THE polarizing and regressive characteristics of the digitalized political domains have received much attention.1 As the practices of digital meddling, induced polarization, and catalyzed regression are spreading, an overall confluence of circumstances is causing convulsions in democracies and rapidly narrowing their previously more inclusive societies. The regression can lead them deeper into intensifying nexus of internal and external drivers where externalizations, diversions, interferences, and meddling are increasingly commonplace. As such, the key premise of this work is to improve existing understanding of the nexus between internal domestic division and external foreign action, which has hitherto received relatively little attention in modern scholarly works.2 This work studies the following key questions: What kind of power-political dynamics are we now facing in the current world order? How are democratic Western states, and especially the United States (US), challengedâinternally and externallyâin an age of increasingly competitive geopolitics? Most importantly, how does the digital domain facilitate the possibilities of political regression both from within and without the gates of Western democracies? This book gives an account of our contemporary times that contain diversity of regressive factors and seeds of polarization ranging from the abuse of new technologies to the destabilizing spread of Covid-19 pandemic.
Our own times have often been called, and increasingly perceived as, borderless and connected. This can be seen as a virtue or a vice. Internal and external are hard to define in a world of global value and production chains. The flows that cross not only state borders but also the domains of sea, space, cyber, and air are defining our modern life (Aaltola 2014). The bordering âwallsâ and âcity gatesâ are thought more and more in terms of flow control, access, security, vulnerability, and resilience. Increasingly, our cognitive experience, engagement, and flow are also defined by newer domains and services, such as social media platforms, the dynamic of which reshape and redefine domestic and foreign politics.
INTERNAL division has been a key driver in history. Examples are many. When the Goths headed by Alaric were besieging Rome in 410 CE, it is rumored that internal elements opened the outer gate of the city to the invaders: âBut they were unable to guard against the secret conspiracy of their slaves and domestics, who either from birth or interest were attached to the cause of the enemy. At the hour of midnight, the Salarian gate was silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the Imperial city, which had subdued and civilized so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythiaâ (Gibbon 2010: I: 31). Historian Edward Gibbon, who detailed this account in his six-volume work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was not the first to narrate the regressive decline and fall of a body politic. His account is predated by more ancient historians such as Thucydides and Zosimus, who have presented us with what some might call naturalistic and grimly realistic accounts of regressive vortexes that have engulfed and brought down empires and other political entities throughout history.
The conspiracy inside the city gates cited by Gibbon was supposedly motivated by factors such as ethnic bonds and factional interests. The city of Rome and, together with it, the Western part of the empire was set, metaphorically speaking, in a state of vortex from which the empire could no longer recover. The idea of âenemies within the gatesâ has received research attention through case studies on the supposed âfifth columnsâ and âenemy aliens.â These studies of possible and supposed collusion have indirectly taken on the issue of an internalâexternal nexus.3 The critical junctures and situations described in these studies are tense, full of circles of suspicion and doubt. Conspiracies and paranoia run rampant. Because of this, it is easy to see that a fifth columnist can appear out of the figments of the dis-eased political imagination of a given time. Spies and traitors can appear out of thin air as oneâs own failures are externalized and explained away by hidden enemy elements and their underhand subversive tactics. Crisis, failure, and political loss can be projected into forces that go beyond the usual and expected. Enemies are not only at the gate, they are often already seen within them because of collusion. Danger is seen as impending and immediate.
When morale is low, fifth columnists and enemies within can also be thought of as natural symptoms of the overall political regression. The talk about Russian actors meddling in the 2016 presidential elections in the United States can be seen, at least partly, in this context. Although many forms of meddling did in fact occur4 and are likely to take place again in 2020, the deepening regression is by now a part of the broader domestic discussion concerning the dangerous and escalating state of affairs in US politics. However, the discussion is not limited to the US alone, but considers also the overall intense deliberations concerning the possible regression of Western democracies and the liberal world order, coupled with the autocratic challenges posed by autocratic actors like Russia and China and with the pandemic era of Covid-19.
It can be further claimed that the political regression taking place in a state has certain general symptoms and proceeds in stages from a stable, vibrant, and steady body politic to extreme infighting, civil war, and state collapse. Suspicions and paranoia can be part of the political equation, and enemy aliens, spooks, and colluders can be symptoms of the perceived domestic trouble. Fifth columnists can be mere paranoia, but they can also reflect some real underlying worries that are acute in our times, during what might be called regressive multidimensional polarization, characterized by intensifying clash between the factions of democratic politics and the rise of centralized autocratic actors, such as China and Russia.
On the one hand, fears about agents of regression reflect the internal processes whereby the community aims to (re)create political health and a more advantageous situation.5 In the US, the political thought after the 2016 elections has been focused on foreign elements and possible internal collusion. The troubles the nation has experienced are generalized and projected into often loose and stereotypical yet popular talk about immigrants, barbarian terrorists, and subversive Russian or unfair Chinese activities. To a degree, internal regression in the US can be used to understand the talk about collusion and external meddling. On the other hand, foreign powers really are drawn to signs of democratic weakness by strategic design, but also by opportunism as they try to co-opt and abuse these new emergent vulnerabilities. Moreover, there are also more irrational motives. The meddlers are often regressing themselves and, in many cases, they are more politically regressed than their democratic targets. They have their own regressive reasons for meddling. Moreover, the resulting confluence can further intensify mutual regressions and form negative downward-sloping spirals of coupled political failure that are, ultimately, not under any strategic control and proceeds in stages according to its own emergent logic.
There is a sense of an approaching precipice in many Western democracies. The growing internal polarization, identity wars, and tribalism have fed a sense of emergency further catalyzed by the tensions created by the Covid-19 pandemic. Two important books have pointed out the dangers of the regressive situation in 2018. Lilliana Masonâs book, Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, details the deepening route of polarization from disagreements over policy issues to intense fights between two mega identities that have overrun practical common ground and, increasingly, the potential for practical political arbitration (Mason 2018). Francis Fukuyamaâs (2018) work, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, explores the politics of fear that has led to the emergence of narrower identity groups and domestic infighting between them, replacing the more inclusive and civic-minded domestic polities. That this dis-ease is reaching toxic levels of contestation and lack of together-mindedness is pointed out by politicians as well. For example, French President Emmanuel Macron in March 2019 published an op-ed in major European newspapers. His message pointed out a sense of urgency and emergency: âNever since the second world war has Europe been so essential. Yet never has Europe been in such a dangerâ (Macron 2019). He was not talking about just geographical Europe, but also about the very idea of liberal democracies based on the rule of law. They seemed to have lost much of the luster added to them by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence. Autocracies are sensing, opportunistically and strategically, this weakened staying power and are seeing their own legitimacy in the rise in the failings of the democratic West. Polarizing monochromatic upheavals in the West are replacing their worst fears: color revolutions in the East. In the West, the emergence of Covid-19 is further triggering the sense of urgency, danger, and potential fragmentation. The pandemic has not been followed by lull in influence operations and meddling.
ELECTION is the key gauge of democracyâs health. Without elections, it is hard to imagine modern version of democracy, representative democracy. Meddling, heightening instability, and hybrid interference directed against democratic elections are new power-political signifiers that have come to characterize recent scenarios on global order. These arguably regressive elements are discussed and investigated intensely in different democracies, ranging from the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom (UK) and the US elections in 2016 to the French, and German elections.6 In fact, autocracies have been meddling in democracies based on the investigations of 2016 US presidential elections, 2017 French presidential elections, and 2017 German parliamentary elections (Aaltola ...