By Javier Surasky
Global digital governance is often explained through power, economics, actors, and institutions, but another factor also helps us understand how the international system evolves: the quality of dialogue among its actors.
By dialogue, we mean interactions shaped by three basic conditions: real listening, recognition of the other as a legitimate interlocutor, and the construction of common language, meaning that speaking is not the same as engaging in dialogue, and interaction does not necessarily produce understanding: Over the last fifty years, a clear pattern has emerged: the international system communicates more and more, but dialogues less and less. Digital technologies, and more recently artificial intelligence, are a central part of that transformation.
When dialogue helped stabilize the international system
In the final years of the Cold War and during
the early 1990s, dialogue, limited to that between the superpowers, served as a
driver of international détente. Through it, the United States and the Soviet
Union redefined their mutual perceptions of one another, expanded the margins
of coexistence, and created space for the expansion of multilateralism.
Conflict existed and was intense, but it was
managed through political and institutional dialogue. Strategic fear led to
understandings, and these, in turn, to détente.
That dynamic of dialogue was one of the reasons
why, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a systemic transition process was
possible that was less violent than many had anticipated.
During the 1990s, a powerful idea also took
hold: that major global problems could be addressed through international
cooperation. The United Nations conferences of that decade reflected that
spirit.
At that time, the technological infrastructure
that now shapes much of global communication was beginning to develop and
spread on a massive scale, and soon the climate of openness began to erode, as
dynamics marked by the primacy of national security, unilateralism, and the
growing asymmetry of power at the global level emerged.
The shift in logic in the 21st century
The securitarian turn following the attacks of
September 11, 2001, weakened multilateral consensus and legitimized unilateral
actions. Despite the centrality of that event, it is more accurate to see it
within a chain of overlapping crises: the environmental crisis; the food
crisis, which reached its peak in 2000 alongside the major “dot-com” crash; the
energy crisis, which peaked in 2008 together with the global financial crisis originating in high-risk mortgage-related financial assets in the U.S. financial system; and others that followed,
such as the humanitarian crisis.
Around the same years, the mass expansion of the Internet, the emergence of digital platforms and social networks (Facebook was
founded in 2004 and became an open network in 2006), and new communication
infrastructures profoundly transformed the way international actors interact.
The result was the reinforcement of a paradox:
the capacity for global communication was expanding rapidly, while the
conditions for strategic dialogue were progressively deteriorating.
A hyperconnected international system
Today, the international system is undergoing a phase marked by hyperconnectivity: states, technology companies, international organizations, and societies interact through a global digital infrastructure that would have been unimaginable just three decades ago.
Never before have there been so many channels, or such speed, for exchanging information, coordinating action, and enabling interaction among international actors.
However, greater connectivity has not produced
greater dialogue among actors. While digital technologies have expanded
interactions, they have also multiplied spaces of political fragmentation,
informational polarization, and strategic competition. We are witnessing AI becoming a central asset in the struggle for hegemony between the United States and China.
Dialogue, therefore, is largely absent, which
creates difficulties for cooperation on global issues and for the production of
international documents such as the Paris Agreement, an excellent example of
how incomplete dialogue undermines the possibility of establishing solid
international governance of the kind we need for AI.
Artificial intelligence as a new layer of the international system
In recent years, AI has introduced new
technological capabilities that redefine how information is produced,
circulated, and interpreted, with three major implications for international
dialogue.
First, AI accelerates the production and
circulation of information, increasing the volume of communication but not
necessarily improving the quality of understanding among actors.
Second, AI has become a central object of
geopolitical competition, introducing new tensions into an international system
that lacks the dialogue necessary to generate cooperation and manage conflicts.
Third, the international governance of AI
requires very high levels of global cooperation, precisely at a moment when the
conditions for deep dialogue among major powers are more fragile. This
continues to prevent the establishment of common global regimes for managing
the risks and opportunities arising from this technology.
The very technology we need to regulate
internationally becomes an obstacle, generating an overwhelming multiplicity of
communication that blocks dialogue and contributes to an international
environment with faster interaction and less capacity for political
understanding.
Conclusion
The contemporary international system does not
seem to need more channels of communication to foster understanding among its
actors, promote cooperation, and sustain peace; rather, it needs to rebuild the
political conditions for dialogue in a world system of exchanges increasingly
mediated by digital technologies.
This is particularly important for issues such
as the global governance of artificial intelligence, where technological
interdependence is as deep as the geopolitical tensions it generates.
More communication has led to less dialogue
and, as a result, greater interdependence has turned into lower trust, more
global problems, and fewer common frameworks to manage them: we have more
forums, more institutions, and more media outlets than ever before, yet we have
progressively lost the quality of international dialogue—something that must
now be rebuilt within a new, digitalized environment in which more actors
participate in an increasingly complex international ecosystem.
There have never been so many means of
communication and so few political conditions to sustain high-quality,
strategic, inclusive, democratic, and results-oriented dialogue. The
consequences are self-evident.