Globalization
and Its Discontents
Just
about a year ago, I wrote in this space about premature
globalization, suggesting that it may have come
too early in humanity's history and gone too far. Whatever
the putative benefits of globalization, they appear to not be shared
equally but have left many – the
unprotected – behind. Well before the November election, it
was already clear that Donald
Trump was riding the wave of discontent with globalization and
would be seen as the transformation
candidate.
A
fierce critic of globalization now sits in the White House right
behind the new President, Steve Bannon. As
David
Ignatius notes,
however, it would be incomplete, maybe even inaccurate, to see Bannon
as simply an extreme nationalist. Rather, fusing criticisms from the
left and right, Bannon sees globalization as benefiting “crony
capitalists” and as a threat to working Americans. Under his
guidance, Trump now seems to be undoing the global order of
interconnectedness that has seemed increasingly unstoppable over the
past few decades. Leaving the politics of this aside, this raises
two questions: Whether globalization is indeed an evolutionary
inevitability or something still subject to conscious intervention by
we human beings? And, if it turns out to be an inevitability, what
happens if Trump and Bannon succeed in taking the United States out
of contention to continue to occupy the central role in the evolving
global reality?
It
may well be that the dynamics behind globalization are unstoppable.
Human society has moved forward over the last 100 thousand years from
small isolated groups to ever larger units that now exist as
interconnected nations and organized states. Since the Industrial
Revolution, the economic drivers have become mass production for
consumption requiring ever-broadening networks of trade for resources
and customers. Efficiencies have been gained not only through
advances in technology but also through the ever more comprehensive
and inclusive concentrations of wealth, organization, production,
distribution and trade made possible by those advances. Even when
networks extended into new areas far away, they utilized the
technological and “free-trade” aspects of globalization to make
distributed production more efficient than previous nationally based
activities. Left to itself, globalization does not produce greater
equality but it does seem to create greater wealth. Since Marx at
least, it has been possible to see this ever increasing accumulation
of wealth as an objectification of our existence as a species.
Who can stop this? Is any effort simply doomed to fighting the
logos of human history?
If
globalization is inevitable, would Trump and Bannon’s effort to
resist it simply take the US out of the center and leave it to some
others to occupy? As it now stands, the US has in the last several
decades invested mightily – in money and blood – in shaping the
world as much as possible
in its own image. If we close our borders, emphasize national
productions over free trade, reduce our role in international
affairs, do we leave it to China or Russia or even a compelled
reinvigorated Europe? And if globalization is inevitable, what kind
of future would that make for whatever the US becomes behind its
walls?
These
are questions and not answers. But it seems to me too early to
simply surrender to globalization as inevitable. Logically, at
least, it would seem possible to walk and chew gum at the same time.
We could seek to address inequality. Perhaps some limits and
standards for free trade have a role in this. It makes sense to seek
to protect ourselves from sources of instability and insecurity
around the world but through working
multilaterally within the international system rather than
unilateral armed interventions. Walls and fences may have a role
too, but with careful attention more on how we let people in rather
than keep them out. This may be were politics becomes most relevant.
