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America's Edge: Power in the Networked Century
Anne-Marie Slaughter. Foreign Affairs. New York: Jan/Feb 2009. Vol. 88, Iss. 1; pg. 94, 20 pgs
Abstract (Summary)

In the twenty-first-century world of networks, the measure of a state's power is its ability to turn connectivity into innovation and growth.Thanks to demography, geography, and culture, the United States has the potential to make the networked century an American century.[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
Full Text (7341 words)

Copyright Council on Foreign Relations Jan/Feb 2009 WE LIVE in a networked world. War is networked: the power of terrorists and the militaries that would defeat them depend on small, mobile groups of warriorsconnected to one another and to intelligence, communications, and support networks. Diplomacy is networked: managing international crises - from sars to climate change - requires mobilizing international networks of public and private actors. Business is networked: every ceo advice manual published in the past decade has focused on the shift from the vertical world of hierarchy to the horizontalworld of networks. Media are networked: online blogs and other forms of participatory media depend on contributions from readers to create a vast, networked conversation. Society is networked: the world of MySpace is creating a global world of "OurSpace," linking hundreds of millions of individuals across continents. Even religion is networked: as the pastor Rick Warren has argued, "The onlything big enough to solve the problems of spiritual emptiness, selfish leadership, poverty, disease, and ignorance is the network of millions of churches all around the world." In this world, the measure of power is connectedness. Almost 30 years ago, the psychologist Carol Gilligan wrote about differences between the genders in their modes of thinking. She observed that men tend to see theworld as made up of hierarchies of power and seek to get to the top, whereas women tend to see the world as containing webs of relationships and seek to move to the center. Gilligan's observations may be a function of nurture rather than nature; regardless, the two lenses she identified capture the differences between the twentiethcentury and the twenty-first-century worlds. The twentieth-centuryworld was, at least in terms of geopolitics, a billiard-ball world, described by the political scientist Arnold Wolfers as a system of self-contained states colliding with one another. The results of these collisions were determined by military and economic power. This world still exists today: Russia invades Georgia, Iran seeks nuclear weapons, the United States strengthens its ties withIndia as a hedge against a rising China. This is what Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International, has dubbed "the post-American world," in which the rise of new global powers inevitably means the relative decline of U.S. influence. The emerging networked world of the twenty-first century, however, exists above the state, below the state, and through the state. In this world, the statewith the most connections will be the central player, able to set the global agenda and unlock innovation and sustainable growth. Here, the United States has a clear and sustainable edge. THE HORIZON OF HOPE THE UNITED STATES' advantage is rooted in demography, geography, and culture. The United States has a relatively small population, only 20-30 percent of the size of China's or India's.Having fewer people will make it much easier for the United States to develop and profit from new energy technologies. At the same time, the heterogeneity of the U.S. population will allow Washington to extend its global reach. To this end, the United States should see its immigrants as living links back to their home countries and encourage a two-way flow of people, products, and ideas....