Emil Dzhuraev, PhD, Co-founder and Senior Fellow, Crossroads Central Asia
This Crossroads Perspectives piece by Emil Dzhuraev, Senior Fellow at Crossroads Central Asia, explores why resilience in today’s world requires more than just building connections. While connectivity has long dominated the global agenda, recent crises have shown the need to also plan for its disruption. Dzhuraev argues that disconnectivity — the ability to survive and adapt when links break — must be developed alongside connectivity as a core element of strategic planning. His commentary offers a timely reminder: true resilience lies in being prepared for both connection and disconnection.
The world – the trading, geopolitical, strategic world – has been breathing connectivity for the last couple of decades. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, launched in 2013, gave it the greatest single impulse, albeit it has been around for longer, part and parcel with globalization, international free trade and especially with the demands of global energy market. No international cooperation, trade and/or development event these days is complete without at least a panel on connectivity.
But the world is rapidly changing, among other areas, in exactly that compartment: connectivity cannot be the sole imperative anymore – we need to think of disconnectivity just as much.
The first recent wake-up call for disconnectivity, globally, came with COVID-19. Countries, cities, neighborhoods and households were tested as to their ability to disconnect from their surroundings. Surviving for various periods – for days and for up to years in some cases – without the regular connections with the outside world, was genuinely and practically a necessity, not just a whim or voluntary experiment. Coming up with safe, affordable and sustainable ways to avoid or bypass the connectivity modes defined as too risky from the epidemic perspective became the ruling logic of life and development in that period.
Just as the world began to emerge from COVID-induced disconnectivity, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 gave rise to a new imperative for disconnectivity: that of excommunicating a gross violator of the international political system. To Russia itself, perhaps, the avalanche of disconnections it saw in the wake of its aggression was not really sudden; it was gradually getting accustomed to sanctions from earlier on, at least from the time of its first overt attack on Ukraine in annexation of Crimea in 2014. For the rest of the world affected by all those disconnections – trade routes, supply chains, manufacturing systems, financial transaction routes and even air traffic routes coming under disruption – the change came at a steep price that they had to take.
In disconnectivity induced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a notable sub-theme of the phenomenon was in display: the coping strategies to overcome disconnections. The wide array of activity from Russia – from relocations of its citizens and firms to other countries, to its government seeking out loopholes such as North Korea and Iran, to its banks seeking alternatives to SWIFT and its economy opting for import-substitution – suggested some lessons of how relevant actors may try to cope when disconnected. Suffice it to note that when disconnectivity is wielded as a punitive measure against some by others, there is to be expected both a) that a price tag comes for both punishers and the punished and b) that some loopholes and exit ways remain to avoid or evade the punishment.
The most recent – and currently unfolding – imperative for disconnectivity has arisen with the tariff war started by the most connected – and largest – economy of the world against everyone one. Ludicrousness of the formulas for Donald Trump’s tariffs notwithstanding, the damage and challenge has been as grave as one would expect. The longer consequences would be still more serious. In this World vs USA tariff war, all sides got scrambling for their best available, affordable and survivable alternatives they could find – new markets, new suppliers, new treaties, scolding Trump or “kissing” his behind. The scramble applied to all sides, including American business. The flip-flopping tactics in Trump’s tariff policy, doubling the digits here, postponing the tariffs there, while momentarily worsening or improving the stakes for some, strengthened one thing for certain – the imperative of disconnectivity.
When the world settles down from this war and survives in some manner, in addition to the two lessons from the Russian-induced disconnectivity – a) the price is paid by all and b) some loopholes will always remain – there will be one more lesson taken home: c) disconnectivity is about immune systems – it can bolster one’s (a country’s, the world’s) immune system, or – where it was weak from the start – it can break the system.
So, not just a descriptive term for what can happen and has been happening, disconnectivity is indeed an imperative: it is about the (fast rising) need to develop immune systems to be able to survive and thrive when disconnectivity hits/becomes necessary. A few points may be taken for consideration as to what the imperative may command a system (here primarily a state) to do:
- Strategic autonomy – not betting all of your fortunes on agents/places you don’t control;
- Ensuring that there is a self-sufficient economic system that can, at short notice and at least for a time, carry on when unplugged from the outside;
- Ensuring that for any life-sustaining system – such as energy and food supplies, maybe internet and financial systems – there are more sources of supplies than one, and if not, there is actively search for such;
- Connectivity-disconnectivity mechanisms – inter/trans-nationally, all modes of connectivity being built and launched should see mechanisms for disconnectivity – more literally, disconnectability – as part-and-parcel thereof, with understanding that – in a basic rational actor thinking – it is in the best interest of all to have such preparedness even though when the need may arise or who may in fact be (most) affected is not known in advance;
- Open and proactive avenues for switches – be it multi-vectoral foreign policy approaches, flexible and diverse trade links, or others – maintaining an international posture where, at first call, a state is able to activate and thereby balance across its diversity of external links;
- Partial insulation – with the era of boundless globalization and march of global free trade and open borders possibly coming to a point of reversal, it might be plausible to prioritize more home-centered and inward-looking development paths, without – of course – entirely cutting off links to the outside.
For the near term, the imperative of disconnectivity is bound to grow, alas. The pressures of climate change will add more to it for some countries and regions, while pushing some others for more connectivity. The decline of liberal democracy – and rise of illiberal, populist democracies – around the world, and the spread of nationalism and intolerance in its wake, will most certainly lead to still greater disconnections. When digital systems engulf the world to the fullest and blockchains and other manners of virtual control, command and surveillance systems take hold, disconnectivity is likely to see still more buyers.
If that is the reality, then sound development visions must at least seriously and realistically acknowledge it today. (Many countries, companies and other actors are already doing it, albeit without conceptualizing it overtly just yet.) Disconnectivity is a negative idea in one sense and shape, but is also a healthy and necessary proposition in another. Under some potential circumstances, disconnectivity will be a necessity for survival. Hence, even if we brace for the numerous projects of connectivity moving forward, disconnectivity needs always to be within sight in the rearview mirror.
The text was first published at Emil Dzhuraev’s Substack page.