As Dickens wrote, “we live in the best of times and we live in the worst of times.” That is because we are experiencing  a moment of systemic transition in world affairs. This transition is political, economic, cultural and technological, something that in aggregate affects the entire global network of human institutions. It also involves changes in nature, which cause and compound the human changes that we are now observing. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus observed, we never step in the same river twice. The moment is fluid and uncertain, the possibilities both open and endless yet potentially dark and forbidding.

In order to make sense of this we might break down the broader picture into component parts. These are 1) the structure of the international system; 2) the rules governing the global order; and 3) the geopolitical repercussions of the changes currently underway.

Illustration by Jackie Niam/istock

Systemic Change.

First, the world is moving from a multipolar to a poly-centric system. In the past 50 years we have seen the long transition from the bipolar world of the Cold War, to the unipolar world of the first post-Cold War decade, then the emergence of a multipolar world where rising great powers like China and India compete for global primacy with declining powers like the US and Russia, and where new and old middle powers are finding necessity in forging alliances amongst themselves and smaller States rather than seek the security provided by larger Powers. That includes the rise of the Global South, exemplified by the emergence of a bloc of so-called BRIC countries, which represent a challenge to traditional “northern” dominance of the international arena (“South” here referring not to a geographic location but an ideological orientation that has roots in anti-colonial struggles).

“Polarity” traditionally has only involved nation-States. Large Powers exercise gravitational “pull” on smaller powers that seek their physical protection and provision of material security. It now includes non-State actors like technology conglomerates and their supply chain adjacents. The “poles” themselves can be divided into techno hubs, entities that use knowledge economies to generate wealth and power, and resource hubs, those that provide energy and material inputs to the global knowledge economy.  Both need each other and in fact hybridisation of these productive models is now the norm in many places such as the Arab Gulf States. When the independent power of non-State actors and cross-border impacts of technology are factored in, we see that rather than multipolarity what is emerging is a polycentric constellation of global-reach actors that cluster around mutual interests or, often enough, conflict nodes based on their rival pursuit of competitive advantages in specific material or ideological realms.

Secondly, this has led to the demise of the post-WW2 “liberal” status quo, which was designed to bring stability and predictability to the exchanges between State and non-State actors in the international field. The disruption of this “liberal” international order (liberal defined not on ideological terms but as a voluntary system of mutual checks and balances governing International relations and foreign affairs), has led us to what is now a “post-liberal” (and often illiberal) world order, one where  liberal rules, norms and conventions are violated and its institutions increasingly  ignored. This is a return to what Hobbes called a “state of nature” in international affairs, often interpreted as a return to “might makes right” doctrines associated with the golden era of late 19th century imperialism. Those who can, do. Those who cannot suffer at the hands of those that can.

The institutional edifice created after WW2, what came to be known as the Liberal International Order, is breaking down. The norms, rules and institutions that made up that order have been rendered ineffective by the rapid changes in human societies, and liberal rules, norms and institutional processes are being increasingly ignored in favour of more self-interested actor-centric approaches to global affairs. An area where this has been seen quite starkly is in the field of international affairs, where the liberal international order attempted to stabilise and regulate away from actor-centric foreign policies and towards mutually cooperative inter- or transnational institutional arrangements that mitigated power disparities between nation-States and among private market agents based on their geographic and political position in the global system. One such regulatory mechanism was the concept of freedom of navigation, which guaranteed safe passage to civilian shipping on the open seas and in smaller maritime spaces (e.g. chokepoints such as straits and small seas) otherwise subject to the interference of adjacent littoral states or non-state actors (like pirates).

Third, that returns us to a core notion now commonly used in non-specialist circles: geopolitics. Put simply, geopolitics  is the relationship between geography and politics. It traditionally used to be seen as a matter of how human politics and military strategy conformed to or utilised immutable geographic characteristics in pursuit of (national) State interests, recognising that geopolitics also encompasses economic, diplomatic and sociological factors as they are influenced by geography and geographic trends. Mass migrations are an example of such activity because they have cultural, economic and security implications, but things like hydro dam construction on rivers that traverse national borders have the potential to become serious diplomatic, economic and military problems as well. The disputes about Mekong River damming, dredging and usage, and the consequent end of traditional riverine lifestyles and population exodus from riverine communities, are an example of this.

Now, although the need for geopolitical adaptation remains a constant of international relations, the relationship between geography and politics has shifted. On the one hand, technologies have made human adaptation or utilisation of geographic features far more extensive than in previous eras. Humans dominate nature in a measure that they did not before, which in turn allows them to exploit terrain and earthcapes in previously unknown ways. Think of undersea and space travel, geospatial mapping, deep sea mining—and warring. Once unimaginable, all are either now currently in existence or on the threshold of becoming reality. Automation, robotics and nano-technologies, to say nothing of AI applications in those fields, allow for the exploitation of geography (and nature in general) in ways unheard of during the golden era of geopolitical thought in the early 20th century.

On the other hand, climate change and other natural shifts have altered the physical world in fundamental ways: consider the melting of the Arctic Ocean icepack opening up the Northern Passage and the retreating ice cover in Antartica opening up accessibility to mineral exploration in ways never seen before. The same is true with the impact of warmer temperatures of drought/deluge cycles on fishery stocks and freshwater supplies. At the intersection of climate change and technological advancement, solar, wind and hydro energy production have significant geopolitical implications that go beyond traditional comparative advantages in one or the other under previous technological regimes.

In summation: geopolitics is at once more fluid and yet remains constant as a guiding principle of international relations. The more things change, the more that they stay the same. In moment of global systemic transition, geopolitics becomes a core feature of the process. That is where human agency becomes a decisive variable for better or worse. What follows is two issues where human agency is at play.

Source: Insights.com

Institutional lag.

“Institutional lag”  refers to the time gap between an event or appearance of a phenomena and the response to them from complex organisations. Derived from management theory, the concept posits that institutions will be slow to respond and adapt to changes in their environment, which in turn will lead to unnecessary costs, superfluous behaviours, design obsolescence, duplication of functions, misplaced objectives and ill-suited planning.

This syndrome is often more than just a failure to react in a timely or responsive manner. Complex organisations develop a type of bureaucratic inertia where established systems and procedures are resistant to change unless some externality forces them to. Even then, they way the respond is not agile and may often not be what is needed for the adaptive task at hand. The adage about generals always preparing for the last war is an illustration of the concept but the notion extends further. Until a technological or other form of social breakthrough occurs, the organisation is perpetually bound by “tradition” (procedure and usage) and therefore always behind the times. Innovative breakthroughs are more often forced by externalities, not pushed by proactive internal reform within the organisation.

A measure of the lack of research on institutions lag is indirectly offered by the chart above. Most studies focus on organisational and individual reactions to change rather than on institutional preparedness for change. As seen above, the Kubler-Ross change curve/five stages of grief model has been broadened in management theory to include responses to organisational change, but the institutional ramifications of externalities like global systemic change are under-explored, particularly as the influence institutional response times.

Source: Rand Europe.

Societal Resilience.

Refers to the ability of human societies, including businesses and economic sectors but extending beyond that, to be adaptable and flexible when it comes to unforeseen, unexpected or sudden events that disrupt their business models and the production chains in which they are located. These can be caused by sudden technological advances, black swan events, political crisis and wars, epidemics and pandemics, natural disasters and other unanticipated phenomena. The term is derived from “Industrial resilience,” which is basically management-speak for changes in processes, procedures and networks caused by external events that require rapid responses via technological advancement and/or diversification of input and output links as well as market substitution, among other things.

In a way, societal resilience, and especially business or industrial resilience, is inversely related to institutional lag. The more resilient a society, industry or social group is, the more bureaucratic inertias can be overcome and institutional lags minimised. Therein lies the problem. Societies and the organisations and demographics that comprise them seek stability, and stability depends on commonly accepted status quos. When something happens that disrupts the whole or part of an institutionalised status quo, the response is often increased resistance to change “in the way things are” rather than flexible adaptability. It is embedded in the human condition so the issue is not trivial in times of systemic change.

It was thought that the Covid pandemic would force industrial resilience upon the global trading community, and indeed, concepts such as “near-shoring,” “friendshoring,” and regional hubs all gained traction in the international system of production, consumption, telecommunications, transportation and commodity and service exchange. The reality was that genuine resilience strategies was adopted by a minority of businesses, with the majority opting, after a period of disruption, to assume a “business as usual” approach and resume their old ways of doing things. This included “just in time” production schemes that worsened the impact of the pandemic in terms of post-recovery demand increases. With little inventory stockpiled while demand was low, business found themselves unable to fill orders quickly, leading to inflationary pressures resultant from demand on limited stock, compounded by the US imposition of tariffs on a wide range of goods from dozens of countries and regional trading blocs. None of this was anticipated by corporate elites once the Covid wave had crested.

Likewise, once the pandemic peaked in terms of deaths, illness and infection rates, many social actors, including political parties, interest groups, community organisations and an assortment of individuals grouped into a variety of grassroots agencies, engaged in revisionist historical interpretations of the pandemic and its underlying causes. Besides theories about Covid’s origins (in a Chinese lab or wet market, among others), there was questioning of whether the disease existed at all and whether vaccines were needed, necessary, useful in fighting the its spread or were part of some Deep State mind control plot. The use of surgical masks as simple front-line defense against airborne infections was even questioned. People were murdered in disputes over mask usage, and an assortment of quacks sprang forth to offer a range of pseudo- or non-scientific solutions such as injecting bleach into the body (advocated by president Trump), horse vaccines and perineum tanning (advocated by assorted alternative medicine adherents and wellness “influencers”).

This reaffirms the axiom that transitional moments such as that involving global systemic change are marked by conflict, not just in the form of rules and norms violations between competing actors such as nation-States and global non-State powers, including the resort to violence in order to settle disputes, but in the human propensity to resist change per se. That is what resilience must focus on: overcoming the innate human tendency to resist change even when it is forced upon us.

One measure that is both a sign of societal resilience and a stop-gap during periods of institutional lag is hedging. Hedging can be both strategic or practical and can be deployed at both levels simultaneously. Diversifying trade partners, seeking alternative sources of information or material inputs, widening exposure to previously unknown contacts, languages, cultures and experiences, experimenting with new ways of doing things are in one way or the other examples of resisting complacency and stagnation by not putting one’s eggs in one basket. Strategic hedging focuses on planning for (and against) long-term events. Tactical hedging focuses on immediate problems.

For example, if the PRC decides to restrict NZ dairy or meat imports because of displeasure with a NZ foreign policy stance, what does NZ do as a contingency plan? Rescind the foreign policy measure that caused Chinese displeasure? Find alternative foreign markets? Open at a lower price scale or subsidise the domestic market for the excess inventory caused by the Chinese bans? Reduce production and ask producers for patience (and reduced profits)? One decision (what to do with the foreign policy stance) is a strategic matter, the answer to which will determine subsequent tactical choices if necessary.

While that is happening industrial resilience will be tested in the export sector, determining whether it is flexible and adaptable enough to weather the dispute and emerge with better plans that cope with future exigencies.

The point of this illustration is to highlight the utility of hedging as a resilience response to crisis, uncertainty and change. That may or may not lead to more durable patterns of behaviour, and that depends on how the inevitable conflicts that arise are resolved and mitigated. Much money and effort has been spent developing sophisticated risk analyses that offer predictive models for myriad of systemic events. That is helpful in framing and avoiding identified problems but it is in the solutions that stem from them where true resilience is found. Given what has been mentioned above, that may be the most daunting project before us.

For Hobbes, the state of nature was chaos. Absent a “Sovereign” (i.e. a government) that could impose order on global and domestic societies, humans were destined to lead lives the were “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” This has translated into notions of “might makes right,” “survival of the fittest,” “to the victor goes the spoils” and other axioms of so-called power politics. The most elaborate of these, international relations realism, is a school of thought that is based on the belief that because the international system has no superseding Sovereign in the form of world government with comprehensive enforcement powers, and because there are no universally shared values and mores throughout the globe community that ideologically bind cultures, groups and individuals, global society exists as a state of nature where, even if there are attempts to manage the relationships between States (and other actors) via rules, norms, institutions and the like, the bottom line is that States (and other actors) have interests, not friends.

Interests are pursued in a context of power differentials. Alliances are temporary and based on the convergence of mutual interests. Values are not universal and so are inconsequential. International exchange is transactional, not altruistic. Actors with greater resources at their disposal (human, natural, intellectual) prevail over those that have less. In case of resource parity between States or other actors, balances of power become systems regulators, but these are fluid and contingent, not permanent. Geography matters in that regard, which is why geopolitics (the relationship of power to geography) is the core of international relations.

It is worth remembering this when evaluating contemporary international relations. It has been well established by now that the liberal international order of the post WW2 era has largely been dismantled in the context of increasing multipolarity in inter-State relations and the rise of the Global South within the emerging order. As I have written before, the long transition and systemic realignment in international affairs has led to norm erosion, rules violations, multinational institutional and international organizational decay or irrelevance and the rise of conflict (be it in trade, diplomacy or armed force) as the new systems regulator.

These developments have accentuated over the last decade and now have a catalyst for a full move into a new global moment–but not into a multipolar or multiplex constellation arrangement in which rising and established powers move between multilateral blocs depending on the issues involved. Instead, the move appears to be one towards a modern Hobbesian state of nature, with the precipitant being the MAGA administration of Donald Trump and its foreign policy approach.

We must be clear that it is not Trump who is the architect of this move. As mentioned in pervious posts, he is an empty vessel consumed by his own self-worth. That makes him a useful tool of far smarter people than he, people who work in the shadow of relative anonymity and who cut their teeth in rightwing think tanks and policy centres. In their view the liberal internationalist order placed too many constraints on the exercise of US power while at the same time requiring the US to over-extend itself as the “world’s policeman” and international aid donor . Bound by international conventions on the one hand and besieged by foreign rent-seekers and adversaries on the other, the US was increasingly bent under the weight of overlapped demands in which existential national interests were subsumed to a plethora of frivolous diversions (such as human rights and democracy promotion).

For these strategists, the solution to the dilemma was not to be found in any new multipolar (or even technopolar) constellation but in a dismantling of the entire edifice of international order, something that was based on an architecture of rules, institutions and norms nearly 500 years in the making. Many have mentioned Trump’s apparent mercantilist inclinations and his admiration for former US president William McKinley’s tariff policies in the late 1890s. Although that may be true, the Trump/MAGA agenda is far broader in scope than trade. In fact, the US had its greatest period of (neo-imperial) expansion during McKinley’s tenure as president (1897-1901), winning the Spanish-American War and annexing Hawai’i, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the Philippines, so Trump’s admiration for him may well be based on notions of territorial expansionism as well.

Whatever Trump’s views of McKinley, the basic idea under-riding his foreign policy team’s approach is that in a world where the exercise of power is the ultimate arbiter of a State’s international status, the US remains the greatest Power of them all. It does not matter if the PRC or Russia challenge the US or if other emerging powers join the competition. Without the hobbling effect of its liberal obligations the US can and will dominate them all. This involves trade but also the exercise of raw (neo) imperialist ambitions in places like Greenland, the Panama Canal and even Canada. It involves sidelining the UN, NATO, EU and other international organisations where the US had to share equal votes with lesser powers who flaunted the respect and tribute that should naturally be given in recognition of the US’s superior power base.

There appears to be a belief in this approach that the US can be a new hegemon–but not Sovereign–in a unipolar world, even more so than during the post-USSR-pre 9/11 interregnum. In a new state of nature it can sit at the core of the international system, orbited by constellations of lesser Great Powers like the PRC, Russia, the EU, perhaps India, who in turn would be circled by lesser powers of various stripes. The US will not seek to police the world or waste time and resources on well-meaning but ultimately futile soft power exercises like those involving foreign aid and humanitarian assistance. Its power projection will be sharp on all dimensions, be it trade, diplomacy or in military-security affairs. It will use leverage, intimidation and varying degrees of coercion as well as persuasion (and perhaps even bribery) as diplomatic tools. It will engage the world primarily in bilateral fashion, eschewing multilateralism for others to pursue according to their own interests and power capabilities. That may suit them, but for the US multilateralism is just another obsolescent vestige of the liberal internationalist past.

Source: Northrop-Grumman.

A possible (and partial) explanation for the change in the US foreign policy approach may be the learning effect in the US of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s scorched earth campaign in Gaza. Trump and his advisors may have learned that impunity has its own rewards, that no country or group of countries other than the US (if it has the will) can effectively confront a state determined to pursue its interests regardless of international law, the laws of war or institutional censorship (say, by the UN or International Criminal Court), or any other type of countervailing power. The Russians and Israelis have gotten away with their behaviour because, all rhetoric and hand-wringing aside, there is no actor or group of actors who have the will or capability to stop them. For Trump strategists, these lesser powers are pursuing their interests regardless of diplomatic niceties and international conventions, and they are prevailing precisely because of that. Other than providing military assistance to Ukraine, no one has lifted a serious finger against the Russians other than the Ukrainians themselves, and even fewer have seriously moved to confront Israel’s now evident ethnic cleansing campaign in part because the US has backed Israel unequivocally. The exercise of power in each case occurred in a norm enforcement vacuum in spite of the plethora of agencies and institutions designed to prevent such egregious violations of international standards.

Put another way: if Israel and Russia can get away with their disproportionate and indiscriminate aggression, imagine what the US can do.

If we go on to include the PRC’s successful aggressive military “diplomacy” in East/SE Asia, the use of targeted assassinations, hacking, disinformation and covert direct influence campaigns overseas by various States and assorted other unpunished violations of international conventions, then it is entirely plausible that Trump’s foreign policy brain trust sees the moment as ripe for finally breaking the shackles of liberal internationalism. Also recall that many in Trump’s inner circle subscribe to chaos or disruption theory, in which a norms-breaking “disruptor” like Trump seizes the opportunities presented by the breakdown of the status quo ante.

Before the US could hollow out liberal internationalism abroad and replace it with a modern international state of nature it had to crush liberalism at home. Using Executive Orders as a bludgeon and with a complaint Republican-dominated Congress and Republican-adjacent federal courts. the Trump administration has openly exercised increasingly authoritarian control powers with the intention of subjugating US civil society to its will. Be it in its deportation policies, rollbacks of civil rights protections, attacks on higher education, diminishing of federal government capacity and services (except in the security field), venomous scapegoating of opponents and vulnerable groups, the Trump/MAGA domestic agenda not only seeks to turn the US into a illiberal or “hard” democracy (what Spanish language scholars call a “democradura” as a play on words mixing the terms democracia and dura (hard)). It also serves notice that the US under Trump/MAGA is willing to do whatever is necessary to re-impose its supremacy in world affairs, even if it means hurting its own in order to prove the point. By its actions at home Trump’s administration demonstrates capability, intent and steadfast resolve as it establishes a reputation for ruthless pursuit of its policy agenda. Foreign interlocutors will have to take note of this and adjust accordingly. Hence, for Trump’s advisors, authoritarianism at home is the first step towards undisputed supremacy abroad.

The Trump embrace of international state of nature differs from Hobbes because it does not see the need for a superseding global governance network but instead believes that the US can dominate the world without the encumbrances of power-sharing with lesser players. In this view hegemony means domination, no more or less. It implies no attempt at playing the role of a Sovereign imposing order on a disorderly and recalcitrant community of Nation-States and non-State actors that do not share common values, much less interests.

Source: UN News.

This is the core of the current US foreign policy approach. It is not about reorganising the international order within the extant frameworks as given. It is about removing those frameworks entirely and replacing them with an America First, go it alone agenda where the US, by virtue of its unrivalled power differential relative to all other States and global actors, can maximise its self-interest in largely unconstrained fashion. Some vestiges of the old international order may remain, but they will be marginalised and crippled the longer the US project is in force.

What does not seem to be happening in Trump’s foreign policy circle are three things. First, recognition that other States and international actors may band together against the US move to unipolarity in a new state of nature and that for all its talk the US may not be able to impose unipolar dominance over them. Second, understanding that States like the PRC, Russia and other Great Powers and communities (like the EU) may resist the US move and challenge it before it can consolidate the new international status quo. Third, foreseeing that the technology titans who today are influential in the Trump administration may decide to transfer there loyalties elsewhere, especially if Trump’s ego starts becoming a hindrance to their (economic and digital) power bases. The fusion of private technology control and US State power may not be as compatible over time as presently appears to be the case, something that may not occur with States such as the PRC, India or Japan that have different corporate cultures and political structures. As the current investment in the Middle Eastern oligarchies shows, the fusion of State and private techno power may be easier to accomplish in those contexts rather than the US.

In any event, whether it be a short-term interlude or a longue durée feature of international life, a modern state of nature is now our new global reality.

Most of the world is now in some form of pandemic lockdown. Everything around us is changing – politics, economics, international relations.

How do we navigate the politics of a COVID-19 world? What are the implications for liberal democracy? And what might a ‘new normal’ look like for the world order?

Paul Buchanan is Director of 36th Parallel Assessments, a geopolitical risk and strategic assessment consultancy.

He’s a former intelligence and defence consultant for the US government, and an expert in authoritarianism, unconventional warfare, international security and comparative politics.

Paul grew up in Argentina, and has worked extensively across Latin America and the Asia Pacific, as well as for a number of security agencies in Washington DC, including the Pentagon and the State Department.

***FOLLOW THE SHOW***

You can subscribe to Standing Places on iTunes, Google Podcasts and Spotify and please rate, review and share the show so that more people can hear about it. You can also like and follow the Facebook page.

Music on this episode is by Eveningland and Blue Dot Sessions.

Ref: https://standingplaces.com/episodes/2020/4/19/episode-9-coronavirus-pandemic-politics-an-interview-with-dr-paul-g-buchanan

Click here to read the full report (part two) and (part one).

Click here to read the full report (part two) and (part one).

The claims need to be treated with scepticism. Here’s why.

Having been defeated on the battlefields of the Levant, ISIS now urges its followers to return to decentralised terrorist attacks as a form of irregular warfare. It wishes to show continued strength by claiming that it can orchestrate attacks world-wide and that no country can escape its reach. The Easter Sunday terrorist bombings in Sri Lanka fit that narrative.

For more, see 36th-Parallel’s RNZ Dispatch.

“We have seen reports of the statement from the Sri Lankan Minister of state for defence, alleging a link between the the Easter Sunday terrorist attack and the March 15 attack in Christchurch,” she says. “We understand the Sri Lankan investigation into the attack is in its early stages. New Zealand has not yet seen any intelligence upon which such an assessment might be based.”

For further analysis, Radio New Zealand spoke to security consultant Paul Buchanan.

For More, see 36th Parallel’s RNZ Dispatch.

“I would take these claims with a very healthy dose of scepticism, and the reason for that is both ISIS and the Sri Lankan government have their own reasons to deflect from the local nature of the attack. ISIS of course is on the run and wants to claim things that are possibly beyond its scope at this point but make the event broader than it is and the Sri Lanka government wants to deflect from its failures of intelligence that facilitated this.

“More importantly, the amount of preparation and planning needed to undertake these coordinated simultaneous attacks simply is too long for it to have been attributed to the March 15 attacks. We’re a month out from the March 15 attacks, they were getting intelligence warnings … that people were stockpiling explosives before March 15th.”

Falling into retaliatory rhetoric over the attacks is dangerous, he said.

“We fall into the false narrative of the clash of civilisations,” he said.

“If we get into tit for tat attacks … we get into a cycle of violence that quite frankly has not occurred in the past. In the past, attacks are done randomly.

“The way the global media is covering it is falling into that trap and conservative media outlets around the world have already cast this as a ‘Christianity versus Islam’ thing when in fact … both Muslims and Christians are a distinct minority in Sri Lanka and they’re both oppressed by Buddhists.

“If I look at the methodology of the attack I think ‘well, the Catholic churches were attacked because they were incredibly soft targets and they were not defended … even in spite of the intelligence warnings to the government about the choice of targets.

“The attacks on the hotels are clearly designed to hurt tourism business in Sri Lanka, on which it depends very very strongly.”

For more, see 36th Parallel’s RNZ Dispatch.

RNZ contacted 36th Parallel’s principal Dr Paul Buchanan for his view, he said for too long intelligence agencies had been solely focused on Islamic extremists.

“The ball’s been dropped when it comes to white extremists,” Mr Buchanan said.

“Unfortunately with the obsession with Islamicists, it seems that Western intelligence agencies, to include those in New Zealand, simply discounted or were unaware of the degree to which white extremists have copied Al Queda and ISIS’ playbook when it comes to recruitment and the planning of events.”

Mr Buchanan was referencing the use of the internet, with several internet forums and communities dedicated to white extremists.

For more, See Radio New Zealand’s report.

Radio New Zealand sought the view of 36th Parallel’s principal, Paul Buchanan. He tells Philippa Tolley the problems that led to the Christchurch mosque attacks had nothing to do with technological capability and that the leader of the National Party is wrong.

For more, see Radio NZ’s report.

In the days, months and years ahead much soul-searching will be conducted about the social and political factors that contributed to the massacre of 50 people. Here we shall focus on two: the spread of hate speech via social media; and the intelligence failures that may have contributed.

With the proliferation of social media platforms during the last decade, there has been a steady increase in their use by extremist groups. Be it Wahabbist and Salafists calling for jihad, 9/11 conspiracy theorists or white supremacists, it has given them global reach in a measure never seen before.

This allows extremists in disparate parts of the world to instantly communicate and reinforce their views without having to be in physical contact. They can even plot acts of violence using encrypted platforms and the so-called “dark web”.

That is what is different today when compared to 20 years ago: the threat of decentralised, even autonomous extremist violence has increased commensurate with the emergence of social media outlets that allow them to disseminate their views.

This produces both an echo chamber and megaphone effect: not only do kindred spirits find common space to vent and practice their hate, against the perceived “other,” but more moderate, mainstream outlets begin to pick and emulate some of the language used in them. Language that was once socially unacceptable in most democratic societies has crept into mainstream social discourse, be it about immigrants, minorities, sexual minorities or indigenous groups.

Hate speech is increasingly normalised under the mantle of free speech, where the hate-mongers turn the tables on civil libertarians by claiming that their freedom of expression is being trampled by political correctness gone mad.

That, in turn, has crept into the rhetoric of politics itself, where mainstream politicians adopt some of the language and policy postures that once were only championed by a rabid yet marginalised political fringe.

One only need to remember the anti-immigrant language of certain politicians and the misogynist, homophobic and/or xenophobic utterances of assorted radio hosts and television personalities, to say nothing of the comments section of what used to be moderate political blogs, to see how the discursive trend has evolved here.

The problem is almost exclusively a democratic one. Authoritarian regimes censor as a matter of course and control the flow of information in their societies, so what can be seen and heard is up to the regime. Unless authorised or condoned by the state, extremists are not given space to air their views in public.

Paul G Buchanan Photo: SUPPLIED

Democratic societies uphold the right to free speech no matter how noxious it may be because it is exactly the unpopular views that need defending. But the principle of free speech never reckoned with the practice of social and mainstream media outlets using business models that are at least in part founded on the idea that there is money to be made in catering to extreme views.

If advertising can be sold on extremist sites and offensive speech is protected, then the bottom line advises that it is not for the media conglomerates to determine what is and what is not acceptable social discourse. That is for others to decide.

This is the public policy conundrum. Where to draw the line between free and hate speech? When does offensive speech become dangerous speech? One would think that the answer would be simple in that any calls for violence against others, be it individual or collective in nature, is what separates offensive from hate speech.

And yet to this day democracies grapple, increasingly unsteadily, with the question of what constitutes censorable material online.

With regard to whether there was an intelligence failure, obviously, there was because the massacre occurred. But the question is whether this was due to policy errors, tactical mistakes, some combination of them or the stealth of the attacker.

At a policy level, the question has to be asked if whether the intelligence services and police placed too much emphasis after 9/11 on detecting and preventing home-grown jihadists from emerging to the detriment of focusing on white supremacist groups, of which there are a number in Aotearoa.

Given a limited amount of resources, the security community has to prioritise between possible, probable and imminent threats. So what happened here? Where a small arsenal of weapons was amassed, improvised explosives made and a lot of planning done without the authorities made aware.

It is known that the security community monitors environmental, animal activist, social justice and Māori sovereignty groups and even works with private investigative firms as partners when doing so, so why were the white supremacists not given the same level of attention?

Or were they? The best form of intelligence gathering on extremist movements is via infiltration of the group by undercover agents (who can target individuals for monitoring by other means). Perhaps there simply are not enough covert human intelligence agents to undertake the monitoring of those that would do society harm. And what happens if the person is not an active member of the groups being monitored?

If this is the case, then no amount of intelligence policy reorientation or tactical emphasis would have prevented the attack. As the saying goes in the intelligence business, “the public only hears about failures, not successes”.

New Zealand, however, must “own” this terrorist attack. It happened in our community.

* Paul G Buchanan is the director of 36th-parallel Assessments, a geopolitical and strategic analysis consultancy.