The Challenge of Global Commons and Flows for US Power

The Perils of Missing the Human Domain

Mika Aaltola, Juha Käpylä

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138270893
• eBook ISBN: 9781317039211
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Geopolitics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Global commons are domains that fall outside the direct jurisdiction of sovereign states - the high seas, air, space, and most recently man-made cyberspace - and thus should be usable by anyone. These domains, even if outside the direct responsibility and governance of sovereign entities, are of crucial interest for the contemporary world order. This book elaborates a practice-based approach to the global commons and flows to examine critically the evolving geopolitical strategy and vision of United States. The study starts with the observation that the nature of US power is evolving increasingly towards the recognition that command over the flows of global interdependence is a central dimension of national power. The study then highlights the emerging security and governance of these flows. In this context, the flows and the underlying global critical infrastructure are emerging as objects of high-level strategic importance. The book pays special attention to one of the least recognized but perhaps most fundamental challenges related to the global commons, namely the conceptual and practical challenge of inter-domain relationships-between maritime, air, space, and cyber-flows that bring about not only opportunities but also new vulnerabilities. These complexities cannot be understood through technological means alone but rather the issues need to be clarified by bringing in the human domain of security.

Chapter 1
Frame for US Power Practices: Managing the Flow of Events

The need to regulate the appearance of US power has led to the mushrooming of different practices such as public diplomacy and the staging of carefully choreographed political spectacles. It seems that the general aim is to frame multifarious global events in such a way that they are in accordance with the desired narratives in the main scenarios of US power. This framing promotes ‘likeness’ to the main scenarios of US national power, thereby making similar events more likely in the future. The regular, resilient and manageable flow of events provides the meta-template for the managing, securing and commanding of other more concrete global flows as well. It is argued here that this framing of a desirable stream of global life has deep affinities in the history of American pragmatism.

The main problematization in these efforts to frame the flow of events is this question: what are the conditions in which US power feels and seems true and believable, in which it is acknowledged and recognized? Finding an answer to this question is central to the contemporary practices of American power. This main end goal requires the management of the temporal flow of events to accord with predefined narratives. This chapter sets the foundations for the flow approach to US power. The central argument is that the temporal management of various sequences of events and their confluences is the foundation of US national power. This overall frame also provides key insights into understanding maritime and other flows across the global commons.

Anxieties of Temporal Flows

It can be argued that the anxieties concerning losing and gaining power comprise a dramatic setting for the US role in global events. It should be noted that the decline dynamic is a temporal one. The time-wise sequences and confluences of events is the embedding for any perceptions of decline and revival of power. Furthermore, this temporal context is inherently a suspenseful one. Persistence or revival of power can become more tangible when it takes place in a situation where there are contrary expectations. When contrasted with expectations of doom and gloom, any foreign policy triumphs are magnified and leave a more lasting mark. The overarching aim of this chapter is to deepen the investigation of temporal flows in contemporary global events. Particular attention is drawn to possible restorative strategies that help to manage the flow of international events in a manner that is resistant to appearances of power in decline and that reutilizes unexpected acts for dramaturgical purposes.

The underlying idea is that the US and overall Western public cognition creates and depends upon a specific sense of time. This sense of time can be regarded as an overarching frame for two interrelated reasons. First, it derives from the culturally powerful Christian conceptualizations concerning the nature of time. It may be argued that this modality of Western time is pregnant with the unexpected – there is an expectation of known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Second, according type of time is fundamental in Western-led global governance – it forms the way to manage political processes and order. This framing of time is maintained through what can be called practices of restoration. Restorative practices set apart certain events and make them signify higher stable values, thus interrupting and marking the ordinary flow of events. Events such as victories, liberations, falling dictators, popular uprisings and democratic elections denote this culturally-specific time. They interrupt the regular flow of events and can serve as reminders of the constancy and staying power of the US’s potential as the world’s sole superpower. The dramatic events in Iraq – such as the liberation of the country and the capture of Saddam Hussein – were examples of such interruptions. Similarly, the deaths of Osama bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi pointed out the good and the evil in a very familiar, yet sudden, revelatory way. These exceptional, yet relatively constantly occurring, events have helped to maintain the vital dramatic tension of the flow of global events and thus to give life and regularity to the desired overall temporal frame. Therefore, time can be modulated in a way that provides for events to become meaningful in ways that support and reanimate US power.

Time Flow and Its Effects on Political Space

It can be argued that concepts such as systems of time zones and calendars, and standard measures of time, such as weeks, minutes, hours and seconds, are crucial from the point of view of modern political power. In order to grasp the profound importance of the prevailing Western time construct, the international system of time zones provides a useful case in point. The invention of the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in the late eighteenth century was the result of the demands of the British mail service. However, it was only during industrialization and the introduction of increasingly fast means of long-distance travel, contact and communication in the late nineteenth century that it became more widely adopted. It was particularly the development of the railways – regularized flow activity – that posed the need for global timetables and one agreed standard time with no geographical variation. Ways of understanding temporality have been intertwined with technologies of mobility from the beginning.

The temporal distance between localities disappeared when their clocks began to run in synchrony.¹ This was first experienced in Britain, where, by 1855, 98 per cent of public clocks were pointing at GMT (Zerubavel 1982: 6). On a global scale, the adoption of a standard time enabled one to know the exact local time in, say, Moscow, when it was seven in the evening in Washington, DC. After quoting Durkheim, Sorokin and Makerjee on the issue, Zerubavel (1982: 3) states that ‘[s]tandard time is … among the most essential coordinates of inter-subjective reality, one of the major parameters of the social world. Indeed, social life would probably not have been possible at all were it not for our ability to relate to time in standard fashion.’ From this perspective, it can be argued that the growing ability to relate to the same standard time was a major prerequisite for the spread of Western-style political power and the sense of global community that came with it.

The urge to keep record of time, which is so characteristic of modern life, reflects the power of the standardized measures of time as ways of ‘orienting’ and ‘synchronizing’ oneself relative to others. The notion of standard time has become so culturally ingrained that other ways of experiencing and punctuating time have been largely ignored: ‘The linear, progressive concept of time, coupled with clocks and calendars, is so interwoven with Western civilization that we hardly recognize any alternative’ (Malmberg 1984: 74). The standardization of time can be regarded as a form of political epistemology. It turns power of governance into a system that allows for the rendering of events unravelling in time meaningful. It organizes the ways in which social encounters take place and become meaningful. It can be argued that the ability to produce standard time in international politics is particularly significant from the point of view of the Western world order, for it enables the performance of political spectacles to a global audience.

There are different ways in which time interacts with meaning. Next, we will turn to cyclical and rhythmic notions of time in order to further explicate the concept of flow. They interact with the metaphoric notion of ‘standard time’ and offer cultural resources that are useful in political practice. The international flow that is accented by restorative and disruptive events conveys a sense of rhythmicity, which, we argue, serves to give meaning to world politics.

Cyclical rhythmicity is typical of circadian, monthly and annual units of time. The underlying idea is that time proceeds in and life is governed by self-repeating cycles and thus, in a way, one always ends up where one started from.² In contrast with this notion, rhythmic time does not necessarily follow a clearly repetitive form. Despite the fact that rhythmic time is not as predictable as cyclical time, it gives a feeling of regularity that can be as tangible as in the case of cyclical time (Malmberg 1984: 74).

The cyclical understanding of time that is built into realist metaphysics is surely the most influential expression/pattern of rhythmicity in international politics. There, it most commonly refers to cycles of order and disorder, as in cycles of hegemonic war. This is evident in such concepts as the rise and fall of great powers, the cycles of hegemonic war, and changing polarities. The conceptual roots of the modern flow of events can be traced to the different notions of rhythmicity introduced by ancient writers such as Thucydides. In his famous Histories, for example, a distinctive sense of rhythm can be detected. On the surface level, the most important of them seems to be the annual changing of the seasons, which the drama of war had to accommodate and from which it receives part of its structure and meaning. However, another and far more important form of rhythm is that of the hegemonic struggle, whereby the communities live through crises and upheavals. This is in line with the general tendency in the realist ontology to perceive time as a problem to be controlled and to present the unfolding of time as involving drama and, often, also tragedy. The fickle Fortuna is hard to tame, as Machiavelli pointed out, and the future might always hold unpleasant surprises. Time conceptualized and framed in this way is a struggle to control fickleness and use surprising events, when they inevitably occur, in serendipitous ways to drive events towards favourable conclusions.

Whether strictly cyclical or more loosely rhythmic, it can be argued that the notion of temporal regularity in the Western political order signifies authority, power and legitimacy by organizing the space where encounters take place. In order to further explain this argument, the notion of territoriality needs to be considered. From a Weberian perspective, it can be argued that territory invites a monopoly of power. The making of a given territory involves the establishment of some form of control over what are held to be politically significant parts of that territory. For example, state maps often convey an idea of radial distribution of power. This involves a hierarchy, the top of which is focused on the capital and the bottom, on the margins of the state. Power is seen to radiate from the capital. Vandergeest and Peluso (1995: 387) define the state-centric practice of territorialization in the following way: ‘All modern states divide their territories into complex and overlapping political and economic zones, rearrange people and resources within these units, and create regulations delineating how and by whom these areas can be used’. It can be said that territorialization places people and natural resources in a common matrix of territorial power. It should be noted that the strategies whereby territorial states are formed are not only functional, but also territorial and temporal, that is, they are not only about ‘what the state does’, but also ‘where’ and especially ‘how regularly’ it carries out certain functions. It can be argued that the notion of regularity is particularly central for the purposes of creating and maintaining governable territories.

The starting point of territorialization is that there is a group of people leading a settled life in a certain geographical area. People and places are identified with each other in a manner that allows state power to work in two directions. First, its direct power over the daily lives of citizens translates into power over the territories that they inhabit. Second, its direct power over the territories increases its power over political units of and in the place, as, for example, over individuals, families, villages and cities. Producing regularity of space can be seen as a form of exercising power over individuals. Effective territorialization involves, first of all, setting regular norms, rules and restrictions over people. Another and related form of control is the system of mapping, measuring and determining physical space – latitudes, longitudes and altitude, for example – together with the technologies and strategies that are employed to control that space, such as highways, airports, global positioning systems, speedometers and tracking devices. Moreover, the advent of the global age means that these systems of creating space spill over state boundaries. The global flows signal the territorialization of even the non-sovereign global commons. The emergence of these global processes feed back into the continued re-creation of state territoriality. The meaning of space changes at the state and local levels when the territoriality is re-evaluated against the measures of global – instead of state-level – remoteness: how many degrees of separation exist in different places to the main global arteries.

The kind of imposition of regularity described above necessarily involves understanding time as a unit of measure. To an important extent, the connection between time and the production of territorial power derives from the ability of the central authorities to merge localities into one coherent community bound by a shared sense of time and the resilience of activities measured in such governance time. It can be argued that this kind of regularity of time signifies the uniformity and continuity between past, present and future and thus increases the likelihood and chances of the existing configuration of power staying in place. In other words, the sense of normalcy that inevitably comes with temporal regularity serves to establish, legitimate and consolidate territorial power. To paraphrase Parkes and Thrift (1978: 353), ‘time makes space into place’. In other words, the perceived regularity of time serves to solidify a sense of territorial control. From this perspective, the success of territorialization depends on the ability of the central power to prevent erratic changes in the regular passage of time and preserve a sense of continuity. The firmness, smoothness and constancy of the time flow serves to affirm spatial boundaries, such as state borders. At the level of world order, this means that global disruptions and fears of such disruptions can undermine the legitimacy of the prevailing global order. Again, the flows across the global commons are crucial in this respect. The sense of regularity is essential for the legitimacy of the present-day US-led world order. The financial collapse of 2009 fed a sense of a world in disorder. It should be noted that this sudden decline reinforced the sense of the rising BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa). Disruption caused problems for the perception of US power and it led to horizon scanning by those actors who might gain in power. Similarly, worst-case scenarios such as terrorist attacks or pandemic diseases can be seen to be articulations of the effects of disruptions on US power.

Maintenance of Dramatic Tension

Regularity and irregularity are central to the rhythmic time-frame. It can be said that the flow of a given rhythm is created by the alternation of regularity and irregularity. Regularity generally refers to the frequent repetition of a certain pattern, signifying predictability and adherence to a law, rule or convention. In contrast, irregularity signifies discontinuity, deviance, variation and exception from normalcy. In the rhythms of global events, irregularity often comes in the form of attention-catching plays of difference or deviance. It should be noted that this kind of irregularity can actually function to reinforce the desired flow of events by creating dramatic tensions. Irregularity and unexpectedness become all the more important in a context where the general sense of what is taking place has worn off over time (see, for example, Belk et al. 1989: 25). It can thus be argued that the US’s and the overall Western politics of time is so constructed that a weakened flow requires some unexpectedness in order to regain its strength. The ability to return to a regular pulse of time in face of crises, emergencies and disruptions offers demonstrable evidence of the underlying governance and power.

Irrespective of its tautological nature, regularity seems to be a central feature of all orderly behaviour. In this sense, it conveys expectations of timelessness – a sense of confidence about the durable and stable nature of order. However, the sense of durability arguably also requires an element of the unexpected, or irregularity. Thus, it may be said that meaningful order is produced in time-management practices that alternate between regularity and irregularity. It can be further argued that such practices are deeply ingrained in the Western political culture. In order to explain what we mean by all this, we will next turn to some of the classics of the Western political corpus.

Earlier the methods of measuring time in exact and standardized units were discussed. However, time can be also measured in terms of socially determined units, such as elections, cigarettes, marriages and jobs. For example, a game of chess proceeds in moves, a piece of music in terms of movements, a book in chapters, and a business day is punctuated by meetings. In international affairs, time is usually measured in terms of significant events. Traditionally, this has meant times of war and peace. It is common to say, for example, that something took place during or after the Cold War or after 9/11. In the same way, other kinds of important events serve to mark and punctuate international time. For example, events in European politics can be referred to as having taken place right before or after the Maastricht or Lisbon treaties. The euro crisis might also offer such a temporal signpost. In many cases, the succession of events seems to express temporality better than the standard units of time.

The various cognitive, psychological, social and political ways to measure time combine in different ways, depending on the context. Their net effect determines the way in which we perceive the sequence of events. Sometimes, this combination of units leads to a sense of acceleration, whereas in other contexts, the passage of events seems to slow down. Thus, whether one perceives time as hurrying or lingering, dissolving or condensing into dramatic tension, the interpretation always depends on the context. Furthermore, it is not only that the sense of temporality depends on the context, but, in a way, it is the context, meaning that particular senses of time create particular foundations for signification. In this sense, any context always has a temporal aspect to it, and a particular temporal context creates a particular basis for signification. This is where the notion of cultural perceptions of time becomes important, for these senses of time can be seen to provide a context for creating particularly powerful meanings. As part of a downward spiralling economic crisis, for example, an event would get a very different meaning than if it were part of a normal situation.

It is useful to contextualize Western constructions of time in traditional political narratives. What are the cigarettes and marriages of world political time? How is time measured? To answer these questions, it is useful to review briefly some culturally prototypic narratives significant for the construction of time.

Plato deals with the theme of repetition in connection with incantations. In his definition, incantation refers to the repetition of words by which feelings of sympathy and antipathy can be influenced. Plato further defines regular and repeated incantations – such as incantations and chants – to be in service of correct and proper political life (Plato 1984: 659d4–e5).³ In his Laws, Plato presents incantations as being vital to the life and to the existence of a polis. They are vital because they serve as reinforcements of the required logismo – the skills of calculation, reckoning and consideration. Cultivating logismo is of paramount importance in the ideal state. But it is weak in comparison to the irrational and destructive impulses of the human soul. The challenge, then, is to make irrationality subservient to the faint voice of reason in a way that would pave the way for the construction of a good polis.⁴ Repetitive rituals are Plato’s answer to the problem, for with their help, it is possible to bring irrational impulses and emotional charges into constructive use. He writes: ‘It is the duty of every man and child – free and slave, female and male – and the whole State, to use these incantations we have described upon themselves incessantly …’ (Plato 1984: 665c4–5). In particular, incantations offer ways of influencing the beliefs and actions of those who cannot be persuaded by reason alone (Welton 1996: 214). They are useful, for example, in the education of the young. Their function is to enchant, not to convince through reason. If one views the regularities of the US political calendar, such as elections, inaugurations or yearly state of the union speeches, it is possible to see what Plato meant by the centrality of rituals for a powerful political religion.

Aristotle, on the other hand, talks about the importance of avoiding too much repetition....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Frame for US Power Practices: Managing the Flow of Events
• 2 The Politics and Power of the Global Flow Dynamic
• 3 Knowledge—Power Networks and the Production of US National Power
• 4 Global Commons and Flows in the US-Led World Order
• Conclusion: Horn of Africa Piracy as a Future Omen
• Bibliography
• Index