Table of Contents
In memory of Hugh Kenner, who always saw the elephant.
Acknowledgments
Multidisciplinary studies like this book require an immense amount of support from friends and acquaintances, and this one is no exception.
First, thanks to my agents Will Lippincott and Maria Massie who encouraged me to write ambitiously, along with Debra Englander, Kelly OConnor, and Kevin Holm, from my publisher John Wiley & Sons, who pushed and prodded the book into excellent shape amid late updates to address the unfolding global financial crisis.
My friends and colleagues at Columbia University have always been incredibly inspirational and thought provoking. Without their expertise and encouragement, many of the books themes would never have surfaced. Lisa Anderson, Jagdish Baghwati, Dick Betts, John Coatesworth, Rob Garris (and other friends in the Global Public Policy Network), Merit Janow, Jose Antonio Ocampo, Mary Robinson, among others, have provided me with great resources, and dozens of useful comments and suggestions. I am also very grateful to Joe Stiglitz for indulging me on a wide range of inquiries. Columbia has also blessed me with dozens of student interns since 1991, and many have contributed work and ideas for this book. Amelia Erwitt, Kamil Kaluza, Debbie Landres, and Nadiya Satyamurthy helped me frame out the books premise and related articles Ive written. Special kudos go to the figurative and literal AngelsPriscilla Adams, Gloria Hartner, Sophy Miles, Nancy Ferrante, and Kim McGinnis, industrious women who helped counter my endless ranting with great karma. Kim, particularly, has worked with me enthusiastically to the chaotic end, and there are few pages in this book that havent been improved by her astute observations and gifted sense of language.
I have many more intellectual debts to pay. Friends from the World Policy Institute helped me formulate the books key argument in an article published in 2006. Ian Cuthbertson, Mira Kamdar, Karl Meyer (and his wife Shareen Blair Brysac), Ben Pauker, Steve Schlesinger, Sherle Schwenninger, John Watts, Linda Wrigley, and Michelle Wucker all have provided conversations and ideas for this book. At New America Foundation (NAF), I have to thank Ted Halstead, not only for introducing me to a fabulous community of big picture people, but his own policy thoughts have shaped much of my thinking. Other NAF related friendsPeter Bergen, Sharon Brownlee, Steve Coll, Frank Fukuyama, Jacob Hacker, Zach Karabell, Parag Khanna, Jeffrey Lewis, John Nagl , Rachel White, Dan Yerginhave also offered great insights and observations that are strewn throughout the book.
There are many concepts in these chapters that spring from dozens of conversations with writers and scholars over the years; I cant begin to name them all. However, several deserve mention including Sam Brittan, Paul Blustein, David Brooks, Steven David, Peter Feaver, Jeff Garten, Richard Goldberg, Robert William Fogel, Steve Hanke, Craig Karmin, Ed Lincoln, John Mueller, Amity Schlaes, Jim Twitchell, and Martin Wolf. A special thanks to President Bill Clinton, who graciously offered me some insights into several issues amid his hectic schedule.
My colleagues at HSBC have been incredibly encouraging. First, the organization has provided me with great opportunities to witness firsthand the megatrends I describe; indeed, the practical experience working and investing globally everyday has been some of the best education Ive ever received. Specific thanks to Markus Ackermann, Rudolf Apenbrinck, Sten Ankarcrona, Nigel Brown, Chris Cheetham, Lisa Chin, Paul Dawe, Christian Deseglise, Mike Gagliardi, Steve Gibbon, Sara Grillo, Clair Hammond, Kat Harley, Arif Joshi, Erica Maisonet, Mark McCombe, Bill McKinzie, Aimee Mihalko, Chris Milonopoulos, Rekha Ramdas, Chas Robinson, Jean Luc Roghe, Paul Seary, Denise Simon, Jeanie Sun, Nick Timberlake, George Varino, and Heiner Weber, for their varied contributions to this endeavor.
Whenever I take on a writing project like this, many voices of past teachers echo in my head. The late Hugh Kenner has always been my great intellectual inspiration, a man who could chat effortlessly and authoritatively about everything from James Joyce to computers to cartoons. Its to him I dedicate this book. Past conversations with and lessons from Milton Cummings, Pasquale DeVito, Nancy Melser, Ron Paulson, Peter Sachs, Frimi Sagan, and Larzer Ziff, among others, often filled my brain as I pored through the manuscript.
Lastly, I must thank my wife Andrea and our two daughters, who have been suffered through yet another one of my book ordeals. Andrea has been my best soundboard since college and provided me with trusty sanity checks through every step in the book.
Introduction
Anyone writing today about globalizationthe complicated web of life through trade, investment, technology, ideas, and migrationneeds to thank Tom Friedman and Al Gore. Whether you agree with their alarmist messages, The World Is Flat and An Inconvenient Truth helped educate and inform while elevating the debate above the whiny emotional anti-everything protests of the late 1990s.
Friedman and Gores best sellers, along with several other books by commendable authors, discuss some of the most important facets of globalization. However, like the blind men in the parable of the elephant who only feel and describe a tusk, ear, or trunk but dont comprehend the whole animal, most of these writers tend to comment on a feature or two of globalization; few attempt to describe all the phenomena and understand their holistic connections. So, while The World Is Flat (and Friedmans other books), vividly dramatizes international economic competition and An Inconvenient Truth shocks us with the perils of accelerated environmental degradation, these topics need to be considered with the many other interlocking features of a twenty-first century planet in which more than 6.7 billion people are working and consuming at an alarming rate. Only by stepping back from the fray can we begin to see the interlocking, overlapping, and colliding aspects of globalization as a whole and begin to formulate national and international policies that take account of these rapid changes and interconnections.
Thats what this book is about. It is nearly impossible to talk about basic concerns like mortgages, retirement plans, and gas prices, for example, without examining global intersections in trade, finance, energy, immigration, the environment and defense. But we, as U.S. citizens, seem blind to how twenty-first century civilization is connecting more nations and peoples than ever before. Our elected officials, too, are fumbling with major policy decisions amid the worlds changing power structure. Without recognizing, admitting, and understanding these connections, we cant even begin to discuss how the United States and other countries can craft and harness effective policies amid this breathtaking progress.
A Different Lens
It is somewhat understandable that we Americans cant get our heads into the chaos of globalization. For most of the twentieth century, we lived in an easy-to-understand world. The U.S. economy was the largest and most competitive but fairly insular and domestic; trade was less than 10 percent of our total economic activity. Our comparative advantages in technologycoupled with a strong dollar and cheap oilhelped propel a living standard that surpassed much of the world. After World War II, we dominated the global scene and lived largeliterally. Automobiles grew longer and heavier, people grew taller and fatter, homes grew bigger, and the nations political and economic influence grew ever grander. Because of the vast U.S. marketplace, many outward looking countries naturally wanted to do business with us and emulate our rich lifestylewearing designer and logo-bearing clothes, driving big flashy cars, listening to popular music, watching TV and movies, and eating too much. We were seen as leaders of the free capitalist world, a bit gauche but with our heads and hearts essentially in the right places.
