The Globalization Backlash

Mark Thirwell of the Lowy Interpreter points out that globalization's successes were already generating the beginnings of a backlash within the developed world, and argues that the advent of the subprime failure makes one even more likely. I'd point out that the Asian financial crisis and the internet bubble had already raised some red flags about the potential dangers of globalization, albeit in a different historical context. But Thirwell's point is well taken. So many of our futurist scenarios are based on the assumption that barriers to trade will continue to fall, and in the context of a global order. But the trend could very well reverse, or fragment into various pockets of competing free trade zones.

With that in mind, one area that Thirwell doesn't mention, but that I think will also have a significant impact on the future of globalization, is the West's increasing emphasis on economic sanctions as the primary enforcement mechanism of the multilateral order. When globalization involved mainly freeing trade between developed poles and the undeveloped periphery, sanctions represented a coherent tool for encouraging good behavior on the part of states solicitous of joining the global community. Now that trade has truly become globalized, with a dramatic increase in the commercial links between developing nations, the impact of sanctions is felt far beyond the frontiers of the country targeted. That, plus the fact that sanctions are in perfect opposition to the logic of globalization (which was supposed to be an essentially transformative phenomenon) makes it harder both to generate political support for applying them, and to enforce compliance once they've been applied.

While proposals for adjusting globalization (mainly to render it more socially, politically and environmentally sustainable) abound, we don't see too many hypotheticals about alternative scenarios to continued globalization. If Thirwell's right, and I think he is, we need to start coming up with some.