More American musings, but with a specific play-theory angle. As the new Administration has been re-orienting itself as diplomacy-and-human-rights friendly - with Guantanamo scheduled for closure, and the previously belligerent Hillary Clinton now advocating "smart" (or is that really soft?) power - I've been recalling a prescient essay from 2003 in the New York Times.
There is an astonishing new book out, been out a few months, by a man named Robert Wright, called Nonzero - kind of a weird title unless you're familiar with game theory. But in game theory, a zero-sum game is one where, in order for one person to win, somebody has to lose. A non-zero-sum game is a game in which you can win and the person you're playing with can win, as well.
And the argument of the book is that, notwithstanding all the terrible things that happened in the 20th century - the abuses of science by the Nazis, the abuses of organization by the communists, all the things that continue to be done in the name of religious or political purity - essentially, as societies grow more and more connected, and we become more interdependent, one with the other, we are forced to find more and more non-zero-sum solutions. That is, ways in which we can all win.
And that's basically the message I've been trying to preach for eight years here...We have to have an expanding idea of who is in our family. And we in the United States, because we're so blessed, have particular responsibilities to people not only within our borders who have been left behind, but beyond our borders who otherwise will never catch up if we don't do our part. Because we are all part of the same human family, and because, actually, life is more and more a non-zero-sum game, so that the better they do, the better we'll do.
Putting yourself in the shoes of people who do things you find abhorrent may be the hardest moral exercise there is. But it would be easier to excuse Americans who refuse to try if they didn't spend so much time indicting Islamic radicals for the same refusal. Somebody has to go first, and if nobody does we're all in trouble.
Even if we dawdle, and make no progress on either the moral or governmental fronts - fail to move toward a global norm of tolerance and toward sound global governance - history will eventually concentrate our minds. A nuclear explosion, or epic bioterrorism, will lead even some hardened unilateralists to embrace arms control and other multilateral actions.
But it would be nice to avoid the million deaths. Besides, if we wait until an American city is erased, by then hatred of America will be broad and deep. One can imagine national and global policing regimes that could keep us fairly secure even then, but they would be severe, with expanded monitoring of everyday life and shrinking civil liberties.
In other words, the age-old tradeoff between security and liberty increasingly involves a third variable: antipathy. The less hatred there is in the world, the more security we can have without sacrificing personal freedom. Assuming we like our liberty, we have little choice but to take an earnest interest in the situation of distant and seemingly strange people, working to elevate their welfare, exploring their discontent as a step toward expanding their moral horizons - and in the process expanding ours. Global governance without global moral progress could be very unpleasant.
As the world's most powerful nation, and one of the world's most ethnically and religiously diverse nations, America is a natural leader of this moral revolution. America is also well positioned to lead in shaping a judicious form of global governance.
This role wasn't inevitable. But for a few quirks of history, some other nation might be on top at this moment of challenge. What was more or less inevitable, in my view, is the challenge itself. All along, technological evolution has been moving our species toward this nonzero-sum moment, when our welfare is crucially correlated with the welfare of the other, and our freedom depends on the sympathetic comprehension of the other.
That history has driven us toward moral enlightenment - and then left the final choice to us, with momentous stakes - is scary but inspiring. Some, indeed, may see this as evidence of the higher purpose that was widely assumed back in the 19th century. But a religious motivation isn't necessary. Simple self-interest will do. That's the beauty of the thing.
This seems to be about as clear a statement of the strategic intent of the Obama administration as you could find, six years early. Wright's 2006 essay, 'A Foreign Policy That Both Idealists and Realists Should Love', is only more assured in its insights, after three more years of attrition in Iraq, and states the issue even more confidently:
A correlation of fortunes - being in the same boat with other nations in matters of economics, environment, security - is what makes international governance serve national interest. It is also what makes enlightened self-interest de facto humanitarian. Progressive realists see that America can best flourish if others flourish - if African states cohere, if the world’s Muslims feel they benefit from the world order, if personal and environmental health are nurtured, if economic inequities abroad are muted so that young democracies can be stable and strong. More and more, doing well means doing good.
One wonders whether Wright would be as confident about America as a world actor now, given that its much vaunted "economic leadership" is in a state of self-induced implosion. Or now that the BRIC's (Brazil-Russia-India-China) are beginning to ring their own changes on the exact shape of "global governance"... whether they're informed by game-theory (which has its own creepy history, as I've previously written), or not.
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