How NOT to Run the World: A Commentary on Parag Khanna, 'How to Run the World'
“….some may find it irritating” says John Ruggie in his advance praise for Parag Khanna’s How to Run the World.
More than irritating, I found the book’s main messages in and of themselves worrisome, and even more worrisome, when considering that it is Parag Khanna who is putting them forward with great fervor.
Khanna is, as he would perhaps say, an “in” person: He directs the Global Governance Initiative at the New America Foundation, was picked as one of Esquire’s Most Influential People of the 21st Century and featured in Wired’s Smart List. He has worked for the Brookings Institution and the US Council on Foreign Relations, has a regular media presence, including on CNN and the BBC and to mention just one more of his distinctions, was named Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.
Khanna is being heard; and therefore, it is important to know his views, including those that he espouses in How to Run the World as his preferred approach to future global governance.
“Technology and money, not sovereignty”, so says Khanna (p.3), “determines who has authority and calls the shots.” As governments continue to lose control and international bureaucrats like those of the UN and the World Bank try to do everything but are, in Khanna’s perception, utterly ineffective, the real key players, mainly private companies, non-governmental organizations, church groups, celebrities, universities, the super-rich and otherwise influential should form coalitions of the willing that can “push” (p.28) and “quickly move global resources to solve local problems” (ibid.).
These willing key players are, in Khanna’s terminology, the diplomats of the future; and networking among them is the diplomacy of the future. Anybody who is somebody can become a new-type diplomat, provided he or she is willing to act. Yet, the main diplomats Khanna has in mind are “big shots”: celebrities like Angelina Jolie; personalities like Bill Clinton, George Soros and Ted Turner; and, of course, private companies, notably multinationals.
According to Khanna, it matters far less “who conducts an intervention than that it produces positive results” (p.28). Most people in the world, suggests the author, do in any case not care whether their system of governance is a democracy. So, the “doers” of the future should not lose time bothering about strengthening democracy but just get down to action. As more and more people will have a mobile phone in the future, they will be able to send – approving or disapproving – messages to the key players. Mobile phones, computers and the Internet – not democratic processes – are seen as the future avenues of political participation (p. 120 ff.).
And jarringly, while the new key players should not waste too much time on democracy, they should be impatient with old-style autocratic rulers who may not take good care of their countries and citizenries. In order to address this problem, Khanna proposes what he calls “neo-colonialism”: subversive plots and assassinations (p. 93 and pp. 98-99). Again, in order not to waste time, the international community should not set up tribunals “to tell us who the bad guys are” (p.99). Rather, “progressive interventionists will have to …. play god” (p. 101).
The substance behind the messages
The analytical rigor of Khanna’s narrative is weak. The key concept of his book, “new diplomacy”, remains vague. We learn that the new diplomats would not do what the conventional ones do, viz. take orders, accept briefs, act on their government’s or state’s behalf. No, the new ones define their own agendas. Thus, engaging in networking to form coalitions of the willing seems to be the essence of this new diplomacy.
At the same time, it is not very clear what turns diplomacy into mega-diplomacy. The description of mega-diplomacy offered in the book is that it is “a jazzy dance …the triumph of mini-lateral action over multilateral stasis” (p.22).
Certainly, current governance processes, both nationally and internationally, require change and adjustment to better fit today’s new realities. Yet, Khanna only asserts present shortcomings and reform needs, setting aside, at least for now, their actual analysis. As alternatives he refers to a few initiatives that he considers to exemplify his “new diplomacy”. For example, the Nuclear Threat Initiative funded by Ted Turner and other philanthropists is paraded as a new diplomacy intervention in respect to nuclear non-proliferation; an Alcoa investment in Saudi Arabia figures as an initiative that could bring the US the goodwill of the Saudi people; and an increase in the number of fellowships for young people from Muslim countries is seen as an effective measure for fighting terrorism, much more effective than the sum of UN efforts in this field.
Khanna does not attempt to assess what impact to date these types of initiatives, however laudable, have actually had. Nor does he discuss the possibilities for scaling up such interventions. He simply asserts their desirability.
And what about the next Renaissance?
Seven out of the book’s 215 text pages are devoted to the next Renaissance. Jean Monnet is presented as ”the most inspirational figure for twenty-first-century diplomacy” (p. 210), as a person holding no official position, using his family’s riches to engage in self-initiated shuttle diplomacy, cajoling President Roosevelt to bring the US into World War II and, after the war, pushing for the creation of the European Union. So, the next Renaissance appears to be about just more Neo-Medievalism, although Khanna also refers to a scholarly example: President Sarkozy’s initiative to establish a Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress.
Conclusion: Refuting Khanna’s claims
Because of its analytical weakness and superficial treatment of many issues, How to Run the World could just be ignored – were Khanna not the person he is. Considering his strong presence in the global debates on governance, it is important to seriously critique his conjectures, to demonstrate that if the goal is achieving sustainable growth and development in an increasingly polycentric world, Khanna’s mega-diplomacy approach is precisely what should NOT be done, exactly how NOT to run the world. Instead, venues like the World Economic Forum must be presented with more fitting policy advice – with arguments for maintaining and strengthening the rule of law and democratic governance processes, nationally and internationally; with reasons to think in terms of subsidiarity rather than letting anybody push global resources to the local level; and, importantly, with demands for diplomats to help us all forge more efficient and effective linkages between the national and international levels of policymaking, while, of course, appreciating the contributions that people like Bill and Melinda Gates, Bono and Angelina Jolie, or George Soros are making – provided those contributions help us achieve our diverse local and national policy priorities. Fortunately, they tend to do exactly that at present, because these voluntary contributors do not perceive themselves as un-guided, let-loose mega-diplomats, but as global citizens helping to meet agreed-upon global public concerns – concerns often agreed upon in UN venues.
The Book Under Review is Parag Khanna's 'How to Run the World; Charting the Course to the Next Renaissance' (New York: Random House)
Inge Kaul is adjunct professor, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany, and former director, Office of Development Studies, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), New York.
