I’m very greatful to making this book publicly available for download.
The Zapatista Social Netwar in Mexico was prepared for the U.S. Army and written by David Ronfeldt, John Arquilla, Graham E. Fuller and Melissa Fuller.
The book covers the EZLN organization and netwar, a concept developed for the purpose of understanding the nature of conflict in the information age.
Made possible by developments in media technology, ICT and the growth of transnational NGOs – it is a force-multiplier and an irregular form of warfare.
I’ve pasted some of the notes that I’ve copied from the text below, along with the organizational structure of the Zapatistas.
“segmented, polycentric, ideologically integrated network” (SPIN):
During the 1980s, Chiapas became a crossroads for NGO activists, Roman Catholic liberation-theology priests, Protestant evangelists, Guatemalan refugees, guerrillas from Central America, and criminals trafficking in narcotics and weapons.
How, then, did network designs come to define the Zapatista move- ment? They evolved out of the movement’s three layers, each of which is discussed below:
- At the social base of the EZLN are the indigenas—indigenous peoples—from several Mayan language and ethnic groups. This layer, the most “tribal,” engages ideals and objectives that are very egalitarian, communitarian, and consultative.
- The next layer is found in the EZLN’s leadership—those top leaders, mostly from educated middle-class Ladino backgrounds, who have little or no Indian ancestry and who infiltrated into Chiapas in order to create a guerrilla army. This was the most hierarchical layer—at least initially—in that the leadership as- pired to organize hierarchical command structures for waging guerrilla warfare in and beyond Chiapas.
- The top layer—top from a netwar perspective—consists of the myriad local (Mexican) and transnational (mostly American and Canadian) NGOs who rallied to the Zapatista cause. This is the most networked layer from an information-age perspective.
- The social netwar qualities of the Zapatista movement depend mainly on the top layer, that of the NGOs. Without it, the EZLN would probably have settled into a mode of organization and behavior more like a classic insurgency or ethnic conflict.
the key economic factor—land—is not really about economics from an indigenous viewpoint.
land matters intensely to Indians because it is the physical basis for community—for having a sense of community and for being able to endure as a community. Without land, an indigenous people cannot dwell together; their community is culturally dead. Outsiders (including Marxists) often view the Indian struggle for land in economic class terms, evoking images of “landless peasants.” But for Indians, the truly important dimensions of the land issue are about community and culture.
Mexico’s economic liberalization policies of the 1980s and early 1990s created an agricultural crisis for the peasants, for it brought the termination of subsidies and credits and eliminated agencies regulating agricultural policies.
Although the state’s population is only 4 percent of the national total, 25 percent of all land disputes in Mexico are in Chiapas; and 30 percent of all petitions for land presented to the federal government come from Chiapas
As their economic and thus their cultural and social woes mounted from the 1970s onward, the restless indigenas formed new peasant organizations that were independent of the federal and state governments and of the ruling political party, the Institutional Revolu- tionary Party (PRI). A vibrant set of indigenous organizations emerged, the most important being the Unión de Ejidos-Quiptic Ta Lecubtesel, the Unión de Uniones
The Diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas in the central highlands, headed by Samuel Ruíz (known in some circles as the “Red Bishop”), became a key player in the mobilization and politi- cization of the indigenas, notably with the organization of the land- mark Indigenous Encounter in 1974 that stirred many Mayans to en- gage in the kinds of organizing noted above.
Ruíz would describe Salinas-style neo- liberalism and the poverty it spawned as being “totally contrary to the will of God.” While his diocese denies having ever funded the EZLN, it acknowledges the justice of its cause.
Its 1983 statutes called for creat- ing the EZLN by name; that year, key FLN leaders moved into the Chiapas jungle to accomplish this, at a time when liberation theology was vibrant, some tiny cadres associated with other guerrilla groups already existed, hopes were rising that revolution would triumph in Central America and spread into Mexico via Chiapas, and peasant organizations like ARIC existed that might be infiltrated. The FLN leadership aimed to establish a powerful center of operations in Chiapas, while also creating a nationwide infrastructure of armed cells.
The indigenas disapproved of hierarchical command structures. They wanted flat, decentralized designs that emphasized consultation at the community level. Indeed, their key social concepts are about community and harmony—the community is supposed to be the center of all social activity, and its institutions are supposed to maintain harmony among family members, residents of the village, and the spiritual and material worlds. Decisionmaking is essentially communal, and the key positions of power in a village belong to a larger council, under the notion that many people make better deci- sions than just one
In this design, the purpose of power and authority is to serve the community, not to command it—so one who does not know how to serve cannot know how to govern. Marcos would learn this and later point out that he could not give an order—his order would simply not exist—if it had not been authorized by an assembly or a commit- tee representing the indigenas. While elements of hierarchy are found in these indigenous structures, the Mexican federal and state structures in the region are terribly hierarchical by comparison and are thus viewed as alien impositions.
As recruitment and organization advanced—and to assure they kept advancing—the EZLN’s founders adapted their principles to those of the indigenas.14 The EZLN did not copy their organizational forms, but it did begin to resemble them.
Marcos soon clarified that
Armed struggle has to take place where the people are, and we faced the choice of continuing with a traditional guerrilla structure, or masificando and putting the strategic leadership in the hands of the people. Our army became scandalously Indian, and there was a certain amount of clashing while we made the adjustment from our orthodox way of seeing the world in terms of “bourgeois and prole- tarians” to the community’s collective democratic conceptions, and their world view.
Some of the activist NGOs were more radical and militant than others, and some were more affected by old ideologies than others. But, altogether, most were in basic agreement that they were not interested in seeking political power or in helping other actors seek power. Rather, they wanted to foster a form of democracy in which civil-society actors would be strong enough to counterbalance state and market actors and could play central roles in making public- policy decisions that affect civil society (see Frederick, 1993a). This relatively new ideological stance, a by-product of the information revolution, was barely emerging on the eve of the EZLN insurrection, but we surmise that it had enough momentum among activists to help give coherence to the swarm that would rush into Mexico, seeking to help pacify as well as protect the EZLN.
a surge in transnational networking gained momentum following the First Continental Encounter of Indigenous Peoples in 1990 in Ecuador, and after the formation of the Continental Coordinating Commission of Indigenous Nations and Organizations (CONIC) at a meeting in 1991 in Panama.
Alison Brysk: “We see ourselves as a human rights organization in the broadest sense, and that was certainly our first track of contact with indige- nous rights. But we’ve moved more into ecology . . . clearly it works better.”23
the UN- sponsored Conference on the Environment and Development—the “Earth Summit”—in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 put NGOs on the map as global activists. Though the conference mainly assembled govern- ment officials and representatives of international governmental organizations (IGOs), one to two thousand NGO representatives were invited, and more showed up. The key event for them was less the official conference than the NGO Global Forum that was orga- nized parallel to the conference to enable NGOs to debate issues and adopt policy positions independently of governments
During these conferences, one infrastructure-building NGO proved particularly crucial: the Association for Progressive Communications (APC). It, along with its affiliates (e.g., Peacenet in the United States, Alternex in Brazil) operates the set of Internet-linked computer net- works most used by activists, and thus it played growing roles in facilitating communications by e-mail and fax among the NGOs, and in enabling them to send reports and press releases to officials, journalists, other interested parties, and publics around the world
The key umbrella networking organization was the innovative, multilayered Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), which spanned a range of peace, human-rights, and church organizations.
It is difficult to say how influential the NGOs were; they affected some public debates and congressional views, especially on environmental issues, but did not prevent fast-track approval of NAFTA in late 1993. Still, the activists’ trinational pan-issue networks got better organized than ever before.
Thus, by the time of the EZLN’s insurrection, the transnational NGOs that had been building global and regional networks, notably those concerned with human rights, indigenous rights, and ecumenical and pro-democracy issues, had counterparts to link with in Mexico City, San Cristóbal de las Casas, and other locales. Then, as NGO representatives swarmed into Chiapas in early 1994, new Mexican NGOs were created to assist with communication and coordination among the NGOs—most importantly, the Coalition of Non- Governmental Organizations for Peace (CONPAZ), based at the diocese in San Cristóbal.30 (An NGO named the National Commission for Democracy in Mexico was established in the United States, but it was basically a public-relations arm for the EZLN.)
The insurrection did not begin as a social netwar. It began as a rather traditional, Maoist insurgency. But that changed within a matter of a few days as, first, the EZLN’s military strategy for waging a “war of the flea” ran into trouble, and second, an alarmed mass of Mexican and transnational NGO activists mobilized and descended on Chia- pas and Mexico City in “swarm networks” (term from Kelly, 1994). Meanwhile, no matter how small a territory the EZLN held in Chia- pas, it quickly occupied more space in the media than had any other insurgent group in Mexico’s if not the world’s history.1
Acts of sabotage against Mexico’s economic infrastructure were to be features of the FLN/EZLN’s campaign plan. Victory in such a war would hinge on the ability of dispersed operational units (like the focos of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s theory of guerrilla war- fare—see Guevara [1960], 1985) to pursue a common strategic goal, strike at multiple targets in a coordinated manner, and share scarce resources with each other through strategic and logistical alliances.
Strategically, the guerrilla campaign follows a sequence of events, moving from rural to urban settings, with campaigning be- gun in far-off areas but culminating near the opponent’s principal locus of power. Tactically, pitched battles are to be fought whenever possible, as the opponent advances upon the guerrillas.
netwar is a different form of conflict. Inasmuch as the key combatants are organized along networked lines, military operations can be conducted by even quite small units, almost al- ways well below the battalion size recommended by theorists of guerrilla war. In terms of political aims, netwar may be waged with a state’s overthrow and revolution in mind, but it may easily accommodate a reform agenda as well. It is thus a more discriminate and versatile tool of conflict than guerrilla warfare; and it may proceed even in the absence of mass armies, allies, or widespread popular support among indigenous peoples, all of which are normally necessary conditions for the success of guerrilla warfare.
For armed netwarriors, it is possible, and generally desirable, to strike anywhere, at any time—or not to strike at all, even for long periods; to avoid massing, but to attack in swarms; and to find allies in and draw support from other networked actors.
Some activists also had other agendas, notably to achieve the erosion if not the downfall of Mexico’s ruling party, the PRI, since it was viewed as the linchpin of all that was authoritarian and wrong in Mexico’s political system.8
Issue-Oriented and Infrastructure-Building NGOs—Both Important
As the netwar got under way, two types of NGOs mobilized in regard to Chiapas, and both were important: (a) issue-oriented NGOs, and (b) infrastructure-building and network-facilitating NGOs.
in 1994 Chiapas engaged the attention of myriad NGOs concerned with the rights of indigenous peoples: transnational NGOs with no national identity, like the Continental Coordinating Commission of Indigenous Nations (CONIC), the Independent Front of Indian Peoples (FIPI), and the International Indigenous Treaty Council (IITC); U.S.-based NGOs, like the South and Mesoamerican Indian Information Center (SAIIC); Canadian NGOs, like Okanaga Nation; and Mexican NGOs (or quasi-NGOs), such as the State Coalition of Indigenous and Campesino Organizations (CEOIC), the Coordinadora de Organizaciones en Lucha del Pueblo Maya para Su Liberación (COLPUMALI), and the Organización Indigena de los Altos de Chiapas (ORIACH). Many of these have links to each other; for example, COLPULMALI and ORIACH are sister organizations in FIPI-Mexico, and FIPI is a member of CONIC.
FIPI-Mexico put out a plea for transnational indigenous organizations to come to Chiapas and act as human-rights observers while the military conducted its January 1994 campaign.
The above is only a partial listing, for one issue area. A full listing of all NGOs for all issue areas would run for pages.
As Sergio Aguayo remarked (as a leader of Civic Alliance, a multi-NGO pro- democracy network that was created to monitor the August 1994 presidential election and later chosen in August 1995 by the EZLN to conduct a national poll, known as the National Consultation, about opinions of the EZLN):17 “We’re seeing a profound effect on their [the NGOs’] self-esteem.
“If civic organizations have had so much impact, it is because they created networks and because they have received the support and solidarity of groups in the United States, Canada, and Europe.”19
Chapter Five
TRANSFORMATION OF THE CONFLICT
Within weeks, if not days, the conflict became less about “the EZLN” than about “the Zapatista movement” writ large, which, as elucidated in Chapters Three and Four, included a swarm of NGOs. This movement, as befits the analytic background in Chapter Two, had no precise definition, no clear boundaries. To some extent, it had centers of activity for everything from the discussion of issues to the organization of protest demonstrations, notably San Cristóbal de las Casas and Mexico City. It had organizational centers where issues got raised before being broadcast, such as the diocese in San Cristóbal and CONPAZ. And it drew on a core set of NGOs, e.g., the ones in Tables 1–5 at the end of Chapter Four. Yet it had no formal organization, or headquarters, or leadership, or decision-making body. The movement’s membership (assuming it can be called that) was generally ad hoc and in flux; it could shift from issue to issue and from situation to situation, partly depending on which NGOs had representatives physically visiting the scene at the time, which NGOs were mobilizable from afar and how (including electronically), and what issues were involved.
What led President Salinas, and later Zedillo, to halt military operations and agree to dialogue and negotiations? Varied propositions have been raised for explaining their decisions: e.g., confidence that the army had gained the upper hand, or worries about a backlash among foreign creditors and investors, damage to Mexico’s image in the media, infighting among Mexico’s leaders, or a widespread aver- sion to violence among the Mexican public. Our analysis, however, is that in both instances, the transnational activist netwar—particularly the information operations stemming from it—was a key contributing factor. It lay behind many of the other explanations, including arousing media attention and alarming foreign investors. This activism was made possible by networking capabilities that had emerged only recently as a result of the information revolution.
Mexican officials admit that they were over- whelmed by the “information war” in the early days of the conflict.
the EZLN convened a Continental Encounter For Humanity and Against Neo- liberalism in April 1996, and an Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism in August 1996.
During 1994 and 1995, the government behaved gingerly toward the foreign presence in Chiapas, partly because it attracted media coverage; but since 1996, measures have been taken to control and curtail it (as we shall discuss).
These conferences gave Marcos renown for having a “capacidad convocatoria” (convocational capacity) that attracted civil-society allies, legitimized the EZLN, and thus enabled it to break out its confinement, at least in ideational and informational senses. All this represented a radical departure from the classic guerrilla style, lead- ing one keen observer to posit that real fighting had been superseded by a “shadow war”:
While all parties to the conflict knew that radio, television, and the press were part of the battlespace, months passed before government officials realized the significance of the Internet—and “cyberspace” generally—for the EZLN and the NGOs.
Mexico’s Foreign Minister Jose Angel Gurría observed that: “Chiapas . . . is a place where there has not been a shot fired in the last fifteen months. . . . The shots lasted ten days, and ever since the war has been a war of ink, of written word, a war on the Internet.”
During 1994, few Mexican officials had any awareness that the EZLN and sympathetic NGOs were developing a strong presence on the Internet by means of e-mail lists, computer conferencing systems, and Web pages that were often accessed by hundreds, per- haps thousands, of activists in North America and around the world. Eventually, these officials began to learn what the NGOs already knew—that a new model of conflict was emerging, one in which the use of the new information technologies reflected the rise of radically new approaches to organization, doctrine, and strategy.
A faction of pro-Zapatista radicals based in New York, drawing on ideas coming out of radical theater circles and inspired by the shock tactics of Earth First! and ACT-UP, has begun to advocate “electronic civil disobedience.”10 The intent is to go beyond the electronic protest tactics (e.g., e-mail and fax campaigns) that Zapatista activists have emphasized so far, and focus on creating “virtual sit-ins” that may shut down sensitive Web sites and Internet servers in Mexico and/or the United States, in order to “disrupt the flow of normal business and governance.” The protagonists of this view are trying to create software for use on anonymous offshore servers—“ping engines, spiders, and offshore spam engines”—that will enable them, and any other individual anywhere who wants to join, to conduct what amount to massive, remote-control, standoff, swarming attacks in cyberspace (see Wray, 1998a, 1998b).
The Mexican army took the opposite tack, creating much smaller operational units, of roughly platoon size (36–45 troops, with an officer in command), and deploy- ing them in a dispersed fashion across Chiapas, blanketing the state with the aim of deterring new outbreaks of fighting. In a traditional guerrilla war, this move might have had disastrous consequences,13 inviting the defeat in detail of one isolated detachment at a time. For counternetwar, however, this scheme for decentralizing authority and deployment proved optimal, and fighting soon died out almost completely.
Since a social netwar is not a traditional insurgency, part of the challenge is to recognize that military roles rarely figure large in a counternetwar against social actors. Indeed, it might be said that army had more problems dealing with the NGOs than with the EZLN.
the netwar has had a positive side for the military. It has prompted tactical decentralization, institutional redesign in favor of smaller, more specialized and mobile forces, new efforts at joint op- erations, and improvements in interservice intelligence sharing. These shifts engendered some intra- and interservice tensions; but the benefits of reorganization should outweigh the difficulties and costs, in terms of an increase in military efficiency. If fully imple- mented, this program would amount to a “revolution within the army.”
The netwar has obliged the army to devote much increased attention to public affairs, psychological operations, relations with NGOs, and human-rights issues. The army’s concerns about generating sufficient information to do its job is but a part of a general movement to give more attention to the development of an “information strategy.” This new focus has entailed efforts to cultivate better relations with the media and has extended to mounting a number of psychological operations, including “sky shouting” from helicopters with bullhorns, as well as leafleting. More importantly, the pursuit of an integrated information strategy spurred the Mexican government to form a joint intelligence apparatus that is supposed to put an end to the proprietary, baronial practices that have characterized its competing intelligence organizations throughout the 20th century.
The prospects for netwar—and counternetwar—revolve around a small string of propositions about networks-versus-hierarchies, as discussed earlier: Accordingly, it can be said that hierarchies have difficulty fighting networks. It takes networks to fight networks—in- deed, a government hierarchy may have to organize its own networks in order to prevail against networked adversaries.
Whoever masters the network form should gain major advantages in the information age.
the interagency arena is where networking may best occur in the government world. Improving civil-military, inter- service, and intramilitary coordination and cooperation become essential tasks
the government adapted by organizing interagency and other inter- governmental networks to try to prevail against the pro-Zapatista networks. Although the government and the army initially re- sponded in a traditional, heavy-handed manner to the EZLN’s insurrection, they have not responded idly or unthinkingly since then to this seminal case of social netwar.
Once negotiations got under way and Chiapas was defined as more a political than a military problem, the Ministry of Government (Gobernación) took charge of overall strategy, leaving the Ministry of Defense (SEDENA) to focus on avoiding further damage to its image. An innovative interagency group was established in January 1994 at the Center for National Se- curity and Investigation (CISEN), which fits under Gobernación and is the key agency for national security and intelligence matters.20 This interagency group…worked to define overall government strategy toward the EZLN and related problems in Chiapas. It soon assessed that the EZLN was not a powerful force in military terms, and that the threat of other armed groups arising around the country was overstated. The strategy it developed during 1994 aimed to localize and limit the conflict, and had essentially three prongs: a military prong to keep the EZLN confined in the conflict zone, while avoiding combat and improving the army’s human-rights behavior; a political prong to keep the dialogue and its agenda from becoming national in scope, and to regain control of information; and an economic prong to offer resources and mount programs that would appeal to some of the local population’s needs. The strategy was also designed to let the Zapatistas talk (and let them know that there was no alternative to talking), while working gradually to diminish international attention to the EZLN and whittle down its demands.
Mexico needed a “national intelligence community.”
In sum, beginning in 1994 the federal government, its national security apparatus, and the military had to try to transform them- selves to respond to this social netwar. Yet this transformation has never been complete, and there has been a constant tension and interplay between, on the one hand, learning to treat the Zapatista movement as an information-age social netwar and, on the other hand, wanting to treat it as a traditional insurgency. The key touch- stone as to which hand of strategy was prevailing was not the mili- tary—its presence and strength grew throughout, leaving the conflict zone thoroughly blanketed and penetrated by small detachments. Rather, the touchstones were, apparently, two forces over which the government had marginal control but which it knew were key players in the overall game and dearly wanted to control: the foreign NGOs and the local paramilitary forces. Which hand of Mexican strategy was stronger seems to have varied mainly according to the degree of foreign NGO and media attention.
few other governments would have been so tolerant of such an unusual, heavy, albeit episodic influx of foreigners showing great interest in an inter- nal security matter. During 1996, however, and especially during the international encounters that attracted thousands to Chiapas, gov- ernment agents began stepped-up efforts to videotape, warn, and question foreign activists, especially those who were traveling on tourist visas but seemed engaged in activism, not tourism, and lacked affiliation with recognized NGOs. Some were deported.
Over 200 activists have been obliged to leave Mexico since January 1997. In one incident in April 1998, about a dozen foreigners, who were present at a site that was in the process of declaring itself an “autonomous municipality” aligned with the EZLN, were detained, interrogated, and forced to leave Mexico.
In the name of nationalism, and citing constitutional proscriptions against foreigners meddling in internal politics, the government is taking a much harder line than before toward foreign activists, even though officials also point out that hundreds of special visas granting observer status have been provided to NGO representatives who have been visiting and monitoring conditions in the conflict zone.
Chapter Six
THE NETWAR SIMMERS—AND DIFFUSES
Since 1996, much of the Mexican public has tired of the Zapatista story and begun to doubt that it benefits Mexico, even though it has raised important reform issues.
their campaign to get indigena communities all over Mexico to declare their autonomy represents, in its own way, a strategy to seize power around the periphery of the state and the ruling PRI party—and that is viewed in Mexico City as potentially quite threatening.
the Zapatistas tried to diffuse their netwar onto the global stage by means of the “Intercontinental Encounters” in 1996 and 1997, where they called for the creation of global “networks of struggle and resistance.”
The sudden appearance of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) in Guerrero, Oaxaca, and elsewhere in June 1996, and its spate of armed assaults in July, caused all sides in the Chiapas conflict to wonder anew whose side time was on. This armed group of unclear origins and dimensions quickly proved more violent than the EZLN and more able to operate in diverse parts of Mexico, leading a Mexican scholar to compare the two organizations as follows: “The Zapatistas are a local abscess. The E.P.R. is a general infection.”4
The EPR, whose leadership appears to be mainly mestizo, has a scattered social base in the impoverished mountain villages of Guerrero and Oaxaca. It may also have a social base in an organization that appeared in January 1996: the Broad Front for the Construction of a National Liberation Movement (FAC-MLN), which is a nationwide, network-like coalition of numerous (perhaps as many as 300) leftist groups, including radical peasant and teachers unions.5 In contrast to the EZLN, the EPR is largely shunned by the Mexican and transnational NGOs who rallied to the EZLN’s cause—and the EPR has not done much to seek the NGOs’ support. In addition, the EZLN and the EPR both deny having links to each other. Overall, then, the EPR is freer than the EZLN to pursue military actions on its own initiative.
EPR as a network-like alliance among numerous (reportedly 14) armed organizations from all over Mexico (PROCUP included).7 Some reports also hold that the EPR is the armed front for a broader movement of which the FAC-MLN is the main political front.8 If the latter story is correct, then the EPR fits better into the netwar framework.
The EZLN has no known ties to drug traffickers, but the EPR has been suspected of some indirect links.
There is no evidence of direct links between the EZLN and the EPR, and the differences noted above argue against such links. Yet there appear to be indirect links and influences. According to Tello (1995), some guerrillas from PROCUP, one of the constituent elements of the EPR, may have joined the EZLN in its formative days.
The other, more documented story is that the EPR may reflect a bitter disappointment in some leftist circles that the EZLN failed to spark nationwide unrest and later relented on the armed struggle. In this story, the FAC-MLN and the EPR are offspring of groups that were critical of, and later expelled by, the EZLN and its leaders at the EZLN-sponsored National Democratic Convention in Chiapas in August 1994.
EPR’s pronouncements and actions do not reveal much. It has a general command. But if it has a hierarchical central command presiding over decentralized units, it does not qualify structurally as having a network design, although it may emu- late netwar strategies and tactics. If it consists of a set of armed groups and support elements operating as a clandestine all-channel network, with a central clearinghouse for consultation and coordination, then it may be deemed a netwar actor. If so, the EPR represents a different kind of netwar actor from the EZLN. Most likely, the EPR is at least partially networked and aims to wage an armed guerrilla netwar that will emphasize tactically dispersed, nonlinear, swarming operations.
The EPR has displayed some cleverness at information operations. An example lies in the invitations and bus tickets for journalists to arrive at a particular time and place where, unbeknownst to each other, they expected to conduct interviews with EPR leaders but instead found themselves witnessing an EPR attack on a government building.
THE ZAPATISTA NETWAR GOES GLOBAL
Some activists have endeavored to extend the Zapatista movement by generating a global dimension. In July–August 1996 in Chiapas, a working group with participants from around the world lauded the importance of communications for the Zapatista movement and its ability to project its ideas. The group suggested creating an “International Network of Hope,” whose design would be “horizontal,” “self- organizing,” and “without centralized coordination” (all terms that could have been taken from a theory of networks and netwars).
In the critical documents, “network” was deemed a very unclear concept. At worst, it was a new “buzzword of the internationalized Left” and might not even be a progressive form of organization (since networks were already a mainstay of corporate and conservative actors). It seemed more a “metaphor” than a “structure” that could be truly developed.
The aim should be, as an American noted, “to weave a variety of struggles into one struggle that never loses its multiplicity” (Cleaver, 1998). But, perhaps partly because the Zapatista movement was so much the cause celebre of the gathering, the skeptics and critics evidently needed reminding that a worldwide trend in favor of networked social movements was already well under way in Europe and North America
Marcos, the EZLN, and the Zapatista movement sought to achieve a global reach. They wanted the conflict in Chiapas to represent an opening salvo in what they believed should be not only a national but also a global struggle against the defects of neoliberal- ism, capitalism, and the market system.
The analyst should thus be wary of easy notions that social movements are the key factor affecting a government’s decisions to adopt re- forms. They may be an important factor, but as Diane Davis (1994, p. 38) notes in a study of Mexico City during 1982–1988, “the willing- ness and capacity of governing officials to cede to popular mobilizations, and to introduce certain institutional reforms, may influence the overall extent of democratization as much as the presence of social movements themselves.”
at times it may be the government’s intention to have the Zapatistas take some credit, to help keep them on a peaceful track and thereby try to institutionalize their behavior.
The EZLN is the most significant armed movement in Mexico since the 1970s, and the Zapatista movement writ large is the most significant social movement since the student-led social movement of 1968. What has made the EZLN/Zapatista movement so significant is, in particular, its capacity for nonviolent information operations, spread through all manner of media.
The netwar contributed to acute perceptions of crisis and instability, especially in 1994. But this did not have all the effects the Zapatista movement may have intended. The adverse perceptions alarmed foreign investors and creditors, and they contributed to the peso de- valuation late that year—thereby weakening the state. Yet earlier in 1994, when many activists shifted their focus from the conflict in Chiapas to aspire to bring about the downfall of the PRI in the national elections, the perceptions of potential crisis and instability stemming from Chiapas led many citizens to vote overwhelmingly for the PRI’s candidates—thereby strengthening the state.
Overall, the netwar has helped impel the Mexican government to continue down the road of reform. It added to the pressures on Mexico’s leaders to enact political and electoral reforms; to make the political party system more transparent, accountable, and democratic; to take human rights more seriously; to accept the rise of civil society; and to heed anew the needs of indigenous peoples. Some analysts claim that political and electoral reform has proceeded faster since the Zapatista movement than in years past.
Mexico’s prospects for stability and for success in dealing with multiple netwars—the social netwar identified with the EZLN, the armed netwar pursued by the EPR, and the criminal netwar represented by the internetted drug cartels—will depend on the government’s ability to form its own inter- organizational and multiagency networks to confront and counter those netwars.
the serious potential future risk for Mexico is not an old- fashioned civil war or another social revolution—those kinds of scenarios are unlikely. The greater risk is a plethora of social, guerrilla, and criminal netwars. Mexico’s security (or insecurity) in the information age may be increasingly a function of netwars of all varieties. Mexico is already the scene of more types of divisive, stressful netwars than other societies at a similar level of development, in part because it is a neighbor of the United States.
At present, neither social (EZLN/Zapatista), guerrilla (EPR), or criminal (drug trafficking) netwar actors seem likely to make Mexico un- governable or to create a situation that leads to a newly authoritarian regime. This might occur, if these netwars all got interlaced and rein- forced each other, directly or indirectly, in conditions where an economic recession deepens, the federal government and the PRI (presumably still in power) lose legitimacy to an alarming degree, and infighting puts the elite “revolutionary family” and its political clans into chaos.
Mexicans take their nationalism very, very seriously. The EZLN was quick to deny that it was foreign in origin and repeatedly averred it was a Mexican movement. More to the point, it has resisted allying with movements that are not nationalist. Some NGO activists, notably in the area of indigenous rights, wanted the EZLN to express its solidarity with their transnational agenda, but Marcos and other leaders declined to do so. The EZLN has also not posed as a cross-border Mayan irredentist movement. Had the EZLN cast aside its Mexican nationalist credentials, the government and the army might have had a solid pretext, and public support, for quashing it.
when a society has become disorderly and out of equilibrium as a result of a systemic transition, actors that might normally be marginal may have decisive effects.
Ironically, U.S. military assurances of the availability of material support for counterinsurgency may discourage the Mexican army from pursuing innovative operations against the EPR.
the Mexican military and the NGOs are the bracket- ing forces in this conflict. Moreover, they are among the most counterpoised actors on the Mexican scene; many among them even regard each other as enemies. The military is part of Mexico’s statist hierarchies; it is steeped in the traditions of closed nationalism and is responsible for preserving constitutional order. In contrast, the NGOs are part of the emerging antihierarchical, multiorganizational networks of the information age; many are amenable to trans- national ties and eager to pressure for reform. The backgrounds, cultures, interests, and ideological orientations found among military officers and NGO activists are generally at odds.
Without a diverse transnational presence, presumably of responsible NGOs (and corporations), Mexico would probably not make a strong effort to evolve into an open, democratic system that can benefit all sectors of society.21
Yet there is a conundrum. Neither the military, which is statist in orientation, nor the NGOs, which contain many leftists and center- leftists, seem to favor Mexico’s full transition to an open market economy. It is not clear that either actor has much belief that the construction of an economically advanced, politically democratic system requires a market system. If statist preferences continue to prevail within both actors, their increased activism may unwittingly help keep much of Mexico locked in its traditional preferences for corporatist approaches to its development.
“guarded openness,” a deliberately ambivalent concept from the new field of information strategy that means being forthcoming about providing and sharing information in areas of mutual benefit where trust and confidence are high, yet being self-protective in areas where trust and confidence are not ad- equate (see Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1997).24
The Mexican case is so seminal that Harry Cleaver (1997) speaks of a “Zapatista effect” that may spread contagiously to other societies:
Beyond plunging the political system into crisis in Mexico, the Zapatista struggle has inspired and stimulated a wide variety of grassroots political efforts in many other countries. . . . it is perhaps not exaggerated to speak of a “Zapatista Effect” reverberating through social movements around the world—homologous to, but ultimately much more threatening to the New World Order of neo- liberalism than the “Tequila Effect” that rippled through emerging financial markets in the wake of the Peso Crisis of 1994.
to quote from Adrienne Goss (1995), it appears that a global “third sector” is being created—“a massive array of self- governing private organizations, not dedicated to distributing profits to shareholders or directors, pursuing public purposes outside the formal apparatus of the state.”3 This amounts to an “associational revolution” among nonstate actors that may prove as significant as the rise of the nation state.4
EVOLUTION OF ORGANIZATION, DOCTRINE, AND STRATEGY
The Mexican case instructs that militant NGO-based activism is the cutting edge of social netwar, especially where it assumes trans- national dimensions. A transnational network structure is taking shape, in which both issue-oriented and infrastructure-building NGOs are important for the development of social netwar. This infrastructure is growing, so that the activism it enables can extend from the locale where issues are generated (e.g., Chiapas) to the distant hallways of policymakers and decisionmakers (including in Washington, D.C.).
The case instructs that netwar depends on the emergence of “swarm networks,”7 and that swarming best occurs where dispersed NGOs are internetted and collaborate in ways that exhibit “collective diversity” and “coordinated anarchy.” The paradoxical tenor of these phrases is intentional. The swarm engages NGOs that have diverse, specialized interests; thus, any issue can be rapidly singled out and attacked by at least elements of the swarm. At the same time, many NGOs can act, and can see themselves acting, as part of a collectivity in which they share convergent ideological and political ideals and similar concepts about nonviolent strategy and tactics. While some NGOs may be more active and influential than others, the collectivity has no central leadership or command structure; it is multiheaded, impossible to decapitate.8 A swarm’s behavior may look uncontrolled, even anarchic at times, but it is shaped by extensive consultation and coordination, made feasible by rapid communications among the parties to the swarm.9
The Zapatista case hints at the kind of doctrine and strategy that can make social netwar effective for transnational NGOs. Three key principles appear to be: (1) Make civil society the forefront—work to build a “global civil society,” and link it to local NGOs. (2) Make “information” and “information operations” a key weapon—demand freedom of access and information,10 capture media attention, and use all manner of information and communications technologies. Indeed, in a social netwar where a set of NGO activists challenge a government or another set of activists over a hot public issue, the battle tends to be largely about information—about who knows what, when, where, how, and why. (3) Make “swarming” a distinct objective, and capability, for trying to overwhelm a government or other target actor. Although, as noted above, swarming is a natural outcome of information-age, network-centric conflict, it should be a deliberately developed dimension of doctrine and strategy, not just a happenstance.
Where all this is feasible, netwarriors may be able to put strong pressure on state and market actors, without aspiring to seize power through violence and force of arms.
To date, mainstream netwar activism has gone in the directions described above and elsewhere in this chapter: It has emphasized the creation of complex, multi- organizational networks, which use the new technologies mainly to improve communication and coordination within the network and to exert pressure on government and other actors through electronic protest measures (e.g., via e-mail and fax-writing campaigns). In contrast, a new “electronic civil disobedience” faction is emerging that appears to care less about the organizational network-creating dimensions of doctrine and strategy, favoring aggressive computer- hacking tactics that, though termed “virtual sit-ins,” verge on anarchistic or even nihilistic “cybotage” against sensitive government or corporate Web sites and Internet servers.
A target government should care about its international image, and be sensitive to its disruption.12 The more a government cares about presenting to the world an image that it is, or is becoming, a modern democracy and wants to attract foreign investors, the more vulnerable it may be to a netwar that jeopardizes its image. Perhaps a susceptibility to social netwar is a sign of modernity.
a major part of social netwar is about activists’ efforts to get their story into the global media, so that it reaches and arouses foreign publics and governments.
the presence of journalists may contribute importantly to a netwar by providing, very quickly, a broader audience than usual for NGO activities. A symbiotic dynamic may thus develop between the activists and the media (in which the journalists may claim that they are the ones who deserve credit for calling a conflict to the world’s attention, but the larger dynamic is about the activists using the media to accomplish this). Furthermore, the media’s presence may alter the local power equations vis-à-vis information—a local government may lose the luxury of controlling who knows what about a conflict, and its options may decrease accordingly. As inter- national attention grows, a hard-line approach, for example, may be less feasible for a government.
In general, information-processing regimes such as human rights and ecology are more accessible to NGOs than state-centric arrangements for trade or arms control.
In other words, the situation in a target society should be such that a diversity of NGOs exist and can mount different attacks on different issues, adapting flexibly to the circumstances. In the process, the message—the story and its symbolism—may get modified and broadened beyond its original meaning in the conflict zone, in order to appeal better to audiences abroad.
he fight over “information” has made the Zapatista conflict less violent than it might otherwise have been. But it has also made the conflict more public, disruptive, protracted, and difficult to isolate; it has had more generalized effects than if it had been contained as a localized insurgency. Thus, although the Mexican military has performed reason- ably well militarily against the EZLN, has decentralized its organization, created new small units, improved its communications and mobility, and acquired new material and budgetary resources in the process, it has been bedeviled by many aspects of this new approach to conflict. The army in particular has seen its combat operations deterred and its image impugned to an unusual degree.
The Mexican case suggests that the U.S. Army may be increasingly called upon to provide “knowledge assistance” to allies for public and press rela- tions, psychological operations, and the restructuring of command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I) functions in response to netwars. Respect for human rights, and possibly for the looming matter of “information and communications rights,” may play no small part in this.
It may turn out that a new language and a new set of metrics must be devised. New centers and schools are already being established for the U.S. military to help address such challenges. T
the ease of entry and the deniability afforded by network designs imply an increasing “amateurization” of militant activism, terrorism, and crime. It is increasingly easy for protagonists to construct sprawling networks that have a high capacity for stealthy operations by individuals or groups, as well as for rapid swarming en masse.
Information—as a function of the technological and organizational innovations stemming from the information revolution—is now said to be a “force multiplier”
“information strategy” is emerging as a new tool of statecraft. U.S. officials are accustomed to emphasizing economic, political, and military strategies and instruments for urging foreign governments and societies to develop in liberal democratic direc- tions. Yet, global civil-society NGOs whose focus is informational more than economic, political, or military may prove more potent as information-age instruments of policy and strategy, especially to pursue goals like “democratic enlargement.” Chris Kedzie’s (1995) work on the positive correlation between political democracy and communications connectivity provides a basis for proposing that information be treated and developed as a distinct new dimension of policy and strategy