The Exploit: A Theory of Networks - asounder

Prolegomenon 7
the other hand, the reality of how the United Nations operates is far
from this: most nations are effectively excluded from the decision -
making processes in international policy, and the stratifications between
nations within the United Nations make for folly (either from
within, as with criticism of U.S. war policy from Russia and China,
or from without, as with the 2003 American veto of the nearly unani -
mous condemnation by UN member states of Israel’s security fence
in the occupied territories).
The United Nations is not simply the opposite of the United States, just
as decentralized networks are not simply the opposite of centralized networks.
The Nietzschean argument, while it does call our attention to the
political physics of action and reaction that exists within network
structures, cannot account for conflict within networks, or better, between
networks. Because its scope is so local, it can only account for
the large - scale effects of network conflict by moving from local conflict
to local conflict (in effect, moving from node to node). Nietzsche’s
notes in The Will to Power reveal this atomistic bias. Nietzsche begins
from the analysis of “quanta of power” in constant interaction, and
these quanta of power are understood somehow to compose the “will
to power.” Network structures challenge us to think about what happens
outside scale—that is, between the jump from “quanta of power”
to “will to power.”
Provisional Response 2: Unilateralism versus
Multilateralism (the Foucauldian Argument)
Critiques of U.S. unilateralism betray certain assumptions about power
relationships. They tend to consider the output, or the “terminal effects,”
of power relations, rather than considering the contingencies
that must be in place for those power effects to exist. For instance,
the example of U.S. unilateralism is often used to demonstrate how
power is not decentralized or network based, for, in this case, political
power is encapsulated in one nation (or, more specifically, in the
American president). The argument is similar to Lovink’s claim at the
beginning: yes, it is possible to acknowledge the networked character