Selim Ibraimi- In August 1989, during a trip from Skopje to Ulcinj, a passenger sitting behind me was talking to another person about a world that would be automated. I didn’t know if she was a teacher or not. She was talking about the “intelligent machines” that would one day be part of the future. As the bus approached the city of Tivat and headed towards Ulcinj, everything ran through my mind. Her conversation sounded more like a fantasy than a reality.
Meanwhile, a few months later, in November of that same year, the Berlin Wall fell and the bipolar world divided since the end of World War II returned for several decades to a unipolar order under the leadership of the US. But not now, when China and other actors have changed this order, returning us to a Cold War, this time on a digital plane. Almost four decades since that conversation, the debate about artificial intelligence, autonomous machines, algorithms, etc., is indicative of profound changes.
There are signs that the world is once again being divided into more advanced blocs, in a slightly different way, between a central digital world and a peripheral world. In addition, in our previous articles, we have analyzed the core theories of international relations, including realism, idealism, constructivism, etc., and how states and decision-making fit within them.
But as the world is changing, especially with artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, and autonomous machines making decisions, this has put pressure on a new paradigm called “computational international relations” (“comint”) which is moving into “algorithmic realism,” with a tendency to become important in the next decade. Now let’s focus on this paradigm which will essentially include all states regardless of power and geography.
And why do I say this? Because in the digital world, when everything is built on artificial intelligence networks, semiconductors and much more, states that will have all these capacities will have the opportunity to project power and dominance. Essentially, this is “algorithmic realism” and not classical realism, in which decision-making was a kind of process and depended on the geographical position, military, political, economic, etc. capacities of states in the international arena. Today it is difficult to say that “algorithmic realism” is a consolidated discipline, but as I mentioned, in the next decade it will certainly emerge as a major theory within “international relations informatics” and more. Both concepts will move forward: “algorithmic realism” and “synthetic realism”.
The second, the synthetic one, will be the most difficult to follow because this discipline is likely to manipulate information in the process of political, military, etc. decision-making. In order to prevent mistakes in real and concrete cases, “algorithmic realism” will advance to prevent such decisions in important cases. However, both concepts are part of (“comint”). The current treatment is not simply a shift from philosophical approaches to technology. In fact, the (“comint”) paradigm reminds us of the German philosopher and historian Oswald Spengler with his book “Man and Technology” (Der Mensch und die Technik).
According to Spengler, technology is essentially a weapon used to dominate nature (Spengler 1932, 10). The digital world will help the “informatics of international relations” to last for a long time, as classical realism was and is. While we have just touched on these growing concepts in practical terms, world politics will face two major divisions: the central digital world which will lead military, economic, artificial intelligence and technological issues, and the second, the peripheral world where the Western Balkans and other states will also be part. States with non-digital capacities will be forced to become part of this emerging system. It is of interest to see which states, in the coming decades, will have the strongest systems. And how other states, regardless of strength and ideology, will respond to this out of the need to survive.
And here the issue will become more interesting and dangerous for fragile states and democracies. Those states that will choose to stay outside the infrastructure of “algorithmic realism” will be in a more fragile position influenced by the force of “synthetic realism” which will claim that international relations and events are false and unreal. To return to “algorithmic realism”, it should be noted that it is like a continuation of the previous theories of John Locke, Kenneth Waltz, Hans Morgenthau, etc., but as I mentioned, the digital world is demanding more in-depth approaches to managing international affairs.
With classical realism, in the last century, states and leaders have made many decisions, d including the idealistic and constructivist approach to international politics. In the coming era, the decision-making model will be based more and more on “algorithmic realism”. The war in Ukraine shows us more about these new approaches, where artificial intelligence replaced several roles on the battlefield including leadership steps in decision-making. However, the 1989 trip still haunts me, especially the words of the passenger sitting behind me about “intelligent machines.”
After all, who would have thought that we would witness such great changes. In fact, this can be seen as a tendency for a change in the approaches to how we see the world, what is good and bad, based on machines and automated thinking, not excluding “algorithmic realism” and “synthetic”. The current situation reminds us of the myth of Faust and the fear of the path taken where machines decide the fate of states, and not like now where statesmen still decide whether problems will be dealt with by force (classical realism) or diplomacy (idealism).
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