Power within international relations is a construct that manifests itself in multiple forms, domains, and structures. Power is not only the transactional medium through which states interact, but also what states strive to generate, maintain, and expand to improve their relative position compared to each other. A manifestation of this concept is how multiple countries seek to develop artificial intelligence technology to gain advantages in military, information, and economic domains to advance their interests over other states. Power and structure share a unique bi-directional relationship, as both the exercise and generation of power by states reshape structures within the international system, which concurrently alters domain-specific contexts that affect the internal composition, relative positions, relations, and hierarchy of states. The dawn of the nuclear age highlights how developing and employing a domain specific instrument of power not only altered the United States’ relative position compared to other states, but also transformed how all actors, including the United States, could exercise coercive military force, transforming the entire global order and restricting or enabling the domains states utilized to achieve objectives.
The reordering of the international system occurs both sequentially and simultaneously, as structural changes such as emerging technology or environmental conditions can alter states, which then reshape international structures. Within the international system, the importance of structure is not monopolized at the systemic level, but also heavily predicated on how individual states configure and order their nations and the benefits and detriments these structures endow. One of the most important state level structures is regime type. Applied simplistically, examining state structures based on regime type divides the world into a binary construct of democracies and autocracies.[1] Traditional scholarship has long theorized that democracies have substantial advantages over their autocratic counterparts. The acceptance of that theory has remained a near-constant until the consequences of two major events synchronously reshaped both the structure of the international system and the domains through which actors generate and utilize power. The outcome of the information age and nearly 30 years of hyperglobalization have transformed the international system and motivated the development and utilization of sharp power by autocratic states. Honing those tools has provided some autocratic regimes with a transformative advantage over democracies in reshaping the autocratic-democratic relationship within the international system.
A Visual representation of power within the international system as defined by the author. Power is not only the medium through which states interact within given domains such as economics, information, or military force but a byproduct of that interaction that creates structures that then in turn affects domains. This continuous bidirectional process is contextually based on both states and the domain in which they operate. (Author’s Work)
Sharp power is the coordination of malign influence operations and economic coercion by autocratic states that “pierce, penetrate, or perforate the political and information environments in the targeted countries” and are part of a “ruthless new competition that is under way between autocratic and democratic states.”[2] The ability for autocratic states to use sharp power, according to Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig, is based upon “glaring asymmetry” within the modern international system that enables autocratic states to level the proverbial playing field in multiple power domains where democracies have traditionally enjoyed superiority and comparative advantage.[3] Democracies still enjoy a myriad of advantages compared to autocracies, but sharp power within the information age has provided autocratic states a tool that has done far more than mitigate their disadvantages relative to democratic nations. Such adjustments have also weaponized the essential structures, institutions, and norms of democracy to be used to the advantage of the authoritarian and the detriment of democracies. Russia’s manipulation of U.S., U.K., and European elections and China’s efforts to control Hollywood narratives and plots all take advantage of free speech and market economies, critical components to any democratic state. Sharp power in the information age has greatly altered not only the international system by allowing autocrats direct access to democratic populations; it has overturned the intrinsic power advantages democracy provides as a form of government to a given state by providing autocrats comparative advantages in information related domains. This transformation challenges existing theories on the relationship between regime typologies and power within international relations.
The Structure of Nation-States
Key to understanding how regime type improves or impedes a state’s ability to operate within the international system, one must understand the internal structures of both democratic and autocratic societies. Identifying what structures and systems define autocratic and democratic states is a prodigious task. To promote parsimony, this article will examine states through the lens of selectorate theory. Selectorate theory, based on the work of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, has two fundamental principles:
All leaders, whether despotic kings or democratically elected parliamentarians, wish to stay in power.
In any given state, there will always be three groups: the interchangeable, the influential selectorate, and those known as the essentials in the winning coalition.[4]
The size and composition of these three groups within a given state either limit or broaden the power of the ruling party in both domestic and international affairs, greatly shaping the structure of that state. Democracies have large numbers of essentials, potentially 50.1% of the voting population, while autocracies might only have a handful of individuals, such as generals and intelligence leaders, whose loyalty is a necessity for a ruler to remain in power.
Comparing the selection process for the heads of state of South and North Korea illustrates the difference in systems. The former uses direct presidential elections in which a candidate must win a majority of the approximate 40 million registered voters every five years, while the latter relies on a small number of party officials and generals to select and maintain political power. Therefore, while autocracy and democracy vary from state to state, the fundamental principle of those who empower and select the ruling class within those systems do not. Simply put, a ruling party, individual or administration, is beholden to those who have placed them there, and having to appease a dozen powerful generals is a far easier task than satisfying millions of voters.
Visual representation of selectorate theory for a democracy and an autocracy. The higher number of individuals that are required to achieve and retain power directly degrades the freedom of maneuver a ruling body/individual has in both domestic and international affairs. (Author’s Work)
This leads to what Robert Putnam labeled a two-level game in which diplomats of democracies must negotiate not only with rival states but also with the legislative ratifying agent in their home jurisdiction, potentially restricting their ability to maximize relative positions within the international system. Such broader consensus building is something with which an autocratic regime would not have to contend.[5] For example, in 1919 the United States Senate failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, negating President Woodrow Wilson’s negotiating efforts with dozens of nations and removing the United States from the League of Nations.
One could even argue that, in the modern paradigm, a tri-level game is the standard as the information age has provided democratic publics far more knowledge and agency than when Putnam wrote his seminal article on the subject in 1988, providing vastly greater opportunities for sharp power to target public opinion within democracies. This is one of the goals in using sharp power: to target the large number of essentials and influentials within a democracy with information operations that shape public opinion in favor of the autocrat and restrict elected officials’ freedom of maneuver to counter the autocrat within the international system or even discredit leaders who oppose autocratic expansion.
Traditionally the two-level game involved the restrictions that domestic democratic institutions played in international negotiation and approval of treaties and trade deals. The information age has expanded the concept to a tri-level construct in which international actors can directly access and influence the empowered selectorate of democratic states and further restrict the governments ability to operate within the international system. (Author’s Work)
The Power of Democracy
Despite the restrictions highlighted above, there has been a long-standing theory that democracies have an inherent advantage when compared to other regime types within the international system. This position goes back to many of the foundational works of the international relations field specifying the role democracy has in empowering states to succeed within the international system. Scholars base the inherent advantage of democracies on various aspects of democratic states, but four primary components economic power, popular support, coalition building, and prudent war waging are regularly cited in research on the topic.[6] In defining elements of national power, Hans Morgenthau specifically included advantages of democracies and disadvantages of autocrats within the subcategories national character, national morale, and the quality of government concepts he predicates as the basis for the use of all forms of force and power within the international system.[7] In addition to theoretical propositions, democracies have a long history of military success against autocracies in interstate conflict. Dan Reiter and Allan Stam empirically examined this concept and showed that from 1816 to 1982 governance type had a strong influence on the outcome of war. Reiter and Stam’s rigorous examination found democracy had an overall warfare winning percentage of .76, substantially higher than the .45 winning percentage of autocracies in the inclusive period of cases from 1816 through 1982.[8]
Results from Dan Reiter and Allan Stam’s analysis of the relationship between regime type and interstate conflict outcomes. (Author’s Work)
Beyond the ability to wage and win wars, the inherent structures of democracies provide substantial advantages in the generation of soft power when compared to autocratic rivals. In examining the Soft Power 30 rankings for 2019, only four nations with a polity score outside of a democracy achieved a ranking within the top 30.[9] Measured by nominal gross domestic product, democracies represent nine out of the ten largest world economies.[10] While the above-mentioned democratic advantages might appear overwhelming, many of them are predicated on paradigms that no longer exist and do little to advance state interests in an environment defined by competition below levels of conflict, information warfare, and restricted military options due to complex economic interdependency and nuclear deterrence.
Getting Sharp
The world of 2020 presents a unique and challenging environment in which sharp power plays a role in intensifying the complexity of threats and challenges to the interests of democratic states. China is now the world’s largest economy as measured by gross domestic product purchasing power parity, dispelling the theory of democratic dominance of economic power.[11] Furthermore, permitting China access to multiple international institutions under the assumption that participation in liberalized trade practices would facilitate domestic liberalization has proven a detrimental strategy to democratic powers, as Cooley and Nexon assert, "China and Russia now directly contest liberal aspects of the international order from within that order’s institutions and forums.”[12] China now utilizes its expanding economic power to advance state interests and expand influence through a combination of debt-laden investments, economic coercion, and by applying predatory liberalism—a concept coined by Victor Cha and Andy Lim describing how China uses market access to suppress public criticism from a range of actors from the National Basketball Association to the European Union.[13]
China is not alone as a rising autocratic revisionist. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 using hybrid and information warfare, and has used the Syrian Civil War to expand its influence into the Middle East and Africa. The rise of these two states is based on their understanding that the contextual parameters of the modern paradigm include a reduced likelihood of interstate conflict, an increased level of economic interdependence, and near instantaneous direct access to democratic populations via information-age technologies. These realizations have led autocratic regimes to use sharp power techniques to restrict democratic nations’ ability to respond to their coercive expansion and offer them little recourse or mitigation under the current liberal structures of most democratic regimes.
Sharp power provides authoritarians two distinct capabilities against a democratic society. The first is to control narratives and suppress criticism through the manipulation of liberal media practices and inherent democratic rights while isolating domestic populations from external media sources. Secondly, sharp power can stoke domestic conflict and “cut, razor-like, into the fabric of a society, stoking and amplifying existing divisions.”[14] Sharp power in both its forms uses population-centric operations within the information domain that bypass state levels and directly target the essentials democratic leaders rely on to stay in power. This is evident when one examines the Chinese concept of Three Warfares, which “seeks to break adversary resistance and achieve Chinese national objectives with little or no actual fighting.”[15]
The elements of the three warfares strategy are public opinion, psychological operations, and legal warfare of which the first two clearly attempt to dominate the information domain of a targeted polity. Not all sharp power uses are covert, and the structures and norms of democracies enable the establishment of overt sharp power instruments within national borders, demonstrated in the large number of Confucius Institutes on college campuses or Russia Today programing as part of cable and satellite television packages. As autocratic regimes seek to expand, they will most likely do so in the developing world, where fledgling democracies are most vulnerable to sharp power manipulation and concentrated sharp power efforts can impede democratic growth and move them closer to the growing spheres of autocratic control and exploitation.
Students practice Mandarin at one of the over 1500 Confucius institutes and classrooms that the Chinese Communist Party operate worldwide. Governments and academic institutions have accused the Confucius institutes as being a tool for the Chinese Communist Party to suppress criticism, control narratives, and even conduct espionage. Pratik Jakhar, "Is China's Network of Cultural Clubs Pushing Propaganda?" (BBC News).
Conclusion
At its very core, a nation-state is a collection of individuals who have come together through common interest, institutions, culture, and history, ceding a part of their rights and power to representatives through social compact, to pursue safety and survival against the unknown of anarchy. Therefore, a state is its population, and its population is one measure of its overall power relative to other states. The information age and the inherent liberties of democracy have provided authoritarians direct access to populations in democracies across the world. In novel ways, the present international environment has allowed authoritarian states to manipulate the basis of democratic governance and power by exploiting structures in democratic states that do not exist within authoritarian ones, creating a massive imbalance within the information domain greatly empowering the autocrat.
Sharp power manipulation of democratic societies can change public opinion toward autocratic regimes, impeding the ability of elected officials to respond to expansionist autocratic actions by adding to existing systemic disincentives such as economic interdependence and nuclear deterrence. Sharp power can create mistrust between a democratic populace and its leaders or even worse create conflict within diverse democratic societies by exploiting already existing intergroup grievances.
Sharp power is now an integral part of international relations and a manifestation of power that greatly reduces the ability of democratic states in competing with autocratic ones, a substantial shift in relative positions from historic perspectives. Democratic states cannot ignore the effectiveness of sharp power and must develop internal and external information dominance capabilities, doing so within the framework of liberal democracy while extending protection to vulnerable developing democracies. As democracies reenter a paradigm of great power competition with autocrats, they do so within a new context in which their system of government no longer grants absolute advantage but instead is a potential vulnerability.
James P. Micciche is a U.S. Army Strategist. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
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Header Image: Image from the 2018 Cover of the Economic Intelligence Unit Report (EIU)
Notes:
[1] This paper will utilize a nation’s polity score to categorize it as a democracy (+6 to +10), autocracy (-10 to -6), or transitional anocracy (-5 to +5). Polity IV, "Integrated Network for Societal Conflict Research (INSCR) Program." Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM), University of Maryland, College Park (2000).
[2] Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig, “The Meaning of Sharp Power: How Authoritarian States Project Influence,” Foreign Affairs, November 16 2017, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2017-11-16/meaning-sharp-power, accessed June 1, 2020.
[3] Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig, "From ‘Soft Power’ to ‘Sharp Power’: Rising Authoritarian Influence in the Democratic World." Sharp Power: Rising Authoritarian Influence (2017): 8-26, 9.
[4] Bruce Bueno De Mesquita, Alastair Smith, James D. Morrow, and Randolph M. Siverson, The Logic of Political Survival (MIT press, 2005.)
[5] Robert D. Putnam, "Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games." International Organization 42, no. 3 (1988): 427-460.
[6] David A. Lake, "Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War," American Political Science Review 86, no. 1 (1992): 24-37; Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam III, "Democracy and Battle- field Military Effectiveness." Journal of Conflict Resolution 42 (1998): 259-77.; David L. Rousseau, Christopher Gelpi, Dan Reiter, and Paul K. Huth, "Assessing the Dyadic Nature of the Democratic Peace, 1918-88." American Political Science Review 90 (1996): 512-33.
[7] Hans Morgenthau, Kenneth W. Thompson, and W. David Clinton, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, (1985).
[8] Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam, "Democracy, War Initiation, and Victory," American Political Science Review 92, no. 2 (1998): 377-389.
[9] Jonathan McClory, "The Soft Power 30–A Global Ranking of Soft Power 2017," Washington: Portland (2019).
[10] World Bank, “GDP (Current US$),” The World Bank Group. Accessed April 22 2020, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?most_recent_value_desc=true&view=map
[11] World Bank, “GDP, PPP (current international $),” The World Bank Group. Accessed April 23 2020, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?most_recent_value_desc=true
[12] Alexander Cooley and Daniel Nexon, “How Hegemony Ends,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2020, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-06-09/how-hegemony-ends
[13] Victor Cha and Andy Lim, "Flagrant Foul: China’s Predatory Liberalism and the NBA," The Washington Quarterly 42, no. 4 (2019): 23-42.
[14] Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig, "From ‘Soft Power’ to ‘Sharp Power’: Rising Authoritarian Influence in the Democratic World," 13.
[15] Doug Livermore, "China’s “Three Warfares” in Theory and Practice in the South China Sea," Georgetown Security Studies Review (March 2018), accessed March 1,2020, https://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/2018/03/25/chinas-three-warfares-in-theory-and-practice-in-the-south-china-sea/