He states that this
trend started when power passed from the old nations, the old powers of Europe, across
the Atlantic to the new emerging power of the
United States of America -- the beginning of the
American century. Of course, into this vacuum left
by the old European powers’ war games came the two bloody catastrophes of the last century -- the
two great World Wars.
The shifts of power that are now occurring to the world are
frightening, because this has never happened before. We have seen lateral
shifts of power -- the power of Greece passing on to Rome and the power shifts
that occurred during the European civilizations -- but we are seeing something
slightly different. Power is not just moving laterally from
nation to nation, but is also moving vertically.
Civilizations started gathering around seas -- with the first ones around the Mediterranean, the
more recent ones around the Atlantic. It seems that we're now seeing a
fundamental shift of power, broadly speaking, away
from nations gathered around the Atlantic seaboard to
the nations gathered around the Pacific rim. It has begun with economic power -
the way it has always begun. We are already beginning to see the development of
foreign policies, the augmentation of military budgets occurring in the other
growing powers in the world. This is not just a shift from the West to the
East; this is something different.
Up until now, the United States has
been the dominant feature of our world. They will remain to be the world’s most
powerful but in an increasingly multi-polar world. We already begin to see the
alternative centers of power building up -- in China, of course. But China's
ascent to greatness is not going to be smooth. It's
going to be quite grumpy as China begins to
democratize her unwieldy society after
liberalizing her economy.
We are now reaching the end of
400 years when Western power was enough. Many people
say that the Chinese will never get themselves involved in peace-making,
multilateral peace-making around the world. But they are already involved. How many Chinese troops are
serving under the blue beret, serving under the blue flag, serving under the U.N. command in the world today? 3,700. How many
Americans? 11?. In fact, there are more
Filipinos at any one time in the U.N. command. What is the largest naval contingent
tackling the issue of Somali pirates? The Chinese naval contingent of course! They
are a mercantilist nation. They want to keep all
sea lanes open, including the West Philippine Sea leading to the Malacca Straits. Increasingly, we are going to have to do business with people with whom we do not share values, but with whom, for the moment, we share common
interests. It's a whole new different way of looking at the world that is now emerging.
There's another factor that is totally different. Today in our modern world, because
of the Internet, because of Facebook, Twitter
and other social media, everything is connected
to everything. We are now interdependent. We are now interlocked, as
nations, as individuals, in a way which has
never been the case before. The
interrelationship of nations has always existed. Diplomacy
is about managing the interrelationship of nations. But
now we are intimately locked together. You get
swine flu in Mexico which is going to be a problem for Charles de Gaulle
Airport 24 hours later. Lehman
Brothers goes down the drain and the whole lot collapses. When there are fires
in the steppes of Russia, it causes food riots in Africa.
We are all now deeply, deeply, deeply interconnected. And what that means is
the idea of a nation acting alone, not connected
with others, not working with others is no longer a viable proposition. Because the actions of a nation state are neither confined to it, nor
is it sufficient for the nation state itself to
control its own territory, because the effects
outside the nation state are now beginning to
affect what happens inside them.
In olden times wars were small. At
that time, the defense of a country was about
one thing and one thing only: how strong was our
army, how strong was our air force, and how
strong was our navy and how strong our allies were. That
was when the enemy was outside the walls. Now
the enemy is inside the walls. Now if I want to
talk about the defense of my country, I have to
speak to the Minister of Health because pandemic
disease is a threat to my security, I have to
speak to the Minister of Agriculture because
food security is a threat to my security, I have
to speak to the Minister of Industry because the
fragility of our hi-tech infrastructure is now a
point of attack for our enemies -- as we see
from cyber warfare -- I have to speak to the
Minister of Home Affairs because one who has
entered my country, who lives in that terraced
house in that inner city has a direct affect on
what happens in my country -- as the New Yorkers
saw in the 9/11 bombings. It's no longer the
case that the security of a country is simply a
matter for its soldiers and its ministry of defense. It's
its capacity to lock together its institutions.
This tells us something very important. It tells us that, in fact, our
governments, vertically constructed, built on
the economic model of the Industrial Revolution -- vertical
hierarchy, specialization of tasks, command
structures -- have got the wrong structures
completely. Those in business know that the paradigm structure of our time is the
network. It's your capacity to network that
matters, both within your governments and
externally.
In this modern age, where
everything is connected to everything, the most
important thing about what you can do is what
you can do with others. The most important bit
about your structure -- whether you're a
government, whether you're an army regiment, whether
you're a business -- is your docking points, your
interconnectors, your capacity to network with
others. That is understood in industry; not in governments.
Finally, we should realize that we
are now locked together in a way that has never
been quite the same before. Suddenly and for the
very first time, collective defense is no longer
enough. It used to be the case that if my tribe was more powerful than their tribe,
I was safe; if my country was more powerful than
their country, I was safe; my alliance, like
NATO, was more powerful than their alliance, I was safe. It is no longer the case. The
advent of the interconnectedness and of the
weapons of mass destruction means that,
increasingly, I share a destiny with my enemy.
One of the great barriers to peace in the Middle East is that both sides, both Israel and the Palestinians,
do not understand that they do share a collective destiny. So suddenly, what has been the proposition
of visionaries and poets down the ages becomes
something we have to seriously face as a matter of public policy.
But who is the enemy? It’s a brand new ball game. Look up
beyond our mortal selves.
Based on Paddy Ashdown’s
fearless forecast at Ted Talk
