Online Social Networks: A New U.S. Diplomatic Weapon Spreading U.S. Values

When two billion people around the world started to use the Internet, they fundamentally changed its nature from a virtual world far from reality to almost a necessity of our daily lives. Obama and Hillary were also paying attention to this trend. When they became the new leaders of this nation, the Internet — as well as its byproduct, the social networks — became part of their indispensable tools. It is even now coined as a new weapon for diplomacy. What was once a “free Internet” now transforms from individualism to an active effort to execute diplomacy. Now the U.S. wants to claim the “land of the Internet” as their new frontier.

Social Networks: A Double-Edged Sword

In Hillary’s second “Internet freedom” speech, she focused on the social networks — Twitter, Facebook and YouTube — and the power they exert. Not only was this based on the personal experience of Hillary or Obama, it was also based on the recent events in Iran, Tunisia and Egypt and how social networks played an important role. It is a common perception now that social networks had a striking influence on the changes happening in the Middle East and North Africa.

The onset of social networks clearly expanded how we communicate and exchange ideas and clearly sets a new milestone on how we use the Internet. In other words, social networks revolutionized the way we think and interact. It also realized Hillary’s idea of how the Internet provides the freedoms of expression, assembly and association that comprise what she called the freedom to connect. However, on the flip side, this freedom also has its consequences, which Hillary recognized — a double-edged sword that can harm oneself more than the enemy.

This fact is clearly expressed in Hillary’s second “Internet freedom” speech, that “the challenge [of liberty and security] is finding the proper measure: enough security to enable our freedoms but not so much, or so little, as to endanger them. Finding this proper measure for the Internet is critical because the qualities that make the Internet a force for unprecedented progress — its openness, its leveling effect, its reach and speed — also enable wrongdoing on an unprecedented scale.” From Hillary’s speech, the standards for Internet security and liberty are not all that consistent. The “proper measure” is weighed toward the benefit of the United States: If it benefits America, it can be liberalized; otherwise, it should be secured. Is Hillary right? From the U.S. perspective and the secretary of state’s perspective, there is no doubt — she is right. But as a global standard, this is Hillary’s unilateral standpoint — historically, also a U.S. standpoint.

Social Networks: A Tool for Spreading U.S. Values

　　

In the movie and novel “007,” state-of-the-art weapons and equipment are indispensable tools. In the traditional sense of insurgency and counterinsurgency, the CIA and KGB stretch our imaginations of dark nights and bloody days. But from the regime volatility recently seen in Iran, Tunisia and Egypt, one sees the Internet as a new tool that can powerfully sway the countries’ futures and destiny. The power of social networks is slowly recognized, and it is a force to be reckoned with.

It is apparent that Hillary has seen this point; otherwise, the U.S. government wouldn’t have provided $20 million in competitive grants the past three years and wouldn’t have added to that amount $25 million in 2011 to “support a burgeoning group of technologists and activists working at the cutting edge of the fight against Internet repression.” And where these funds are flowing to is a matter worth pondering.

What is more important, on Feb. 16, the day after Hillary’s Internet freedom speech, Voice of America (VOA) decided to stop airing its Chinese radio and television shows. Similarly significant is that VOA will continue to maintain its Chinese version of the website and will air its shows on the Internet. S. Enders Wimbush, chair of the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ Strategy and Budget Committee, claimed that there were very few Chinese radio listeners, but China has the most Internet users in the world. It was widely known that VOA Chinese radio is a propaganda tool used by the U.S. government toward the Chinese people, and recent changes show the adaptations of the political propaganda for the Internet age. The U.S. government has been pushing for a new media like Twitter for use in the Internet age. The New York Times pointed out that the relationship between Twitter and the U.S. Department of State shows that the Obama administration is using online social networks as a tool for diplomacy.

Indeed, the U.S. Department of State will release its Arabic and Persian versions of its Twitter, adding to its current French and Spanish versions. In the future, it will release Chinese, Russian and Indian versions. Hillary admits, “This is enabling us to have real-time, two-way conversations with people wherever there is a connection that governments do not block.” What is her purpose? It is not too difficult to read into her words.

According to Hillary, “It’s about ensuring that the Internet remains a space where activities of all kinds can take place — from grand, groundbreaking, historic campaigns to the small, ordinary acts that people engage in every day.” The events in Iran, Tunisia and Egypt all vindicated Hillary’s grand, groundbreaking campaigns, because these are the ones that truly benefit the United States.

This is of course another war but not the war Hillary mentioned as “protecting the rights, liberty and dignity of the people,”* but the war that enhances U.S. values and benefits. Because, from Hillary’s standpoint, only U.S. values represent “democracy, liberty and human rights”* and the only choice for human progress. Perhaps Hillary forgot Bertrand Russell’s famous words: “Diversity is essential to happiness”; similarly, diversity is the nature of the world. A single-minded value of the world, despite being a U.S. value, is the value presented in the “Brave New World” of “1984.”

*Editor’s Note: Quotes could not be verified.