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By Root 1797 0

policy blunders and a long-running history of mutual animosity between the West and the rest won’t be forgotten so easily. Even in the digital age, the foreign policy of a country is still constrained by the same set of rather unpleasant barriers that limited it in the analog past. As Joseph Nye and Robert Keohane, two leading scholars of international relations, pointed out more than a decade ago, “information does not flow in a vacuum but in a political space that is already occupied.” Until the events in Iran, America’s technology giants may have, indeed, functioned in a mostly apolitical vacuum and have been spared any bias that comes with the label “American.” Such days, however, are clearly over. In the long run, refusing to recognize this new reality will only complicate the job of promoting democracy.

Why Hipsters Make Better Revolutions

In the case of Iran, Western policymakers not only misread the Internet but bragged about their own ignorance to anyone who would listen. Much to their surprise, the Iranian government believed their bluff and took aggressive countermeasures, making the job of using the Web to foster social and political change in Iran and other closed societies considerably harder. The opportunities of three years ago, when governments still thought that bloggers were mere hipsters, amusing but ultimately dismissed as a serious political movement, are no longer available. Bloggers, no longer perceived as trendy slackers, are seen as the new Solidarity activists—an overly idealistic and probably wrong characterization shared by democratic and authoritarian governments alike.

Most disturbingly, a dangerous self-negating prophecy is at work here: The more Western policymakers talk up the threat that bloggers pose to authoritarian regimes, the more likely those regimes are to limit the maneuver space where those bloggers operate. In some countries, such politicization may be for the better, as blogging would take on a more explicit political role, with bloggers enjoying the status of journalists or human rights defenders. But in many other countries such politicization may only stifle the nascent Internet movement, which could have been be far more successful if its advocacy were limited to pursuing social rather than political ends. Whether the West needs to politicize blogging and view it as a natural extension of dissident activity is certainly a complex question that merits broad public debate. But the fact that this debate is not happening at the moment does not mean that blogging is not being politicized, often to the point of no return, by the actions—as well as declarations—of Western policymakers.

Furthermore, giving in to cyber-utopianism may preclude policymakers from considering a whole range of other important questions. Should they applaud or bash technology companies who choose to operate in authoritarian regimes, bending their standard procedures as a result? Are they harbingers of democracy, as they claim to be, or just digital equivalents of Halliburton and United Fruit Company, cynically exploiting local business opportunities while also strengthening the governments that let them in? How should the West balance its sudden urge to promote democracy via the Internet with its existing commitments to other nondigital strategies for achieving the same objective, from the fostering of independent political parties to the development of civil society organizations? What are the best ways of empowering digital activists without putting them at risk? If the Internet is really a revolutionary force that could nudge all authoritarian regimes toward democracy, should the West go quiet on many of its other concerns about the Internet—remember all those fears about cyberwar, cybercrime, online child pornography, Internet piracy—and strike while the iron is still hot?

These are immensely difficult questions; they are also remarkably easy to answer incorrectly. While the Internet has helped to decrease costs for nearly everything, human folly is a commodity that still bears a relatively