Globalism Post 9/11

September 11 is transforming our notions about a raft of subjects, from economics to technology. Thanks to our myopic and narcissistic media and opportunistic, short-sighted politicians, we are only beginning to grasp the ways in which computer networks are changing, even radicalizing much of the world, sometimes in great, sometimes horrific ways. Six months ago, most Americans were stunned to discover how differently others in the world regard us from the way we see ourselves. Globalism is a major reason. Invasive American culture -- from movies, music, fast-food -- have highlighted political and religious differences, from Europe to the Middle East and South Asia. So have networked, hi-tech economies based on information and tech, argues a new book by George Soros.

We seem to be running away from the world, and much of the world hates us for it. Such forces make America not only the world's leading superpower, but probably its most feared and hated nation. As the U.S. evolved rapidly from an industrial to a data-based economy, much of the world hasn't come along, or doesn't want to.

Our technology is running away from the rest of the planet, from genomics to supercomputing to bio-tech research to weaponry. Globalism, arguably the single most significant political issue on the planet even before 9/11, is even more critical now, even though there is little consensus on what it is or how we should feel about it or even define it. Deep-thinking billionaire philanthropist Soros jumps in with a significant new book -- George Soros on Globalization -- in which he advances some exciting and startling ideas about the future.

Anti-globalization protests have become a staple of international summit meetings, Soros points out, a sort of "fragmented potpourri of laments about life in the modern world." A ferocious advocate of open societies, he takes on what's good and bad about globalism, and how we might put it to better use. We'll take up that discussion here.

As Soros points out, 'Globalization' is a much overused term with a wide variety of meanings and contexts. Soros uses it to mean the development of global financial markets and the growth of trans-national corporations, along with their increasing power over national economies. "I believe that most of the problems that people associate with globalism," writes Soros, "including the penetration of market values into areas where they do not traditionally belong, can be attributed to these phenomena."

One could also blame the globalization of information and culture; the spread of television, Internet and other forms of communication; and the increased mobility and commercialization of ideas.

But Soros understandably concentrates on economic issues. Globalization as he defines it, is new. At the end of World War II, most countries strictly controlled international capital transactions. International capital movement accelerated in the early 1980s under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and financial markets became truly global only in the early 1990s, Soros says, after the collapse of the Soviet empire.

That period also happens to coincide with the most explosive growth of the Net and the Web, perfect engines for the new data-driven economies and systems for the rapid movement -- literally -- of capital.

By contrast, as we can see on the evening news most nights, while governments may not be able to restrict the flow of capital, they're still fairly effective at controlling the movement of people. (Although even there, the Net ultimately makes that more difficult, at least in terms of intellectual property and ideas. This kind of content is liquid, no longer confinable within territorial boundaries.

Since capital is the essential ingredient of contemporary production and economies, countries compete to attract it. It's no accident that nations who can't or won't are also incubators for political discontent and terrorism. Globalism has transformed our historic economic and social arrangements. Since capital can move anywhere in seconds, any nation-state's ability to exercise control over an economy has been radically undermined. This was a huge club the British held over the Chinese government during negotiations over the transfer of Hong Kong. The Chinese were forced to be somewhat more democratic when, with the stroke of a key, billions of dollars in capital could have fled Hong Kong in a micro-second, even if its people couldn't.

"The globalization of financial markets," argues Soros," has rendered the welfare state that came into existence after World War II obsolete, because the people who require a social safety net cannot leave the country, but the capital the welfare state used to tax can."

This was no accident, he explains, even if few Americans had any idea it was happening. The Reagan administration (along with Thatcher) was determined to reduce the state's ability to interfere in the economy and, helped enormously by globalization's rise, it succeeded.

So, exuberantly costumed demonstrations aside, globalism is not about to evaporate or even weaken, not any time soon. Quite the opposite: nation-states and their constituents now have to choose between globalism (and its attendant prosperity) or religious fanaticism. This leaves us with the central question:

Next: Is Globalism good or evil?

Comments

No after versus before here

[Logic Bomb]

I fail to see how anything in this article differs substantially from anything said about globalization pre-9/11... especially by Jon Katz. I guess next week we'll be treated to a similarly-rehashed version of the (already useless) discussion of whether globalization is a good thing.

Hey editors, if you're hurting for money (see also: subscriptions), maybe you should tell Katz that either he comes up with original material or you're taking him off the payroll.

running away from the world

[wiredog]

We seem to be running away from the world, and much of the world hates us for it.

Much of the world hated us when we weren't running away from it.

For example

Syrian Radio blared before the 1967 war, "The Arab seas and the fish in them will feed on the Americans' rotting imperialist bodies." Thirty-five years before Mr. Atta's work on 9/11, Radio Cairo trumped Syrian calumny with the macabre but now prescient warning, "Millions of Arabs are preparing to blow up all of America's interests, all of America's installations, and your entire existence, America." The same big lies that we see today on al Jazeera were the everyday stuff of the latter 1960s -- when official government radio stations blared out daily untruths that Americans had bombed Arab countries during the Six Day War and so prevented a "sure" Muslim victory.

Re:running away from the world

[4of12]

I was going to say that most Americans are not actively running away from the world. [What stands for "news" in many Arabic language daily papers would leave many of us open-mouthed and incredulous.]

Rather, we ignore the rest of the world and consider America to be our world.

That's why most Americans were aghast and surprised by the 9/11 attack, because most of them didn't have any clue about the ideas that circulating in the rest of the world.

Our own media bears much responsibility in this regard, because it, too, has largely become part of an apparatus of market-based forces - infotainment used to embed valuable advertisements. George Soros makes a good point there.

I think the scariest part of globalism is that with free movement of corporations between nations, there will be a tendency for those corporations to be attracted to nations with a vacuum of regulations, enabling them to operate in what they find to be the friendliest environment from a pure market perspective. Zero corporate taxes, little corporate liability or responsibility apart from "returning shareholder value".

Unfortunately, I don't think a good, rational consensus can yet be built at the international level as to a proper corporate regulatory environment. There are too many special interests that would burden things in all kinds of contorted ways, pretty much as many nation states have done. There simply has to be a way of achieving some balanced policy that combines both perspectives, where returned shareholder value is everything, and where cost is no object to achieving a global optimum of human happiness.

As a consequence, you'll see more and more nations gravitating towards being run for corporate interests, which have only the small inertial forces of ethics among their chief executives preventing them from abandoning even more traditional human values and morals in order to achieve a better return on shareholder value.

It will probably be some years before this evolution of nation/corporate states comes to a head, but inevitably it will.

While I strongly believe that free, unfettered flow of accurate information and individual empowerment (such as democracy) are vital to finding a good solution, these two particular ideals may not necessarily be included in either the solutions that provide maximum shareholder value, or in some of the proposed solutions that supposedly provide optimum global human happiness.

Re:running away from the world

[4of12]

People are "surprised" that anyone would have the utter lack of decency and humanity required to carry off such a horrific attack against innocent people.

I didn't express myself clearly or you didn't understand what I meant.

I don't blame the United States for the events of 9/11. I think that quite clearly the perpetrators of that event need to shoulder full responsibility for it, as well as those who trained them and provided financial support.

But you fall into the same cultural pit of isolation as the rest of us peasants. What you can call utter lack of decency (and, I, too, FWIW), believe it or not, others can refer to as a strike against Satanic and infidel immorality, justified by God. Those hijackers went to their deaths believing they were doing a good thing not an evil deed. I don't believe it was a good deed, but the fact is, they did and, more to the point, there are many people out there in the world who still do believe that sort of thing.

It's probably as incomprehensible to you as to most Americans that believe that innocent civilians should not be the targets of political violence. But there it is. It's real. They believe something different, even if you think it's a crock.

I find it ironic and interesting that the same people in one breath accuse America on the one hand of being isolated and ignorant of the rest of the world, and on the other hand of being too involved and too present in the world.
It's like this: most Americans don't know a foreign language, don't read foreign media or watch foreign television. Most everything they understand about the outside world comes through network television news. I submit that they are therefore isolated and ignorant of the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, many of the world's largest corporations are based in the USA. Their trade ventures into the rest of the world are very important, both to us and to the rest of the world, because of the economic benefits that derive from such trade.

What those countries see are not you and me. They see vice presidents of American corporations, negotiating business arrangements in their countries. Those Americans have a different culture, act in different ways, and are yet quite important. You may think that Americans are represented by the State Department. That's only a small part of it. America is represented by corporate officers overseas and by the media which it broadcasts, such as Baywatch, Dallas, etc.

You and I may know that America is not what is portrayed on television, but most of the rest world sees only that. They think we're all materialistic airheads, concerned more about our looks than the well-being of our fellow man, ready to go on a gun-crazed killing spree out of vengeance for some trifle.

I think America is more than that, but I harbor no illusions that just because we are good, that the rest of the world will automatically know it just as we know it.

Running Away?

[e1en0r]

We seem to be running away from the world, and much of the world hates us for it.

Funny, I thought they hated us for sticking our noses in their business.

Re:Running Away?

[Kibo]

I think that's why they say they hate us, but in reality the people who do hate the US are just stupid and poor.

They see us making trade demands from everyone, our fingers in too many pies, and think it greedy or maybe arrogant. But it's just that we're the largest trading partner of most countries. Our national interests are simply more distributed, and unsurprisingly, our foreign policy follows our interests. But there's a strange sort of dichotomy. I think it might come from the value placed on individuality, where by and large people take care of their own crap. Perhaps other cultures see national agreements more holistically. And perhaps expect something more than free trade for any concessions made, and we've left the building. We're watching Access Hollywood for an update on the personal dramas of Britney and Justin, or something equally mundane. A baby who inexplicably fell down a well, whatever. And the populace of other countries feels that the US is too conceited for it power, or too powerful for its conceit. But the truth is much less interesting. It's simply a matter of my goods for your money or my money for your goods, and if you expect me to even entertain the prospect of this process, there are going to be a few things we need to agree on first.

Then you have people, such as the palestinians, who expect to just be happy because some book I've never read says they deserve it. They picked a fight, they lost. And now they're really loosing. (Good.) They expect the US to wave a magic wand and just solve all their problems for them, without any effort on their part. Even if the world did work that way, and history has consistantly shown us it doesn't, why on Earth would we possibly intervene on behalf of the palestinians, given the past years events, and the occasions they choose for celebration?

If it wasn't in such a tragic context, even Arafat's recent statments would be funny. According to him the US is directly responsible for palestinian deaths because the Isralies use some american hardware, and the palestinians are not directly responsible Isralie civilian casualties because they are short on saritonin re-uptake inhibitors, or something. They really feel entitled to everything, and it's somehow our obligation to just give it to them, and they shouldn't even have to stop killing innocent people to get it. It's pretty obvious I've got no pity left for the palestinians. But I do think they have an excuse of sorts.

Some of the data I've read suggests the the majority of the people in the muslim world, which is vastly poorer than the west on a per capita average, are illiterate. Being illiterate and raised in enviroments that even in their mildest forms I would consider reactionary and fundementalist, and having few sources of information, they grow up without bullshit detectors. This and the fact they grow up with a religion that extols, in some instances, the murder of civilians and suicide, and a culture where people think nothing of using people for political ends, well it's to be expected. But we can't make them rich, we can't make them smart, we can't grow bullshit detectors in vasts and have missionaries and peace corps volunteers insert them using a novel out-patient procedure. They've got to help themselves, too bad for them they don't see it that way. Too bad for us too.

Well, at least I get to see some stuff blow up on CNN. There's the steel lining I guess.

Re:Running Away?

[delcielo]

They hate us for sticking our nose in their business when they don't want it; and they hate us for not sticking our nose in their business when they feel they need it.

Perfect case in point: "Why isn't America, the richest nation on Earth, doing something about the famine in Somalia?" So the U.S. starts shipping food over as fast as it can. The warlords steal the food from the people. So the U.S. sends troops in to protect the food/people. "Why is America interfering with poor little Somalia? Why is America hunting the muslim warlords? It must be because they're muslims. The infidels are attacking."

Good to see misinformation is alive and well.

[neema]

"We seem to be running away from the world, and much of the world hates us for it."

Ah yes, thank you for pointing that out. It's not because much of the world hates us for running into shit we should of kept out of and then exploiting everything around us.

We were truly "running away from the world" as the United States killed over 100,000 Filipinos in the 1899 Filipino-American War. (And consequently returning to the Phillipines in 1945 to defeat the leftist Huks and install a series of puppet presidents, namely Ferdinand Marcos who sucked the country dry of capital for three decades and then retired into Hawaii).

They most certainly don't hate us for the CIA's 1953 takedown of democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh in Iran and the subsequent installment of a repressing and torturing Shah.

Or the other takedown of 1953, Jacobo Arbenz, who was a democratically elected president and had such "evil" plans like land reform, civil liberties and nationalizing the Washington-connected United Fruit Company. More US political installments and US trained death squads leads to another 100,000 victims.

Or the US attempts to overthrow the Syrian goverment. Twice.

It's not that we're hated because we still, to this day, Israel with billions of dollars of aid, despite its harsh treatment of Palestinians and massacres in Lebanon.

Or the million or so who died as a result of 1957 Sukarno-Indonesia scandal (which had such tidbits like the CIA making a fake sex film to try to blackmail him).

Or Vietnam.

Or the '69 carpet bombings of Cambodia where hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians died. The end result being the US helping the genocidal manial Pol Pot to take over who declares "Year Zero," kills anyone with an education, or even wearing glasses, and sends everyone to the countryside to work in agricultural labor camps. More than two million die in his "killing fields".

Certainly, the world doesn't hate us for the infamous Congo/Zaire affair where a man calling for the liberation of Congo's economy and politics, Patrice Lumumba, is assasinated with the help of the CIA and then chopped into little bits and then burned in acid. Mobutu Sese Seko takes over, changes the name to Zaire, and begins one of the most corrupt and bloody dictatorships in modern times. Thirty years later, despite its rich natural resources, the people of the Congo are still dirt-poor, Mobutu is a multibillionaire, and the country is in chaos. In 1997, Mobutu is overthrown, and retires to the Cote d'Azur. The country slides into a civil war that has killed more than one million.

I guess that our "running away" consists of violence in Cuba, Chile, East Timor, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and Colombia.

So Katz, before you point the finger to an "invasive American culture" as a cause of hatred from lots of the world, why don't you try pointing the finger at an "invasive America"?

As a 17 year old, I get enough of this "They hate us because we have all this good shit" on the news and at school. At least places like this news website should be reserved for some insight past what the media feeds us and into the real matters at hand.

An English stance

[waterbiscuit]

I really hope this doesn't get modded down, but I have to say that the world itself is, well, pretty unchanged. Contrary to the belief of apparently nearly every American alive, America does not constitute the whole world apart from the Middle East.

America seems to have adopted the 9/11 tragedy as a tragedy for the world. It is not. It is a tragedy for those in the WTC. Of course we sympathise for those. I don't know the exact figures, but less than 4000 people died. How many people do you think there are who are starving, dying of famine, etc etc? I'm sorry, you do not merit our totally undivided sympathy.

Americans seem to think that they are so powerful that a terrorist attack on them is a terrorist attack on the civilised world. This is simply not true. It is a terrorist attack on America, and nothing more. What gives America the right to assume that the whole world is hugely affected by what happens to them? I can certainly say that absolutely nothing has changed here.

I hate to be so totally against America like this, but I cannot help but feel that you've got to realise that there's a lot of other non-Middle-East countries out there who remain unaffected and who do not have such a superiority complex about themselves as to assume that they reflect the feelings of the world. As for the Middle East itself, well they have their opinions too, and they're not so uncivilised as you might think.

The Problem Isn't Globalization, But Our Hypocrisy

[enkidu]

The parts of the world that hate us, (even those that do hate us seem to love other parts of the U.S.), don't hate us because we have so much power, or because we export so much of our "decadent" culture, or because they "hate our freedom", or even because we are turning our back" on the rest of the world. They hate the U.S. because they view us as hypocrites. And so we are.

We talk of free trade and then enact tariffs to protect our industries from "unfair" trading. We talk of democracy and we support repressive, undemocratic regimes. We talk of justice and refuse it to innocent victims of our bombings. We talk of international rules but ignore them when it doesn't suit us. We talk of equality but treat all others as inferiors. We talk of freedom but want our "partner" nations to do what we tell them to do. What do you expect?

And who is to blame? We all are to blame. The media is to blame for ignoring their public responsibility, printing and broadcasting spineless mush (like this piece) that serve the interests of corporations and stability. The government is to blame for supporting coroporate profits to the exclusion of higher social and diplomatic goals. And we the public are to blame, for electing these bozos, for giving them high approval ratings when they do not deserve them, for not demanding better coverage of the foreign press and international affairs, for being content with our computers, our SUV's, our anime cartoons and our prosperity with no thought as to how these things are produced. We are to blame because we allow our government to continue to act hypocritically and we say nothing.

So don't give me that bullshit about "abandoning" the global arena. Globalization isn't the problem. It's our hypocrisy that is pissing people off. And it's pissing me off too.

Useless babble

[radicalsubversiv]

Nothing like a bad mix of George Soros and techno-futurism to come up with vapid social analysis.

We seem to be running away from the world, and much of the world hates us for it.

Americans are doing a good job of ignoring the rest of the world, thanks to the woefully narrow focus of most of our news media. The U.S. government, on the other hand, continues to get better and better at interfering with the rest of the world, often in ways we don't even hear about. How many ./ers know there are American "military advisors" (a la Vietnam) in Colombia and the Phillippines right now?

As the U.S. evolved rapidly from an industrial to a data-based economy, much of the world hasn't come along, or doesn't want to.

Mr. Katz, who do you think manufactures your sneakers? Your car? Your computer? Regardless of whether the U.S. now has a "data-based economy," someone has to do the producing. And, quite frankly, the fact that good-paying industrial union jobs in the U.S. have evaporated, only to be replaced with temp work for 13-year-old Indonesian girls earning a few dollars a day, doesn't strike me as much cause for celebration.

A ferocious advocate of open societies ..

No, Mr. Soros is a ferocious advocate of open markets. Big difference.

... they're still fairly effective at controlling the movement of people. (Although even there, the Net ultimately makes that more difficult, at least in terms of intellectual property and ideas. This kind of content is liquid, no longer confinable within territorial boundaries.

Since when does "people == content"? I'm all for the Net's revolutionary impact on intellectual 'property,' but it doesn't have much effect on whether peaceful people can cross borders freely. That privilege is reserved for capital.

nation-states and their constituents now have to choose between globalism (and its attendant prosperity) or religious fanaticism.

This is a false choice: Enron or Osama. I pick neither. Unfortunately for Mr. Soros, the romantic notion that ordinary people, not financial markets, ought to make the decisions that affect their lives, lingers in the hearts of many.

Re:a little nonsense, but hey - it's near April Fo

[saider]

Man, I'm Canadian and even I know American history well enough to know that.

So what do you care if Americans have guns?

And this is why I will never move to the States, I'd be fearful for my safety and the safety of my family.

I wish more people would adopt this philosophy instead of coming to America and tying to make it more like their home country. When you come to America know that we like our guns (among other things). Don't come over here and say "Back in my country...". If your country is so much better, then go back.

I have never criticized any other nation's internal policies. It is none of my business.

Semantics: Globalism vs. Corporate Imperialism

[alexander.morgan]

The question is not about "good" or "evil." The question is about the definition of globalism.

Corporations and the U.S. Government confuse globalism with corporate imperialism. Or perhaps they don't. It just sounds better. Corporate imperialism is what people hate, not globalism, except as the term is used by the powers that be.

To make globalism work, we need to give people control, including the power to move around the world as easily as corporations and capital. We need to respect the degree to which communities want their lifestyle altered by participating in the global community. And we need to give the people a real say in government, not Mickey Mouse elections based on sound bites and FUD, with a choice between grits and boiled pork.

Further, we need to see the exploitation of third world labor in the same light as the exploitation of mineral resources. When we ship labor overseas, to reduce cost, it must be accompanied by benefits such as education, not just the billowing bank accounts of a few dictators and corporate moguls.

Western countries and the U.S. in particular, must also start to walk the talk. All western political and corporate leaders are good at parroting free trade sound bites. But they are much less adept at letting the market work its magic. The current U.S. vs. Europe steel debacle is just one of the many examples. Take a look at all the regulations and restrictions limiting clothing imports into the U.S. You might say, that is to protect U.S. clothing manufacturers--so much for free trade. But then why not limit the export of programming jobs to India, or help television manufacturers in the U.S.? The reason, among others, is to keep third world countries in their place, and to protect the artificially inflated market of designer brands in western countries. As long as U.S. corporations are in control, everything is OK. But if it looks like control might shift to another country, then trade restrictions are imposed.

And finally, intellectual property law reform is badly needed. As it is, the IP laws are bad for the people in developed countries. But much worse, for people in developing countries they are just a further tool for indefinite enslavement, and in many cases, such as availability of drugs, they are a matter of survival.

The overwhelming hate Americans experience in many parts of the world is certainly related to these issues. As is a completely out of touch and unjust U.S. centric foreign policy, but that is the subject of another essay. Many of these people who hate the U.S. don't hate Americans, they hate what a select few Americans do to their countries and people. Remember when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the "Evil Empire?" Well, those same Russians are still there, but obviously not so evil anymore. The current administration believes that propaganda can help sell American values to the third world. But how do you sell enslavement and exploitation to the looser? Military force, of course, mixed with plenty of FUD and a little well place cash. The promise of a future more bleak than it already is. That is the theory anyway. September 11 should have been a wake-up call to yes, defend ourselves, but also to reevaluate our view of the world.

Obviously, all of this cannot happen overnight. The world's problems are not solved by moving three or four billion poor people to the U.S. or Western Europe. But there is no reason why the government should restrict the movement of the workforce between countries with a similar economic status. There is no reason why we can't develop a "free trade" system that benefits all parties. There is no reason why social responsibility cannot be part of globalism.

In the end, the U.S. Government and U.S. corporations (if there is a difference), must learn to ask and give, not to tell and take. Then perhaps, American values will be admired. And interestingly enough, this is also the recipe for unlimited wealth, because it is giving of service and value, that creates wealth. I should think the collapse of the Roman, Spanish, British, etc.. empire has taught us that much. Perhaps it has, but it is not relevant until after the next election cycle, or the golden parachute kicks in.

Talking about the world is interesting, but the first step must be cleaning up the mess at home. Would you hire an interior decorator who lives in a dump? It may be a surprise to Americans, but even Western Europeans ridicule the U.S. legal and political system. The U.S. may spend tons of money on medical care, but its infant mortality rate is among the world's worst. Social Security? Or do you mean social insecurity? Even with all the news coverage, it is always an eye opener to see the reaction of people from Europe when they catch a glimpse of U.S. poverty. Clean up at home, and lead the world by example. Just remember how well it worked when your parents said: "Do as I tell you, not as I do."

The bottom line is: Globalism is Good. Corporate (or State) Imperialism is Bad.

Re:"hegemony" = We have an inferiotity complex

[Iguanaphobic]

The United States system of fairness, work ethic, innovation and competition makes us extremely successful.

Don't forget legislation. When the above doesn't work to your advantage, you always resort to legislation. 20 years ago, the major forest product companies in Canada recognized a major lack of productivity in their sawmills as compared to the U.S. They embarked on a multi-billion dollar upgrade which now makes their processing capability second to none in the world. Through modernizing their industry, they were able to produce more wood more efficiently than any other country in the world. Compare this to the U.S. companies. They were content to keep pouring diminishing amounts of raw lumber (already cut it all and never bothered to replant) through very antiquated, labour-intensive mills. The result: a lack of raw lumber and poor productivity and high cost products. The solution: 29% tariffs on finished lumber from Canada and welcoming shipments of raw logs from Russia and Europe.

You might want to rethink the "fairness, work ethic, innovation and competition" part of your thinking. Don't forget that Canada is your number one trading partner and friend. Just imagine what your "Department Of Commerce (Protectionism when we can't play fairly) has done to your ENEMIES!!

I choose to disregard the rest of your post as intolerance. But then, given your innovative education system, what more could I expect.