bout de papier, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2001) — Spring 2001 // Printemps 2001, pp. 2–3
Hello, faithful readers. Who would have thunk it? Nortel at $120 after two splits, now costing less than that other great Canadian staple, a case of beer. Pity the poor portfolio managers in their struggle to counsel their clients on how to live through this tech meltdown. While individual investors do their best to figure out what to do next, fibre optics optic has lessons on how we do business, too. Analysts have widely reported that there exists enough fibre in the ground to stretch from here to the sun. The problem is that building 100 million miles and filling 100 million miles with stuff are two entirely different processes. So while everyone was putting this stuff in the ground, the ability of you and me to connect to it lagged far behind as capacity soared. So what’s this got to with diplomacy? A lot, in a strange sort of way.
The other night, I was wandering in the Pearson rabbit warren going to deliver a video we had just produced on the Institute for Connectivity in the Americas (yes, this is a shameless plug), one of the major outcomes of the Quebec City Summit. As I was about to turn left off the A tower and venture into Tour B, a colleague and friend stopped to chat. “What’s that?,” he asked, looking at the sleek, black video case I was carrying. After my explanation, he asked me a tougher question, as he usually does, “So… what is connectivity?” By that point in the night, my brain was full of the quadrillion transactions that an ordinary day at DFAIT brings, so I mumbled out some answer that sounded more like Internet penny stock’s two-year-old business plan than anything coherent and worthy of my friend’s central question.
I took a walk later that evening, and as I wandered the streets of Mechanicsville, there was only one answer to his question that made any sense. So here it is, for what it’s worth: connectivity is sovereignty.
It’s all about sovereignty, always has been and always will be. Not necessarily the sovereignty of states, but the sovereignty of individuals, groups and networks. State sovereignty has created a certain modus operandi, one being that state sovereignty is a counterweight to competing forces of authority and global flows of power, that serve to attract or repel those positive forces or flows.
What makes connectivity relevant in judging sovereignty, and ultimately security of the person or the state, is that the competition to state sovereignty is much more severe now than it has ever been before, as the ability to organize a community around consensus interests is easier and more lucrative than ever before.
So connectivity is also a measurement of sovereignty, that is, it is the power of the network, and not just the network itself.
States in general, and Canada in particular, have focused much energy on the generation of sovereignty, that is the creation of instruments, but that generated energy needs to sustain a network, that is how those instruments flow and where they find use.
The dilemma of the fibre optic industry is that it has a state-of-the-art instrument that, for the moment, is relatively empty. The future value of the industry will be determined by good management, but also by what flows through that instrument.
And, like the network, the value of connectivity depends on the ability of each person to connect to our network of Canadian sovereignty as it exists in a morphing world and, by definition therefore, our sovereignty becomes the sum of those who can connect to it.
One purpose of sovereignty is to enable a state to influence its own destiny for the benefit of security and prosperity of Canadians. Those who aren’t connected represent a net loss for Canadian sovereignty, as sovereignty is the national sum of every citizen’s assessment of the intersection between his or her own self-interest and the public good
That sum is who we are as a country. And there lies the great challenge for us as a foreign service, because the exercise of sovereignty will only continue to blur the lines we have drawn between the domestic and the foreign. Canada is where Canadians are. Our objective as a department should be to use our connectivity to increase our human net worth and, by extension, the strength of our sovereignty. And so, to my colleague, I would say that connectivity is how we use and fill our network so that it attracts capital, ideas and people, so that we can continue to be a force for good in the world
Sovereignty is like electricity – there is no point in generating it if you can’t transmit and use it. This edition of bout de papier contains four articles on sovereignty and the control of one’s destiny that I hope you will find interesting and worthwhile.
First, there’s Kent Vachon’s piece on what’s happened recently in the Philippines and how popular culture and its sub-themes of global probity, transparency and simplicity are changing how people relate to their governments. Then, there’s Cindy Kleiman’s piece on state sovereignty and how new global norms affect traditional ways of doing business. One of our interns, Paul Edwards- Shand, takes a close look at our former Minister and at human security. And finally, there’s Bill Warden’s piece, an elegy to personal sovereignty and finding your way after decades at DFAIT.
That’s all, folks. Sorry for the long editorial. See you soon, with pieces from Ben Rowswell behind the wall at the Quebec City Summit and another piece from one of our interns on EU competition policy.
All this and the bout summer reading anecdote issue….
… now if I could only remember to deliver that video…
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2001) — Spring 2001 // Printemps 2001, pp. 2–3. Read the rest of this issue →
