Chanda Nayan - A world connected: globalization in the 21st century

Globalization in the 21st Century

Preface by Richard C. Levin

Edited by Nayan Chanda and Susan Froetschel

A YaleGlobal Online Ebook

Yale Center for the Study of the Globalization/New Haven, USA

First published in the USA in 2012 by YaleGlobal Online

Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

New Haven, CT 06520

Copyright 2012 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

All rights reserved. No portion of this e-book may be reproduced

in any fashion, print, facsimile, electronic, or by any method

yet to be developed, without express written permission of

the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.

Photos: Courtesy of Reuters

A World Connected: Globalization in the 21st Century

Edited by Nayan Chanda and Susan Froetschel

Includes preface by Richard C. Levin

ISBN: 978-0-9779922-0-1

Cover design: Debbie Campoli

Book design and typesetting: Lynne Reichentahl and Debbie Campoli

Morton Abramowitz

Graham Allison

Hakan Altinay

Christopher Anzalone

Mohammed Ayoob

Ashok Bardhan

Pranab Bardhan

Hans Blix

Clifford Bob

James K. Boyce

Dieter Braeuninger

Joseph Chamie

Anita Chan

Nayan Chanda

Gordon G. Chang

Carolyn E.B. Choksy

Jamsheed K. Choksy

Michele A. Clark

James Cuno

Anthony P. DCosta

David Dapice

Alex David

Kemal Dervis

Sadanand Dhume

Bo Ekman

Jonathan Fenby

Richard W. Fisher

Ann Florini

Thomas L. Friedman

Susan Froetschel

Ioannis Gatsiounis

Jayati Ghosh

Dru Gladney

Bernard K. Gordon

Alkman Granitsas

Richard N. Haass

Jim Hansen

Riaz Hassan

Humphrey Hawksley

David L. Heymann

Dilip Hiro

Richard Hornik

Yanzhong Huang

Dwight Jaffee

Harold James

Rami G. Khouri

Peter Kwong

Pascal Lamy

Jean-Pierre Lehmann

Richard C. Levin

Andrew Lih

Bertil Lintner

Richard G. Lipsey

Terrence Lyons

Rebecca MacKinnon

Mary Kay Magistad

Kishore Mahbubani

Ashok Malik

Peter Mandaville

Michael Mandelbaum

Peter Mandelson

Bruce Mazlish

Suketu Mehta

Branko Milanovic

Barry Mirkin

N.R. Narayana Murthy

Chandran Nair

Paula R. Newberg

Lonce Ndikumana

Rohini Nilekani

Sharon Noguchi

William D. Nordhaus

Joseph S. Nye Jr.

Rajendra K. Pachauri

Thomas Palley

George Perkovich

Michael Pettis

Clyde Prestowitz

Lant Pritchett

Gustav Ranis

Sean Randolph

Ahmed Rashid

Carmen M. Reinhart

Michael Richardson

Bruce Riedel

Alexis Eva Ringwald

Mary Robinson

David J. Rothkopf

Patrick Sabatier

Shyam Saran

Jonathan Schell

Orville Schell

Amartya Sen

Shen Dingli

Shim Jae Hoon

James Gustave Speth

Joseph Stiglitz

Bruce Stokes

Strobe Talbott

Ramesh Thakur

C. Peter Timmer

Jonathan Unger

Vivek Wadhwa

Immanuel Wallerstein

Jeffrey Wasserstrom

Gabriel Weimann

Patricia Wruuck

Guobin Yang

Ernesto Zedillo

As President of Yale University, I often participate in ceremonies dedicating new or renovated facilities. Ten years ago, on November 19, 2002, I drove to the newly refurbished Betts House for such an occasion, where, instead of cutting a ribbon I clicked on a mouse to launch YaleGlobal Online. The founding of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization in the previous year and the launch of YaleGlobal created an important new bridge connecting Yale to an increasingly globalized world, and put us in a stronger position to contribute to the discussion about its evolution.

It is now widely understood that the world has become smaller and more interconnected. The revolution in communications technology has brought the world closer together and changed the way we think. The movement of capital across borders is now instantaneous, and the movement of people, products, and pollution is freer and faster than ever before. These facts make comprehensive governance of the economy impossible at the level of the nation-state. International institutions are needed to regulate trade, capital flows, and environmental degradation. Isolation is not an option. For the past ten years, YaleGlobal, edited by Nayan Chanda, former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review and The Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, has provided a steady stream of original reports on and insightful analysis of our interconnected and interdependent world.

Cross-cultural influences have always been a part of Yales history and tradition. Yale was founded with a gift from Elihu Yale, former governor of the East India Company in Madras (now Chennai) India. Yung Wing, the first Chinese student to come to a U.S. university, graduated from Yale in 1854. But only recently has intensified globalization created tremendous opportunities for Yale and other universities around the world. YaleGlobal is one response to these opportunities, and I am delighted to see how it has blossomed in the past decade. Its rich content, produced by Yale faculty as well as scholars and experts worldwide, is accessed daily by thousands of people in some 160 countries. Reproduced in newspapers and other websites, YaleGlobal articles are read by millions of readers all over the globe. I hope that this collection, A World Connected: Globalization in the 21st Century, will prove to be a handy guide to understanding the complex and evolving phenomenon of globalization. It is a compendium of carefully selected articles from the more than one thousand essays that YaleGlobal has published.

Yale University continues to adjust its curriculum and programs in order to analyze and understand the full array of global challenges confronting our planet. Global security is threatened by instability in the Middle East and by persistent terrorism that strikes almost randomly at civilized peoples around the world. Global prosperity is threatened. The global free trade regime that brought hundreds of millions out of poverty in the past quarter century is in jeopardy because of the parochialism of nations unable to see the common good. And unless we resolve to cooperate and do something about our environment, the biodiversity of the planet will continue to diminish at an alarming rate, and global warming will transform the conditions of life and livelihood around the world. With intelligent and timely analysis, YaleGlobal and its first e-book, A World Connected: Globalization in the 21st Century, perform the valuable task of raising awareness about our interconnected world and highlighting the need for international cooperation and better governance.

Richard C. Levin

President, Yale University

Ten years ago, on a chilly November day, an improbable venture was launched in a corner of the Yale University campus an online multimedia magazine to explore the phenomenon of globalization and promote debate and analysis on that highly contentious subject. As the flagship publication of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, YaleGlobal Online was not meant to be a general magazine on international affairs, nor a publication devoted to business and the economy, so often considered to be synonymous with globalization. YaleGlobals mission was to follow globalization as it unfolds in all spheres of life. Our mission is informed by our understanding of globalization as a historical process, a process that has increasingly connected the world and grown ever since early humans left their homes in search of better and more fulfilling lives. Commerce, proselytization, travel and conquest are but a few of the channels of connection that have tied the world together ever more tightly. YaleGlobals foundational essay,