What will be the shape of the next century? And how will the world's two hundred states apportion the various roles? If some will have more influence than others, one - the United States - is doing everything to maintain its primacy using its economic, military and cultural strength. Unilaterally and for its sole benefit, it intends to fix the rules for the "electronic era" in order to assure itself global electronic mastery in the next century.
How can the United States maximise its current condition of singular power? At the governing level, few question the desirability of pursuing an "imperial policy", however euphemistically it is described. The debate swirls around the best way of achieving it. One of the more "moderate" strategists puts it this way: "The aim of American foreign policy is to work with other like-minded actors to 'improve' the market place, to increase compliance with basic norms, by choice if possible, by necessity - i.e., coercion - if need be. At the core, regulation [of the international system] is an imperial doctrine in that it seeks to promote a set of standards we endorse - something not to be confused with imperialism, which is a foreign policy of exploitation (1)".
Other American voices are less shy about using tougher terminology in prescribing the United States' role in the world arena. For example, Irving Kristol, a long-standing theorist of a belligerent conservatism, shrugs off the notion of constraints and takes for granted an "emerging American imperium". This more muscular approach is still diffident, however, about adopting the term "imperialism".
"One of these days", writes Kristol, "the American people are going to awaken to the fact that we have become an imperial nation." He hastens to reassure his readers that this is not an intentional development: "it happened because the world wanted it to happen." Elaborating this curious explanation, he asserts that "a great power can slide into commitments without explicitly making them (2)".
Under his imperium, Kristol sees Europe embracing its dependence on the United States and relinquishing an independent foreign policy. The Europeans "are dependent nations, though they have a very large measure of local autonomy." Something akin, perhaps, to the Palestine Authority on the West Bank? Kristol himself is bemused by what he sees happening. He distinguishes it from the older European imperialism with its brutal overt coercion, remarking that "our missionaries live in Hollywood". But he concludes on a bleak note: "It is an imperium with a minimum of moral substance. While the people of the world may want it and need it now, one wonders how soon they will weary of it (3)." Nonetheless, Kristol is among those who see US global control as an unproblematic condition: rivals can be subdued by one means or another.
However, the most influential view among the American governing class - up to 1997 at least - expresses doubt that full political control can be achieved. Though completely at ease with the idea of an American 21st century, it accepts the necessity of enlisting partners, however temporarily, in running the world. Richard Haass, director of foreign studies at the Brookings Institution and a former assistant to President George Bush, is a proponent of this prevailing view. He writes approvingly of the Gulf war as a model for future policy.
In his book The Reluctant Sheriff, Haass recommends that the United States should be the global sheriff. In his scenario, unlike the policeman, the sheriff is more of a part-time worker. He comes to work when there is a demand to organise a raid on some recalcitrant powers or "rogue states" - that is, areas or groups that do not accept US-imposed arrangements - and he assembles posses of "willing states" as the enforcers. In this mainstream American view, a frontier species of vigilantism is advocated as foreign policy.
How well a "posse" policy will fare in a world with three billion people below the poverty line, and nuclear warheads scattered around a dozen or more regions like melons in a field, is not easy to imagine. Underlying these strategic outlooks is an uncomplicated reading of the outcome of the cold war. "We won, and the other side not only lost but disappeared (4)." With this interpretation in hand, the geopoliticians weave their imperial reveries.
The policy makers
More consequential perhaps are the blueprints, some already drafted, for the material basis of the world economy in the immediate years to come. In this more practical realm, a loose working coalition now exists of governmental, military and business interests spanning the computer, media and informational industries. No less than the geostrategists, this group has its eyes focused on an American-directed world and insists that the means of achieving this is the electronically-based information/media component that confers cultural and general power. Representatives of this outlook come from the top echelons of power.
In 1996, for example, a former assistant defence secretary, Joseph S. Nye, and a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, William A. Owens, who had both served in the early years of the Clinton presidency, wrote about what they considered "America's information edge". They asserted that "the one country that can lead the information revolution will be more powerful than any other... and, for the foreseeable future, that country is the United States (5)". Voicing the view of the coalitionists who want partners for their posses, Nye and Owens add: "Just as nuclear dominance was the key to coalition leadership in the old era, information dominance will be the key in the information age". This affords them a feeling of optimism about the future: "In truth, the 21st century, not the 20th, will turn out to be the period of America's greatest preeminence. Information is the new coin of the international realm, and the United States is better positioned than any other country to multiply the potency of its hard and soft power resources through information."
This is not a unique view. David Rothkopf, another former Clinton administration official and currently managing director of Kissinger Associates, is no less ebullient in his expectations. His essay, "In praise of cultural imperialism", not only mentions the forbidden word, but revels in its applicability to the American scene: "For the United States, a central objective of an Information Age foreign policy must be to win the battle of the world's information flows, dominating the airwaves as Great Britain once ruled the seas (6)."
Like Nye and Owens, Rothkopf is confident that this will happen. "Inevitably, the Unites States" is, he writes, "the 'indispensable nation' in the management of global affairs and the leading producer of information products in these, the early years of the Information Age." Accordingly, he views current trends with satisfaction: "It is in the economic and political interests of the United States to ensure that, if the world is moving to a common language, it be English; that, if the world is becoming linked by television, radio and music, the programming be American; and that, if common values are being developed, they be values with which Americans are comfortable."
He observes that these "are not simply aspirations" but developing realities. "The realpolitik of the Information Age is that setting technological standards, defining software standards, producing the most popular information products and leading in the related development of the global trade in services are as essential to the well-being of any would-be leader as once were the resources needed to support empire or industry."
In laying out an information-based design for US global ascendancy, Rothkopf gives a modest assessment of why everyone is bound to benefit from this plan: "Americans should not deny the fact that, of all the nations in the history of the world, theirs is the most just, the most tolerant, the most willing to constantly reassess and improve itself, and the best model for the future."
Fantasy-ridden and arrogant as this interpretation may be, it is matched by Washington's policy prescriptions in the information sphere. The high tech initiatives of the Clinton White House are dedicated unapologetically to keeping the United States number one in the global arena. From the start of his presidency, Mr Clinton has had a close connection (fund-raising, at the very least) to the electronics industry in Silicon Valley. Vice-President Al Gore is presented as a fan of computers. He has surrounded himself with electronics executives as he prepares to stand as candidate in the presidential elections in the year 2000. It is reported that "once a month Vice-President Al Gore meets privately with a select group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. The topics vary from month to month, but the overarching agenda is the same: fathoming the implications of America's 'new economy' and devising practical solutions to public policy problems large and small." One of the participants in the meetings confesses that "we're so conceited that we think what's in the best interest of our industry is in the best interest of the whole country (7)".
Privatising the air waves
This evokes memories of "Engine Charlie" Wilson, General Motors' chief at the time of the second world war, who blithely tied his country's welfare to GM's profits. In the late 1990s, however, such a sentiment appropriately expresses and describes national policy. Government has led the march into the electronic age. In its rhetoric and in its actions, it has insisted that full computerisation of the economy is imperative for national growth and global ascendancy. Understandably, the communications industry has no trouble in agreeing.
In the last few years, the project for a wired country and a networked world has moved from blueprint to near reality. Announced with the president's authority in September 1993, the proposed National Information Infrastructure (NII) was presented as the all-inclusive electronic answer to whatever ailed the country, as well as the means to provide for the improvement and enrichment of the human race (8). The benefits were enumerated with unqualified enthusiasm: round-the-clock communication for the family; education on-line from the best teachers in the country; access to global resources of art, literature and science; health services for all on-line, with no waiting; the latest entertainment in your living room; easy access to government officials and all kinds of information on-line.
Yet one central stipulation accompanied these rather ambiguous benefits. It was a proviso which over time could only negate the promised benefits. The NII's founding statement was explicit: "The private sector will lead the deployment of the NII... Businesses [are] responsible for creating and operating the NII (9)." And so this remarkable information technology, which was initially developed with government money and operated as a public utility, was handed to a clutch of powerful communication corporations for its development and expansion.
The corporate communication industry has responded to these new and potentially rewarding opportunities with a frenzied merger and concentration movement, piling resources and capital into enormous companies. There has also been a rash of governmental auctions from the radio spectrum to the telecommunications giants, in preparation for new and expanded services that the new spectrum holders will deem profitable. Here too, and with no debate, public property - the air waves - has been removed from social accountability and released to those whose commercial interests are inherently incompatible with community requirements.
With these material conditions secured, favourable to the private sector, the government encouraged the communication giants to exploit the emerging digital networks. The latest governmental intervention had to do with the crucial issue of markets, mostly foreign ones. The release on 1 July 1997 of a White House document, "The Framework for Global Electronic Commerce", drafted by Ira Magaziner, urged the unrestricted flow of electronic commerce, domestically and internationally.
This recommended statement of policy noted the already substantial use of the National Information Infrastructure (NII) and the Global Information Infrastructure (GII): "World trade involving computer software, entertainment products, information services, technical information, product licences, financial services and professional services (business and technical consulting, accounting, architectural design, legal advice, travel services etc.) has grown rapidly in the past decade, now accounting for well over $40 billion of US exports alone" and "an increasing share of these transactions occurs on-line (10)."
It is expected that this commerce will expand rapidly in the years ahead. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), for example, reported that "the Internet has been doubling in size every year for the past decade" and that "by the year 2000, there are likely to be some 110 million host computers connected to the Internet, implying a user base of around 300 million (11)".
The Magaziner Framework paper's advocacy of free-flowing electronic commerce would seem an unexceptional, indeed welcome development, if there were numerous participants more or less evenly matched in the domestic and international arenas. The reality is otherwise. The emerging electronic economy, in one crucial respect, resembles the situation in the immediate post-second world war days. At that time, the United States emerged unscathed and more powerful than any combination of rivals. It demanded and enforced a "free flow of information" which enabled the American media/cultural corporate giants to blanket the world with their products and services.
This policy has prevailed over the last half century, actively promoted and supported by a variety of US governmental instruments: foreign aid, subsidies, economic pressure on potential recalcitrants and various varieties of political arm-twisting. As a result, "made in America" cultural and informational outputs and the English language now dominate movie and TV screens, music-making, entertainment centres and business conversation (12).
But the technological underpinning of the American industrial state has undergone a massive transformation since the end of the second world war. The computerisation and digitalisation of the economy have proceeded apace. Industries that did not exist fifty years ago have grown spectacularly, spawning some of the most powerful corporate enterprises in the world, like Intel and Microsoft. The production and sale of information have also become major businesses, as well as the telecommunication companies that carry the streams of information, operating globally and increasing their link-ups with foreign carriers.
These developments comprise what is commonly called globalisation. Actually, this is a misleading term, giving the false impression that everything has become globalised. The main constituents of globalisation are the big corporations - in cars, oil, consumer goods, electronic services - and their increasingly transnational operation. It is in their behalf and interest that the current policy-making of the United States, Japan and Europe is formulated. Some coordination amongst these groupings occurs to provide a measure of stability and security for the globe-girdling activities of the transnational system in general, and each nation's home-based enterprise in particular.
Ultimately, each transnational firm strives for its own advantage and is supported in that effort by the state power wherein it resides, or at least where its main shareholders are domiciled. The power that a nation or regional grouping, for example Europe, can bring to bear in support of its national enterprises is a function of that political entity's generalised strength - economically, militarily and culturally. By this criterion, the United States continues to be in a class of its own.
In the name of freedom
This is the context in which the White House Framework for Global Electronic Commerce emerges. It is, in short, a preemptive statement intended to organise the digital age according to rules most helpful to its formulator, the United States. These rules will enforce the already considerable advantages the American communication industries now possess against existing or potential rivals. Once more, this effort is couched in the language of freedom. Manifestly, the Framework document is written to preclude actions that a sovereign state might want to take, either to protect its economic viability and independence, or to challenge arrangements established by the controllers of the system, such as standards, licensing, rate regulation, etc.
There is no option as to whether the economy should be socially or privately structured: "Governments should encourage industry self-regulation wherever appropriate and support the efforts of private sector organisations to develop mechanisms to facilitate the successful operation of the Internet." It follows that the new electronic commerce policy rejects the regulatory framework established over the last sixty years for telecommunications, radio and television. In this period, public interest protections were mandated and social needs were acknowledged, if not heeded, in the operative policies. At the end of the 1990s, corporate capital's global ascendancy has seen to it that the mildest restraints on its prerogatives have been dismissed out of hand.
Although the Framework document is issued from Washington as a national policy platform, its main thrust is international. It is directed to "global electronic commerce", where the political and economic environment is not totally at the disposition of the White House. The report invokes the First Amendment to the US Constitution as the essential grounding for the free flow of information which it seeks to extend as a global principle. In fact, the First Amendment protects individual speech, not corporate expression.
When this wilful confusion is permitted to exist, as it is in the United States today, efforts to protect the public against plutocratically-financed expression are prevented. This is even more the case in the international sphere where nations, to the extent that they accept a corporate definition of free flow of information, are deprived of their cultural and often political sovereignty.
It is, in fact, actions that might be taken by states defending their autonomy that are the concern of Washington and their constituents in the high tech corporate communication sector. Accordingly, taxes and tariffs on the Internet, threats to copyright protection for motion pictures, computer software and sound recordings disseminated via the GII, security of data base and patent holdings - all the forms of property in an information age - are worrying to the new property-holders. The Framework documents firmly states: "The legal framework supporting commercial transactions on the Internet should be governed by consistent principles across state, national and international borders that lead to predictable results regardless of the jurisdiction in which a particular buyer or seller resides."
This seemingly fair-minded proposal is oblivious to disparities and inequalities between states and regions and peoples. The interests of powerful corporate intellectual property-holders take precedence over the weaker partners in the transactions. In this crucial respect, the Framework document represents an extension of the post-second world war free flow of information doctrine to the digital age: "The US government supports the broadest possible free flow of information across international borders. This includes most informational material now accessible and transmitted through the Internet, including through World Wide Web pages, news and other information services, virtual shopping malls, and entertainment features, such as radio and video products, and the arts. This principle extends to information created by commercial enterprises as well as by schools, libraries, governments and other non-profit entities."
The Framework document represents intentions, not at this time, implementable policy. Its strictures against regulation, at least for the domestic economy, cannot be taken at face value. But the report is not intended for the domestic sphere. If its language contains the usual rhetoric of anti-regulation, governmental practices in the information sector for fifty years belie the ritualistic exhortation on behalf of a free market.
Internationally, it is a different story. As Columbia University Professor Eli Noam perceptively writes, "a close reading of the [Framework] report does not indicate a move by the federal government toward lessened economic regulation of those things it cares about. The report's ringing language is hence largely directed at efforts by other governments - states and other countries - to impose economic regulation on the Internet (13)." This is the familiar routine of telling others what to do, while ignoring the advice in one's own actions. How well it can or will succeed is not entirely a matter of US will and its present electronic primacy. Longterm American mastery of cyberspace is not predestined or guaranteed. National wills can intervene to press for alternative outcomes.
In the short term, the economic power of transnational capital, and the extent to which a people have been exposed to, and have accepted, the multi-media marketing environment on which the American economy is based, will give support to Washington's electronic dreams. So, too, will US military power, fortified with advanced communication technology and deployed to surveil and intervene anywhere across the globe. "The message", says the recent chief of the US Atlantic Command, "is that there is no nation on the face of the earth that we cannot get to (14)". However, in the longer term, the wild imbalances that this system of unaccountable corporate-military power imposes on people and resources will produce ever more intensive shocks that may throw the entire enterprise into calamitous disarray.
* Professor of Communication at the University of California in San Diego.
(1) Richard N. Haass, The Reluctant Sheriff, Council of Foreign Relations, New York, 1997.
(2) Irving Kristol, "The Emerging American Imperium", Wall Street Journal, 18 August 1997.
(3) Ironically, a study of the global media written from a totally different perspective is subtitle "The Global Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism", Edward Herman and Robert McChesnery, The Global Media, Cassell, London, 1997.
(4) Haass, op. Cit.
(5) Joseph S. Nye and William A. Owens, "America's Information Edge", Foreign Affairs, March/April 1996.
(6) David Rothkopf, "In Praise of Cultural Imperialism?", Foreign Policy, no. 107, summer 1997.
(7) Elizabeth Shogren, "Gore Finds Brain Trust in Silicon Valley Group", Los Angeles Times, 25 August 1997.
(8) National Information Infrastructure (NII), Agenda for Action, 15 September 1993.
(9) Ibid.
(10) To read this report, see http://www.whitehouse.gov/wh/new/commerce/
(11) "A Global View of Internet's Rise", New York Times, 8 September 1997.
(12) New York Times Magazine, 7 June 1997.
(13) Eli Noam, "Why the Internet will be Regulated", Educom Review, vol. 32, no. 5. September/October 1997.
(14) Hugh Pope, "US Plays High Stakes War Games in Khazakstan", Wall
Street Journal, 16 September 1997.
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