Events occur each day demonstrating the foolish conceit many possess when proclaiming certain trends as "inevitable." This foolish conceit poisons public discourse because establishing this "inevitability" enables it to become conventional wisdom, rendering its opponents as cranks. Thomas Friedman has made a career writing-especially in The Lexus and the Olive Tree and The World Is Flat- polemics against those who oppose his proclamations of "inevitabilities."
If one accepts Friedman's-and many others-view that expanding global trade is both inevitable and beneficial, then how do we interpret a current dispute between China and Japan. China's and Japan's deepening economic interdependence should create a therapeutic progress that will heal mutual historical wounds. This observation makes the prospect of world powers quarreling over natural resources and land look so retro -1900. Forget the Boer Wars and the Boxer Rebellion. China and Japan are both asserting claims over the Diaoyu Islands. Well maybe their disagreement is just a lapse of nostalgia or a harbinger of an emerging geopolitical landscape in the Far East. Regardless any conflict of this type between the two nations that has the world's second and third largest national economies should prompt our soberly reappraising the dominant view that growing economic interdependence holds the most promise for peace.
Both China and Japan claim that historical precedence justifies their respective claims to the Diaoyu Islands. A consensus so far indicates China has a stronger case for claiming rightful possession of these islands. The world as a Globalization project in progress reverts rather easily into pre-globalization disputes over atavistic objects such as a group of islands. Weren't Japan and China listening to Friedman?
The aforementioned Friedman in his The Olive and the Lexus Tree stumbled upon a troubling juxtaposition while riding the high speed rail from a Lexus factory he visited that day back to Tokyo: some nations progress past petty historical conflicts and modernize, while others continue to defy progress by fighting over plots of land. [1]. Although some clung tightly to the Olive Tree, Friedman states that others recognize Globalization's inevitability:
"People will accept a lot more stress associated with globalization than one might think-in part because Russian miners, Mexican peasants and Indonesian laborers understand at some level that they don't really have any choice but to get up to speed for the Fast World, and in part because many of them don't want it any other way." [2].
Friedman believes here that workers of the world unite for a piece of the action. How do they get a piece of the action? More global capitalism of course. He then cites a United Nations Human Development report showing historic drops in poverty, especially among nations most open to globalization such as Taiwan, Singapore, Israel, Chile, and Sweden [3]. Now whether these nations really produced prosperity by following "globalization" as Friedman defines it is another discussion. But, the question considered here is how effectively this globalization era will preempt potential conflicts or resolve historical conflicts that stand perilously close to being reignited.
Globalization is a grand narrative, whose ubiquity we attempt to demonstrate by attributing so much of what we see and experience as the result of its workings. The Grand Narrative whose powers include the conflicting characteristics of mysteriousness and palpability defy the analysis of any Grand Inquisitor. In that Globalization just is...its omnipresence becomes viewable to the mortal eye....declining wages....growing inequality....
Friedman wasn't cautioning us that China and Japan may relapse into atavistic quarrels over who rightfully possesses chunks of land. Both China and Japan had consciously opted to pursue the path graced by globalization's benevolence. He was referring to the barren olive orchards in the middle east over which Israel and Palestine claim casualties be damned. But, these two of globalization's benefactors are showing that capitalism's peace dividend spends fast under certain conditions. The historical wounds inflicted by the Rape of Nanking in 1937 seemed buried under the healing power of benevolent Globalization. Yet their disputing ownership of this string of islands resurrects dead ghosts of nationalism and imperial rivalry. I am not suggesting this is a reoccurrence of imperial rivalry that occurred in the late 19th century and continued through World War One. This dispute though shows that no one should look at globalization both an inevitability and an elixir.
Bill Clinton stated concern in a speech delivered to the United Nations that "Powerful forces still resist reasonable efforts to put a human face on the Global Economy." [4]. His statement implies the latter developed as an inanimate process that once gaining a certain level of momentum and size overwhelmed humanity. I don't know how Clinton believed the Global Economy developed, but its important to understand the Global Economy was no accident befalling on us like natural disasters. Human institutions consciously created institutions that helped promote Globalization. Sure some of its outcomes thus far defied our predictions. But, the state provided the edifice on which globalization could spread. This is crucial because most conversations about globalization position the state as powerless, a Don Quixote at best. Our seeing the state as a critical agent helping spread global capitalism should encourage our holding the state accountable for globalization's harmful effects.
Because the market is often viewed as that which naturally develops when the state imposes minimal rules governing the economy. History offers examples showing the state was integral to the development of the global economy that politicians, pundits, and policymakers invoke as the omnipotent force which we question and oppose at our own peril. If only this were true, then we should give up. The very state that strikes a pose of impotence in front of the almighty global economy is mostly a self-serving rhetorical act to convince us that we should abandon all impulses to oppose it. Some facts show the potency retained by the state.
Just look at the mechanisms participating nation states had adopted to execute the provisions included within the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), that was formally adopted by its signatories in 1993. The drafters used language to define broadly what identifies "investors." [5]. The broadness with which NAFTA's language defines "investors" may at first suggest a recognition of the need to "flexible" lest an agreement of this size impose concrete rules based on conditions soon to change in a dynamic world. Who could argue with such a practical approach? But, this agreement includes so much of its language deferring to "investors" rights that it effectively privileges them as a special class. ***
Effectively, NAFTA privileges an investor class thereby weakening national democracies' power to pass legislation that may conflict with this broadly defined investor class. NAFTA's provisions referenced above in Part 5 of its final document restricts actions taken by national governments that may "impair" rights of investors. But, no provision allows national governments to impose sanctions against each other if one nation fails to enforce labor laws. [6]. NAFTA's provisions sought to reduce any power common men will have to oppose its rules or any of its economic effects.
Such mechanisms defy an image of global capitalism as an inevitable force that renders the nation state as only a symbol of sovereignty. At the onset of the global economic meltdown that began in 2007 Thomas Friedman himself observed that "the invisible hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist." This observation brings to mind Irving Kristol's adage that a neo-conservative is a "liberal mugged by reality." Kristol here was referring to liberals who lost faith in communism and leftist ideology. To paraphrase , Reality carjacked Friedman sitting in his proverbial Lexus. While we await Friedman's newest adaptation of his worldview ,which reality virtually skewered in real time, what does that fallen world inhabited by us mortals need most?
The Global Economy needs no human face as Clinton stated in one of his usual cliche-filled speeches. Globalization, rather, suffers from its intrinsic flaw of Being All Too Human.Hopefully Japan and China resolve their current dispute without both of them further militarizing the region (As if that wasn't a major concern already). But, that a dispute occurred at all between two of globalizations best conveyors should prompt our critically reappraising globalizations two most dangerous tenets: its supposed inevitability and its unrivaled power to create peace and prosperity.
[1]. Friedman, Thomas L. The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization. 1999. Picador, New York. 30-1.
[2]. Friedman, The Lexus.
[3]. Ibid. 350.
[4]. Clinton, William Jefferson. Statement by President Clinton before the 54th regular session of the UN General Assembly on September 21, 1999. http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/7803.pdf
[5]. Panitch, Leo. "Globalization and the State." The Socialist Register 1994. 75.
[6]. Ibid. 76.
***Read Part 5 of NAFTA document to analyze the provisions privileging investors. The document is downloadable at http://www.nafta-sec-alena.org/en/view.aspx?x=343. NAFTA appears to be a prelude to the TPP, though President Obama didn't seem to obtain more firm commitments from Asian heads of stated during his recent trip to Asia.
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