Slaughter on the Strategy of Connection

Anne-Marie Slaughter
December 7, 2015

Anne-Marie Slaughter, president and CEO of New America, has been planning her new book, The Chessboard and the Web, since 2009. She shared its contents for the first time at the MacMillan Center during the second of this year’s Henry L. Stimson Lectures on World Affairs in a three-part series titled “The Strategy of Connection.”

The Stimson Lectures are sponsored by the MacMillan Center and Yale University Press, which will be publishing Slaughter’s book in 2017.

Before taking the helm of New America, Slaughter served as the director of policy planning for the United States Department of State from 2009 to 2011, the first woman to hold that position. Prior to her government service, Slaughter was the dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs from 2002 to 2009.

In her lectures, Slaughter pushed back against “Chessboard Politics,” a system that has dominated international relations since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.

“Chessboard is the traditional geopolitical view focusing on states and competition,” she said.

In other words, the “chessboard” world is one in which carrots and sticks – rewards and punishments – serve as the primary tool of negotiation. The United States tends to view conflicts in this framework.

For example, when Russia annexed Crimea on February 23, 2014, the situation seemed like the classic standoff between the power blocks of the West and the Russians; Crimea merely served as a battleground. It was two sides vying for power: no more, no less.

Slaughter contends that this view alone is counterproductive. She advocates for a Web version of foreign policy to complement the “chessboard.” Using a Web perspective means seeing the world as a network of people, institutions, companies, and criminals.

In the case of Crimea, she explained that using the Web lens shows that the conflict is not only about “West versus the East” but also “a want to end corruption and establish a functioning democracy.” By reducing tensions into a chessboard binary, policymakers lose the ability to implement nuanced solutions to complex problems.

Moreover, the Web lens would reveal that the crisis in Syria was not born out of mere power struggles between Bashar al-Assad regime and the West; rather it was caused by mass displacement, economic contraction, and environmental degradation.

“[The Syrian crisis] was foreseeable years ago, but we are designed for the chessboard not the Web,” Professor Slaughter conceded.

But the Web perspective does not only demand that diplomats approach challenges with a more comprehensive action plan. It compels the United States to structure its institutions for a Web world, to change them from strict hierarchies to collaborative networks.

“Power in hierarchies is power ‘over,’ but in networks, it is power ‘with,’” she explained. “New power is peer-driven. It uploads and distributes. The goal of new power is not to hoard but to channel.”

Most good institutions, Slaughter says, are structured like hammocks or soccer nets. Each node is closely connected with a multitude of other nodes. Power is not concentrated, but distributed among many.  

This organizational strategy provides a number of benefits. For one, it fosters close relationships within the group because it recognizes colleagues as equals instead of establishing a strict system of superiors and subordinates.

“[This advantage] is rooted in a desire to be seen, heard, and recognized as an equal. The circle of ongoing relationships creates a sense of belonging,” she pointed out.

This distribution of authority also functions as a backup system. If one node goes down, others exist to keep the institution intact.

“The hammock is robust because it is always possible to find another route to the destination. It guarantees that if a [health] clinic is closed in one town, another will still be available,” Slaughter said.

This changing structure of networks inevitably means that leadership strategies must adapt as well. The classical chess master needs to become the gardener, tending to his or her colleagues and directing their energies toward a shared goal instead of merely ordering them around.

“Really what diplomacy is about is tending gardens,” she concluded. “This needs to be taught as much as law.”