Globalization Is Good, Says Friedman
Thomas Friedman, author of the new book The World Is Flat, is a lefty for globalization, writes Robert Wright on Slate.
Friedman persuasively updates his Lexus-and-the-Olive-Tree argument that economic interdependence makes war costlier for nations and hence less likely. He's heard the counterargument—"That's what they said before World War I!"—and he concedes that a big war could happen. But he shows that the pre-World War I era didn't have this kind of interdependence—the fine-grained and far-flung division of labor orchestrated by Toyota, Wal-Mart, et al. This is "supply chaining"—"collaborating horizontally—among suppliers, retailers, and customers—to create value."For example: The hardware in a Dell Inspiron 600m laptop comes from factories in the Philippines, Costa Rica, Malaysia, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, India, and Israel; the software is designed in America and elsewhere. The corporations that own or operate these factories are based in the United States, China, Taiwan, Germany, South Korea, Japan, Ireland, Thailand, Israel, and Great Britain. And Michael Dell personally knows their CEOs—a kind of relationship that, multiplied across the global web of supply chains, couldn't hurt when tensions rise between, say, China and the United States.
Friedman argues plausibly that global capitalism dampened the India-Pakistan crisis of 2002, when a nuclear exchange was so thinkable that the United States urged Americans to leave India. Among the corporate feedback the Indian government got in midcrisis was a message from United Technologies saying that it had started looking for more stable countries in which to house mission-critical operations. The government toned down its rhetoric.
Also plausibly, Friedman argues that Globalization 3.0 rewards inter-ethnic tolerance and punishes tribalism. "If you want to have a modern complex division of labor, you have to be able to put more trust in strangers." Certainly nations famous for fundamentalist intolerance—e.g., Saudi Arabia—tend not to be organically integrated into the global economy.
Peace and universal brotherhood—it almost makes globalization sound like a leftist's dream come true. But enough embracing—it's time to extend! Time to use the logic of globalization to attack Bush's foreign policy.
Like Friedman, I accept Bush's premise that spreading political freedom is both morally good and good for America's long-term national security. But is Bush's instinctive means to that end—invading countries that aren't yet free—really the best approach? Friedman's book fortified my belief that the answer is no.
Friedman, unlike many liberals, has long appreciated that, more than ever, economic liberty encourages political liberty. As statist economies have liberalized, this linkage has worked faster in some cases (South Korea, Taiwan) than in others (China), but it works at some speed just about everywhere.
And consider the counterexamples, the increasingly few nations that have escaped fine-grained penetration by market forces. They not only tend to be authoritarian; they often flout international norms, partly because their lack of economic engagement makes their relationship to the world relatively zero-sum, leaving them little incentive to play nicely. Friedman writes, "Since Iraq, Syria, south Lebanon, North Korea, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran are not part of any major global supply chains, all of them remain hot spots that could explode at any time."
That list includes the last country Bush invaded and the two countries atop his prospective invasions list. It makes you wonder: With all due respect for carnage, mightn't it be easier to draw these nations into the globalized world and let capitalism work its magic (while supplementing that magic by using nonmilitary policy levers to encourage democratic reform)?
This is one paradox of "neoconservative" foreign policy: It lacks the conservative's faith in the politically redeeming power of markets. Indeed, Bush, far from trying to lure authoritarians into the insidiously antiauthoritarian logic of capitalism, has tried to exclude them from it. Economically, he's all stick and no carrot. (Of Iran he said, "We've sanctioned ourselves out of influence," oblivious to the fact that removing sanctions can be an incentive.)
But liberals DO believe that economic liberty encourages political liberty. I think their reservations about globalization concern the loss of jobs in the U.S. and the unequal distribution of globalization's benefits between the developed and developing countries (we get cheaper goods, they get sweatshops). Perhaps these injustices are only short-term adjustments.
Lena-doodle-doo at April 19, 2005 8:30 AM
> one paradox of "neoconservative" foreign
> policy: It lacks the conservative's faith
> in the politically redeeming power of markets
Backwards. The Middle East is a shitbath because western powers have always suppressed the free markets and political dynamism of those nations. Wouldn't it have been great if Bush the Elder (and a generation of technocrats before him) had made speeches like this?
Amy, yesterday when I tried to get you to admit the war was a good thing, you twisted every point in the most sarcastic possible way. But in their hatred for W, lefties are pitting their policy in opposition the great movement towards freedom that has characterized the last fifty years, and in mockery of the dearest feelings of the human heart.
No matter what happens with Frist and Delay, don't be surprised if things go badly in 2008.
Crid at April 19, 2005 10:22 AM
This guy said it better.
Crid at April 19, 2005 12:52 PM
Besides Lena, libruls don't believe in economic liberty, they believe in economic equality.
Crid at April 19, 2005 12:53 PM
The war was a good thing, except for the tens of thousands killed and maimed, the untold thousands who will live the rest of their lives with permanent psychological damage, and the thousands who have had to kill another human being for their own survival.
It is a good thing that we have the troops to keep the modicum of security in Iraq. It has taken several years longer than predicted by the architects of this war, and its a good thing they predict we will be able to (hopefully) reduce our troop presence in Iraq in the next year or two since we can not make our military recruiting numbers domestically.
One other minor casualty of this was American credibility, since every single reason given why we had to go to war has been shown to be a lie. And of course there is the material cost, $165 billion dollars that has been borrowed for Americans to pay with interest in the future. As President/General Eisenhower said, every dollar spent on the military is a dollar taken away from a needed social program. I know that Bush thought this war would finance itself, but surely a few hundred billion dollar mistake is not a good thing.
The speech from Bush you keeping referring to was a good one, unless you happen to see this war as being immoral and illegal. Or see the words expressed by our president as being hollow when compared to his history of actions. Of course his daddy put out some good speeches as well, especially after he abandoned the Kurds to be slaughtered by Hussein when he had just weeks earlier promised to help the Kurds and Shiites rise up internally against their unjust dictator. He had some really compassionate speeches when 200,000 Iraqis tried to flee to Iran, many of whom were sent back over the border to be killed. For Saudi Arabia, that was a good thing.
Yup, it's time we liberals stopped raining on this parade and declare "mission accomplished".
And you confuse liberals with some whacked concept of Communism, or maybe you were just lobbing mental cow patties.
eric at April 19, 2005 1:14 PM
Prager calls that "The infantilism of the left." It's not just that the moral presumptions of the argument are lifted from 1968 (a wholly different context); it's also that the timbre of the presentation is frozen from those days as well, when the speaker was a child, and couldn't be held accountable for conditions on the ground.
Well, Eric, today it's different. We're grown up, and you've benefited profoundly from the flow of Middle Eastern oil enabled by our support of these monstrous regimes. No one nourished by the rockin', cheap-energy economy of late-20th America can pretend to be a cloistered, self-sufficient nun with no responsibility to those distant nations.
> ...every single reason given why we had to go
> to war has been shown to be a lie.
You keep saying that, but apparently not. A fraud so grotesque certainly would have cost Bush the election, wouldn't it? You aren't persuaded by elections here, and you aren't persuaded by elections there. What did you want for Iraq, Eric?
> For Saudi Arabia...
Do you think the Saudis supported this war? Do you think Mubarak and Qaddafi and Boy Assad supported it? Did Arafat? Bush has, in Frum's delicious phrase, "completely transformed the calculus of legitimacy in the Middle East." And I maintain, done more for living Muslims than any man since Muhammad.
But as Costello notes above, the Left (as represented by do many head-in-the-sand types in the middle class) cares not at all for the freedom of others. It just wants the oil, and wants not to read about death in the newspapers. It can't imagine a better world worth taking a risk for.
> The war was a good thing, except for
> the tens of thousands killed and maimed...
Agreed! Get the picture? THERE ARE WORSE THINGS THAN WAR. Installing and abiding dictators is one of them.
Crid at April 19, 2005 2:06 PM
The Saudis supported the first gulf war, which is the war I was referring to, and its aftermath.
Nixon and Reagan got reelected despite their illegal wars and imposing dictators where they wanted them, so that point is invalid. Popular will is not a validation of the truth, and the whole truth can be easily obtained through the records of how this administration sold this war.
Bush was a wartime president, which is almost impossible to defeat. Add in a confusing Democratic candidate with no charisma, emotional split issues that catered to fear and bigotry, and such a small Bush victory hardly seems something to call attention to.
I love when you make the claim Bush has done more for the Muslims than anyone since Mohammed. I wonder if you could get even 1 percent of the worlds Muslims to agree with you. I suspect most would be offended you even use those two in the same sentence.
eric at April 19, 2005 3:03 PM
(Forgive typos, tiny keyboard)
- Saudis supported the first
- gulf war...
...And not the second. This ain't your Daddy's Bush Administration.
(Though Poppy had his moments. Did I ever tell the story of scuba-diving the 'Bush's wreck', the Japanese transport sunk by pilot GHWB near Palau during the Big One?)
- ...reelected despite their
- illegal wars...
LBJ comes to mind. Your point is...?
- Popular will is not a validation
- of the truth...
Nor is losing an election.
- the records of how this
- administration sold this war.
That's the thing Eric, it was only two years ago. We were all here and paying close attention, having been alerted to the weaknesses of foreign policy in recent administrations.
- ...a wartime president, which is
- almost impossible to defeat.
A truism formerly as compelling as "Post-Nam boomers have no tolerance for wars of incursion." Or until this morning,"Enter the conclave a Pope, leave a Cardinal."
- such a small Bush victory hardly
- seems something to call
- attention to.
Then let's not bother. Stew there in your resentments and narcissistic juices. See you in 2008.
- I wonder if you could get even
- 1 percent of the worlds Muslims
- to agree with you.
Free ones? You mean like schoolgirls in Afghanistan? Or do you persist in the belief that the little brown people aren't interested in liberty?
crid at April 19, 2005 5:08 PM
You brought in Bush the elder, so I responded.
You are right with LBJ- the Gulf of Tonkin incident was another fictional reason to go blow up "the little brown people". Everyone should see The Fog of War about McNamara and how close we came to self destruction.
Resentment and narcissism because I point out this war was either created due to political opportunism shrouded by lies or inept management on a historic scale? Confronted with all the facts about there never having been yellowcake, WMD's, a biologic weapons program, ties to Al Queda, being greeted with flowers as liberators, a self financing war, a war that should not last more than a few months at most, you cover your ears and chant "I am a Democrat and Bush is a genius". Arguing with you is like a scene from Alice in Wonderland.
And Afghanistan isn't Iraq. You have never seen me write that removing the Taliban wasn't in the American national interest.
So whats the scuba story?
eric at April 19, 2005 5:36 PM
Don't be a hater!
Bush wreck:
http://www.pacificwrecks.com/people/visitors/scannon.html
Besides, if we act only in "American national interest," Amy doesn't get to move on Darfur.
Crid at April 19, 2005 8:47 PM
>Besides, if we act only in "American national interest," Amy doesn't get to move on Darfur.
Herein lies my opposition to the Iraq war. Are Iraqis better off? Sure. Does the American government exist to represent the interests of Iraqi people? Nope. We've spent, now, 300 bil., and 1500 American lives (which our government exists almost exclusively to protect at all costs) to remove an enemy of our enemy (that is that Saddam Hussein was the exact kind of leader that al qaeda was formed in protestation to).
Friedman's hypothesis that opening up countries and spreading the wealth among them, so to speak, provides an explanation for why the invasion of Iraq could work to undercut terrorism as does the revisionist neocon idea that one arab democracy will spill over to the others and that free people aren't going to self-hate enough to fly halfway around the world to kill themselves killing us.
Lebanon is a shining example of how this could work. The cedar revolution could not have been possible without the iraqi elections.
Iran is a gloomy example of how this can backfire. A revolution was on the verge of precipitating before we invaded Iraq. Now the Iranians have decided that they fear us more than they hate their own leaders.
As far as Iraq? The jury is still out. As Friedman says, he is unwilling to say it has worked until they can sustain a democracy without 150,000 US troops watching over their shoulder. I would go further and say that if there's a breath of Allah in the constitution that this ridiculous idea of giving control of countries to people who hate us more than the tyrants who currently or used to rule them has failed (though I do admit it could be ridiculous enough to work).
Reagan won the cold war by supporting the biggest bastards on the planet as long as they were tough on communism. This approach is opposite, and so goes against historical precedent. If there is one word about Allah in the iraqi constitution, that country will be more sympathetic to Bin Laden than Saddam Iraq was.
I hope my doubts turn out to be unfounded. We'll know in 20 years.
Sudan not in American national interest? We could take care of that easier and cheaper than we took care of Kosovo and Serbia, being that these assholes are on horses not tanks.
How is it in our interests? US gov't buys more bombs from US companies, but not enough to dent the budget. We can do our holier-than-thou foreign policy stuff with increased credibility this time (regain some of what was lost with that abu ghraib thing in Iraq). And Bush could use it to lessen the hypocrasy behind his selective support for a culture of life and help conservatives and liberals alike to stop wondering why he always insists on shooting the fly in the room(Schiavo for the life stuff, Social Security economically) with an elephant gun while leaving the elephant (Halting genocide for the life stuff, Medicare/Medicaid economically) to shit all over and trash all of our stuff.
Little ted at April 20, 2005 1:37 AM
> Reagan won the cold war by supporting
> the biggest bastards on the planet...
No, he went on a defense spending spree that the Commies could never keep up with, and broke the back of their "planned" economic power structure. He made some deals with bad people along the way, but that's not the part we admire. Is anyone HAPPY about our coddling of dictators?
Crid at April 20, 2005 8:17 AM
The opening premise is so much nonsense.
Germany's biggest trading partner before WW2 was France. In 1930, if you had been sitting in a Frankfurt cafe claiming that the nation would soon be bombed into the Stone Age by the USA, and that the government would make it legal to burn Jews alive, they'd have carried you off to the nuthouse.
Wars start for weird reasons. What I find amazing today is the lack of articulate discussion about native shooters in Iraq, and the fixation on the place that has the American public ignoring Saudi and Afghanistan.
There will be more wars, regardless of how much business is done between parties. It's a cultural offshoot related to Amy's observation that people are a pain, and biohazard emitters to boot.
I adore Orwell, who had his character Emanuel Goldstein write, "It does not matter that the war cannot be won... the sole purpose of the war is the consumption of human output."
Radwaste at April 20, 2005 4:41 PM
>No, he went on a defense spending spree that the Commies could never keep up with, and broke the back of their "planned" economic power structure.
This has nothing to do with Latin America not currently being communnist. And if it serves a greater good, then yes we should coddle dictators with a smile and a full night's peaceful sleep.
Little ted at April 21, 2005 11:36 AM
> if it serves a greater good...
What is your planet like? Is its atmosphere transparent, like that of our own? Are your oceans blue and full of cheerful fish?
Crid at April 21, 2005 7:44 PM
The United States of America doesn't exist to give non-US citizens happy fish. It exists to improve and protect the lives of US citizens. If its actions help the world along the way, then its lucky for them that their desires coincided with our betterment.
Little ted at April 23, 2005 1:42 AM
> It exists to improve and protect the
> lives of US citizens.
Only the latter. Americans can improve their own lives tremendously so long as government stays out of the way.
Anyway, it's amusinging in 2005 to find someone who admires the results of our policy towards Saudi Arabia and the Middle East generally.
Crid at April 23, 2005 9:03 AM
Read Galt.
Crid at April 24, 2005 1:08 PM
Actually I don't think we should have a policy towards the middle east because I don't believe we should be dealing with them.
Little ted at April 24, 2005 6:27 PM
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