The Palgrave Handbook of Global Politics in the 22nd Century by Unknown

The Palgrave Handbook of Global Politics in the 22nd Century by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783031137228
Publisher: Springer International Publishing


The Machine still linked them. Under the seas, beneath the roots of the mountains, and the wires through which they saw and heard, the enormous eyes and ears that were their heritage, and the hum of many workings clothed their thoughts in one garment of subserviency.1

1 Introduction

A century ago, in the year 2022, who could have envisioned today’s global government? Who could have predicted global rule by the planetary algorithm now popularly called “Big Daddy?”2 And who would have believed that most of the world’s ills would be remedied through central planning under Big Daddy’s direction? For those who benefit from Big Daddy’s benevolent oversight, the endemic violence, poverty, hunger, thirst, early death and possible extinction that confronted the planet and its inhabitants in 2022 is difficult to imagine. The hoary international relations theories formulated between 1945 and 1990 still dominated the field, even as those twentieth-century discourses were unable to explain the rapidly changing conditions of the twenty-first, during which even the richest and strongest countries found themselves under siege by disasters and actants of their own making. As the world grew more chaotic, some predicted the “return of Great Power Politics,” struggles for global domination, even a Fourth World War (the Cold War being the Third).3 Disorder was exacerbated by the rise of the “new nationalism” between 2010 and 2030, explained as a populist “revolt” against globalization and so-called globalism.4 No one imagined for a moment that Big Daddy would relegate all of these gedankenexperiments to the dustbin of history.

Some national governments sought to impose domestic order and assert social control by creating “Great Firewalls” and other forms of electronic surveillance and to build real walls along their borders.5 Some regimes tried to control domestic political dissidence and prevent subversion from abroad by isolating and insulating domestic communication systems from foreign ones and shutting down national internets.6 Yet, even as they did this, states were losing control of the electronic networks that increasingly stitched together their economies and societies, both inside and out. The globe-spanning cables, satellites, server farms and communication centers that moved data around the world—much of it through the United States, the European Union and China—were being expanded and acquired by large tech companies, transferring effective control over data flows to private entities.7 These data cartels did not hesitate to exercise their newly found power.8 Governments that failed to acknowledge the new masters saw their national communication systems go dark, as data diplomacy displaced the more conventional and traditional tools of state sovereignty and power.9

That control of data might lead to unipolar planetary rule seemed as far-fetched as Stalin’s famous riposte about military threats from the Vatican. But unipolar rule happened quite unintentionally. Big Daddy emerged out of many billions of small, diverse decisions, actions and relationships, a case of Foucauldian genealogy10 rather than international public policy. It just growed. As a result, many of the great scourges of humanity have been tempered, if not eliminated, and threats of annihilation have been greatly reduced, allowing



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