Remember "globalization?" It meant the interdependence of the worldthrough trade and investment, international coordination and cooperation. Globalizationwas thought to be an inevitable force -- powered by American leadership. Oh yes, a few anti-globalists protested on streets here and there, but most peopleassumed globalization was here to stay.
But now foreign investment in the United States is dropping dramatically. International trade is contracting. Instead of becoming more porous, national borders are getting more rigid and border controls, tighter. An increasing number of U.S. firms, finding it too risky these days to rely on foreign suppliers, are turning to domestic suppliers instead. American executives and personnel are being recalled to America.
Whatever happened to globalization? The reversal is partly due to the worldwideeconomic slowdown that began in 2000. The tighter border controls are a consequence of terrorism. But future historians will note that another, and increasingly important, reason for the retreat from globalization has been the go-it-alone approach of the Bush administration and its open disdain for international cooperation.
The White House rejected the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. It refused to accept jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. It blocked an agreement to help poor nations buy low-cost generic medicines to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other diseases. It unilaterally imposed tariffs on foreign steel, unilaterally raised farm subsidies. It continues to give tax breaks to American exporters through foreign sales corporations in violation ofWorld Trade Organization rules.
And now, Iraq. We're going it alone there despite the United Nations, and despite world opinion overwhelmingly against us. Over and over again the UnitedStates is telling the world we won't be bound by international law or international institutions when we don't like the results.
America used to be the leader on globalization. We forged multilateral trade agreements, built global institutions, fought to establish the rules of international law. We did so because globalization was in our economic and political interest, and because we thought globalization was mostly a force forgood in the world.
But now we're turning our back on all that. America is more alone now than we've been at any time since the isolationist 1930s. And because we're the world's only remaining superpower, our retreat from globalization is an open invitiation to every other nation to do the same -- reject global laws, rules, treaties, and institutions when they don't like the results.
Who would have thought that anti-globalist demonstrators would have found theirchampion in President George W. Bush?
