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INTRODUCTION

By 2026, China’s economy will be bigger than America’s, and India’s will be much

larger than that of any individual European country (Russia, Brazil, and Indonesia

will not be far behind). The press will be full of articles about ‘‘Asian values’’ and the

‘‘Beijing consensus.’’ As these countries develop, so will their voracious appetite for

natural resources and human capital.... But even the biggest powers will be vulnera-

ble. The privatization of destruction—with computer nerds able to wreak havoc from

the bedroom and terrorists able to buy weapons of mass destruction in a global

market—will allow groups of individuals to take on nation-states. This vulnerability

may encourage ‘‘defensive imperialism’’: powerful countries taking over states to pre-

vent them from serving as bases or breeding grounds for hostile groups. As economic

might shifts from the north and west to the south and east, so will cultural power.

The rise of al-Jazeera and Bollywood already means that the world no longer looks

at things overwhelmingly through American eyes. Ancient civilizations like China

and India will become more self-confident and will project their own ideas onto

concepts such as democracy, freedom, and the rule of law.^50

The introduction of more and more actors on the geopolitical stage seems to clash
with an international order whose ideals and institutions, forms of cooperation and con-
flict, dreams of peace and declarations of war, were for at least a century premised upon
the primacy of nation-states and the explicit formulation and official guaranteeing of their
bi- or multilateral agreements. In short, the rules of the game have dramatically changed,
and all drawn into it make up the rules as they go along.
Recent surveys suggest that identities online succeed in reaching out to members of
different faith-based or ethnic groups more often and more easily than was previously
assumed. So-called allochthonous and autochthonous youth, a Dutch report claims, over-
come social and cultural segregation in virtual forums, in which religion, the relation
between the sexes, and homosexuality—all subjects on which they are likely to disagree
with their parents or educators—are the topics of the day. ‘‘The Internet is good for
integration,’’ a Dutch newspaper quipped on its front page, noting that more than 80
percent of Turkish, Moroccan, Antillean, and Surinam youths communicate—albeit it
virtually—with peers from different ethnic backgrounds, whereas only 20 percent limit
themselves to their own groups, shunningkaaskoppen(‘‘cheese heads,’’ as Dutch autoch-
thonous people are unflatteringly called).^51
The reports in question also find that more than half those interviewed present them-
selves as someone different on the Internet from who they are in ‘‘real’’ life. And one
might argue that integrating verbally, perhaps even visually (through webscams, etc.) is
not quite the same—or at least not as demanding and promising—as integrating as bodies
in space that do or do not ‘‘get along.’’ Is virtual coexistence, being mindful of others
who may be other still than one thinks (and not necessarily present themselves in their
true identity) a way of coming to terms with the otherness of others, a way of learning to

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