9 - Global Networks over Time

Summary

Metrics of network structure are applied to critical global networks representing military, political, and economic power over multiple decades to highlight the dynamics of interstate relations. Densely constructed networks continually transform international relations, flows of influence, and network properties. Globalization’s dense interconnectivity and heightened competition inherently weaken hierarchical control structures in an environment of many powerful forces jostling for influence. The strategic designs of various agents matter, but the patterns of self-organizing regularities of the wider ecology matter even more. In the absence of hierarchical structures or consensus on global governance, state actors will be drawn to nationalism for methods of conflict resolution. The administration of a “grand strategy” is insufficient in a complex, densely networked world whose various agents trade and communicate according to their own self-interests. What happens on any one scale will depend on interacting, self-organizing processes at scales above and below. This makes determining what threats are of greatest importance fruitless. Their interconnectedness is the dilemma we now face.