About Our Connected Future, 4: Policy Transition from Entities to RELATIONS Between Entities

Princeton professor Ann-Marie Slaughter, former director of policy planning at the US State Department, applies network theory to international relations in the post-cold war world. Her important book “The Chess-Board & The Web – Strategies of Connection in a Networked World”  about that has been published March 21, 2017 by Yale University Press. And after pre-ordering it reached me June 30. To explain the importance of this book (which at last gives an up-to-date view to non geeks on the issues I follow) I will quote what editor of NL quality newspaper NRC and nrc.nl Wouter van Noort wrote about this book: , see https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2017/06/30/internet-verandert-de-essentie-van-veiligheid-11374271-a1565151 “Internet vraagt om nieuwe verdediging” (paper version).

================ In the Dutch language (NL)==Quote of Wouter van Noort==

Een maatschappij die zo afhankelijk is van netwerken vereist een andere manier van denken over veiligheid en stabiliteit dan de analoge samenleving. „De wereld is geen schaakbord meer”, argumenteert de Amerikaanse politicologe Anne-Marie Slaughter in haar boek The Chessboard and the Web (2017). Traditioneel waren volgens haar internationale conflicten vergelijkbaar met een schaakbord, met netjes afgebakende zwart-witte vlakjes. „Daarop konden staatsmannen hun machtspolitiek en grootse strategieën uitspelen”, schrijft ze. Het verloop van de strijd was enigszins voorspelbaar, de spelers grotendeels bekend.

Niet meer. De vlakjes van het schaakbord zijn vervaagd, oude spelers krijgen concurrentie van een bonte verzameling hackers, activisten, criminelen en andere nieuwkomers.

Essentiële vragen blijven onbeantwoord. Wie zit er achter deze hack? Hoe voorkom je deze ontwrichting? Hoe vergeld je zoiets? Het ordelijke schaakbord is veranderd in een real time, chaotisch en complex wereldwijd netwerk waarin elke actie een onverwachte reactie teweegbrengt.

De oude benadering van veiligheid vertrouwde op muren, wachttorens, landsgrenzen en firewalls. Die blijken continu zo lek als een mandje.

Slaughter roept beleidsmakers op tot een „network mindset”. Zij moeten zich veel meer verdiepen in de unieke wiskundige eigenschappen van netwerken in plaats van te vertrouwen op hun analoge intuïtie. Ze ziet meer in de logica van internet dan in de logica van het schaakbord: eerder denken in verbindingen dan in afbakeningen. Decentraal georganiseerd in plaats van centraal.

Dat zijn zeer abstracte gedachten. Hoe de concrete digitale verdediging van landen, bedrijven en haventerminals eruit moet zien, is nog lang niet helder. Maar dát er iets drastisch moet veranderen in het netwerktijdperk, wordt met elke grote cyberaanval duidelijker.

================= end of NL quote====== start of partial translation======

Slaughter call on policy makers to acquire a “Network Mindset”. They must study the unique mathematical characteristics and functions of network ((dynamics)) more in depht, instead of relying on their analog intuition. She has more confidence in the logic of internet than in the logic of the chessboard: thinking more in terms of CONNECTIONS than in terms of demarcations/boundaries. De-centrally organized instead of centrally.

 

Those are very abstract thoughts. What the practical digital defense of countries, companies and habor-terminals should look like is still far from clear. But that something ((mindset)) should be changed in a drastic way in THE NETWORK AGE becomes more clear with every cyberattack.

=============== end of quote translation============================

This book is based on Ann-Marie’s “Henry L. Stimson Lectures” in November 2015:

I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlVf5Fo80jo&t=31s

II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGj8dQJHZjs

III https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhUwP87cqGQ

Synopsis of this book:

From a renowned foreign-policy expert, a new paradigm for strategy in the twenty-first century

In 1961, Thomas Schelling’s The Strategy of Conflict used game theory to radically reenvision the U.S.-Soviet relationship and establish the basis of international relations for the rest of the Cold War. Now, Anne-Marie Slaughter—one of Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers from 2009 to 2012, and the first woman to serve as director of the State Department Office of Policy Planning—applies network theory to develop a new set of strategies for the post-Cold War world. While chessboard-style competitive relationships still exist—U.S.-Iranian relations, for example—many other situations demand that we look not at individual entities but at their links to one another.*) We must learn to understand, shape, and build on those connections.
 
Concise and accessible, based on real-world situations, on a lucid understanding of network science, and on a clear taxonomy of strategies, this will be a go-to resource for anyone looking for a new way to think about strategy in politics or business.

About the author:

Anne-Marie Slaughter is President and CEO of New America, former Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department, and former Dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Her previous books include A New World Order and Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family, named one of the best books of 2015 by the Washington Post, the Economist, and NPR. She lives in Princeton, NJ.

*) In my humble opinion the crux of her geopolitical vision marks a transition from: focussing at Nodes/Centres/area’s  to: looking at Links/Relation/flows. Please be aware that these are and always have been each others DUAL. Like light & dark, fire & water. As described in Genesis and many other religious core texts.

jaap van till, TheConnectivist