Summary |
Globalization,like many great geopolitical ideologies before it,is now officially dead.
Despite the near-religious conviction with which it was originally conceived, a growing vagueness now surrounds its original promise that nation-states were heading toward irrelevance, to be replaced by the power of global markets; that economics, not politics or arms, would determine the course of human events; that growth in international trade would foster prosperous markets that would, in turn, abolish poverty and change dictatorship into democracies.
The collapse of globalism has left us struggling with a paradox-a chaotic vacuum. Instead surrendering or sharing sovereignty, governments and citizens are reasserting their national interest. The united states appears determined to ignore its international critics. Europe is faced with problems of immigration, racism, terrorism and renewed internal nationalism. Many of these issues call for uniquely European solution born out of local experiences and needs. Elsewhere, the world looks for answer to African debt, the AIDS epidemic, the return of fundamentalism and terrorism, all of which perversely refuse to disappear despite the theoretical rise in global prosperity.
In addition to the negative aspects of globalism, Saul also objectively analyzes its successes, such as the astonishing growth in world trade and the unexpected rise of India and china, which seem slated to become twenty-first-century superpowers.
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