U.S. Institute of Peace PeaceWatch

Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution in the Information Age

The Institute's recent 'Virtual Diplomacy' conference explored the impact of the global information revolution on nations, institutions, and communities.

Above: Former secretary of state George Shultz addresses the "Virtual Diplomacy" conference. Above: More than 20 companies exhibited new information technologies at the conference.

he new information technologies are transforming international relations, opening up new possibilities for conflict prevention, management, and resolution. But along with these new possibilities come major challenges, says Joseph Duffey, director of the U.S. Information Agency. We in the United States face the need to transform our institutions--"which grew up in another time," during the Cold War--so that they are appropriate not just for the post-Cold War world, Duffey notes, but for "the next stage of history." Richard H. Solomon, president of the U.S. Institute of Peace agrees. He cautions, however, that institutional resistance to new ways of doing business remains a major barrier to exploring the full potential of today's emerging technologies of communication and information processing.

Duffey and Solomon were two of almost 50 experts in international affairs and information technologies who discussed the impact of the global information revolution on nations, institutions, and communities worldwide at the Institute of Peace's recent "Virtual Diplomacy" conference. The event was held April 1 and 2 in Washington, D.C. Speakers included former secretary of state George Shultz (see Keynote Speakers), Walter Wriston, former chairman and CEO of Citicorp (see Keynote Speakers), Chester Crocker, Institute board chairman and specialist in African affairs, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, author of The End of the Nation-State and director of the international department in France's Office of the Budget, Gordon Adams, associate director for national security and international affairs at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, David Gergen of the U.S. News and World Report (see Mass Media), Anita Jones, director of defense research and engineering at the U.S. Department of Defense, Robert Kahn, president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, and many others.

Conference participants included diplomats, government officials, specialists in information technologies, academics, journalists, students, and representatives of business, industry, and international and nongovernmental organizations. The event was conceived and organized by Sheryl Brown, director of the Institute's Office of Communications, Margarita Studemeister, director of the Jeannette Rankin Library Program, and Bob Schmitt, information systems manager.

In his opening remarks to conference participants, Solomon noted that the Institute designed the "Virtual Diplomacy" conference to catalyze new thinking about the way emerging technologies are changing the character of the international system and opening up new possibilities for managing conflict by political rather than military means. (For a discussion of the uses of information technologies in conflict prevention, management, and resolution, see Information Technologies.)

End of the Nation-State?

Jean-Marie Guéhenno argued that we now live in an electronically interlinked world where diplomats will have to manage the interface between non-territorial and territorial functions of the state. Diplomats are wedded to territory and territorial issues--"they love to work with maps"--but they are ill-equipped to deal in a world where the currency of international relations is increasingly information--"which can no longer be hoarded." Its value lies entirely in being exchanged because "to be powerful is to be in contact."

Further challenges to state sovereignty are evident in the worldwide expansion of markets--global investment stocks increased fourfold in number from 1985 to 1995, noted Guéhenno. Increased globalization of markets is not only blurring distinctions between national and international issues, but it also is weakening the ability of the state to tax, which has been the traditional basis of its power, he said. Complicating this development, the new global marketplace is home to powerful non-state actors who are no longer clearly associated with territory. These actors operate according to their own norms, which can be in direct conflict with the norms of states and which are sanctioned by the marketplace. These actors may pose one of the most serious challenges to state sovereignty, Guéhenno said.

While some speakers agreed that not just the state, but physical communities in general are mattering less as electronic or "virtual" communities grow in cyberspace, Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias of Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies downplayed such a notion. "People want to live in this country," he said. "If borders don't mean anything, why do people risk their lives to get across that [U.S.] border?" And ironically, high tech venture capitalists themselves are eager to share the same physical turf, as evidenced in the Sand Hill area of California's Silicon Valley where so many have their offices. The physical closeness there gives them access, influence, and thus power, Penzias said.

Networks and Development

Other speakers pointed out that information technologies give many new groups and individuals platforms from which to speak to the world, and thus they are helping to spread democracy. Francis Fukuyama, author of Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity and professor of public policy at George Mason University, agreed that the information revolution is good for both democracy and for economic development, but he added some significant caveats. The new technologies may provide us with "too much civil society," he cautioned, resulting in too many interest groups deadlocked in paralysis. And while information technologies will enable some states and cultures to leapfrog over intermediate stages of industrial development to become serious economic players globally, it's already clear that they also are contributing to a widening gap between agricultural and information-based societies and the further maldistribution of incomes around the world, Fukuyama said.

Indeed, the great surge in economic growth globally is serving "the nimble and the educated, not the poor," said Ismail Serageldin of the World Bank. Inequality is on the rise, he noted, adding that, for example, those in the top 20 percent income bracket worldwide today receive 83 percent of world income, while those in the bottom 20 percent receive 1.4 percent of world income. But the well-off nations and people of the world are increasingly disengaging from the struggles of the poor, Serageldin said. Diplomats need to devote themselves "daily" to meeting the challenges of hunger and poverty.

John Gage, director of the science office at Sun Microsystems, seconded Serageldin's concerns about unequal access to and benefit from the new technologies. "Fifty percent of today's human beings will never make a phone call," he said.

Hierarchy vs. Rapid Response

While the problems facing the world require concerted attention and action, and while there is some hope that the new technologies can aid in this challenge, the decision to tackle such problems has to be made by individuals and societies, conference speakers said. And the ways in which we must organize ourselves to address these and other problems is already changing. For example, the new technologies--because they deliver information fast, provide easy access to it, and enable rapid response times--are "flattening" the decision-making processes in many organizations, thus weakening hierarchical institutions and redistributing power "downward."

Even the U.S. military needs to change if it is to function at optimal capacity in the information age, said Lt. Gen. Anthony Zinni of the U.S. Marine Corps. "Decision making in the [U.S.] military takes too long," he said. "We have to be able to act faster, and that means making decisions at lower levels, . . . which will require restructuring."

Diplomacy and Cyberspace

Governments have been slow to enter cyberspace, conference speakers agreed. John Negroponte, a former ambassador and foreign career foreign service officer with the U.S. Department of State, said budget constraints will hinder U.S. efforts to go on-line in remote consular posts around the world. Gordon Smith, deputy foreign minister at Canada's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, said that although Canada has invested substantial resources to link up its diplomatic missions abroad electronically, much remains to be done. "For the transition to a technologically savvy diplomatic corps to work, it must be made a managerial priority. Only 10 percent of the challenge is technical. The rest lies in an organization's culture, human resource priorities, and operating procedures." (This point was explored at the Institute's conference on "Managing Communications" held in June 1996. See the Institute's Special Report on Managing Communications: Lessons from Interventions in Africa, April 1997. )

Smith said that international relations are no longer the sole purview of states and diplomats. "NGOs, the private sector, and many individuals have distinct international interests and are contributing to the emergence of a global civil society," he said. "The result is that governments must engage non-state players in a more substantive way than is currently the case." Smith concluded by offering a vision of the future in which "hybrid, just-in-time virtual teams" drawn widely from the diplomatic and NGO communities will become the norm in addressing international crises.

The "Virtual Diplomacy" conference was part of an ongoing Institute special project that explores--via grants, conferences, and other activities--how information and communications technologies are altering the practice of international relations and offering new opportunities for international conflict management. The project involves working with NGOs, government officials, academics, the media, the military, the business community, foundations, and related groups. For background and updates on the "Virtual Diplomacy" conference and follow-up reports, watch our web site at: www.usip.org.

More photos from the 'Virtual Diplomacy' conference.

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