TECHNOLOGY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: The New Frontier in Global Power.

• Author: Sanmarti, Marcal

TECHNOLOGY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: The New Frontier in Global Power

Editors: Giampero Giacomello, Francesco N. Moro and Marco Valigi

Published by: Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, 224pp, 85 [pounds sterling].

As technology changes, international relations reshape too --as has been the case throughout history. The invention of agriculture more than 12,000 years ago completely changed human societies. As did woodblock printing around 200 AD or the internet in the 1960s. Technology can give immense military leverage. We like to remember the European Enlightenment for its scientific achievements. Often we overlook the fact that those achievements were born out of the savage military competition of the 17th and 18 th centuries. Discoveries in physics were pushed by the need to predict cannonball trajectories. Discoveries in optics were financed by European courts to be able to see both rival and home armies from afar.

Another example occurred at the end of the Second World War, when the Soviets and Americans competed to get the most brilliant German scientists, either by buying them out or by forceful means (including kidnap).

That took us to the achievements in space exploration during the first space race, since rockets are just bigger versions of wartime missiles. The Saturn V, the rocket that took Americans to the Moon in 1969, was the grandchild of the V-2 rocket that terrorised London in the 1944. Both were designed by the same engineer: Werner von Braun, a Nazi SS major in the 1940s.

Apart from military leverage, technological edge causes social and cultural wonderment. That is why many technological achievements become so political and central in international relations. A group of Italian scholars from the prestigious University of Bologna, together with a few collaborators from American and Swedish universities, introduce the reader to current technological changes affecting international relations. Technology and International Relations covers an interesting variety of topics: the power of the emerging international centres of innovation, autonomous weapon systems, drones, artificial intelligence, the new space industry and cyber-warfare. It provides a good map of the new challenges to international relations caused by the current technological revolution. And that is quite refreshing. While many books have addressed the topic, not many have had as their main focus the relationship between technological and political change.

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