repeated in Iraq, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority 
-- where the secular elites who talked the West's line have proved to be 
politically weak.

A second explanation of the connectedness paradox comes from Charles M. 
McLean, who runs a trend-analysis company called Denver Research Group 
Inc. (I wrote a 2004 column called "Google With Judgment" that explained 
how his company samples thousands of online sources to assess where 
global opinion is heading.) I asked McLean last week if he could explain 
the latest explosion of rage in our connected world -- namely the 
violent Islamic reaction to Danish cartoon images of the prophet Muhammad.

McLean argues that the Internet is a "rage enabler." By providing 
instant, persistent, real-time stimuli, the new technology takes anger 
to a higher level. "Rage needs to be fed or stimulated continually to 
build or maintain it," he explains. The Internet provides that 
instantaneous, persistent poke in the eye. What's more, it provides an 
environment in which enraged people can gather at cause-centered Web 
sites and make themselves even angrier. The technology, McLean notes, 
"eliminates the opportunity for filtering or rage-dissipating 
communications to intrude." I think McLean is right. And you don't have 
to travel to Cairo to see how the Internet fuels rage and poisons 
reasoned debate. Just take a tour of the American blogosphere.

The connected world is inescapable, like the global economy itself. But 
if we can begin to understand how it undermines political stability -- 
how it can separate elites from masses, and how it can enhance rage 
rather than reason -- then perhaps we will have a better chance of 
restabilizing a very disorderly world.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/21/AR2006022101148.html?nav=hcmodule
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