Globalisation is unstoppable – adapt or get left behind: Nicholas Lorimer
Key topics:
Anti-globalisation movements fuse left, right, and conspiracy ideas.
Globalisation driven by technology, trade, and centuries of exchange.
Nations benefit by adapting, not resisting, global interconnectedness.
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By Nicholas Lorimer*
Underpinning so much of politics at the moment, across the globe and across the left and right, is fear of, anger at, or concern about globalisation.
Fears about immigration, anger at “neo-colonialism”, concern over manufacturing “decline”, tariffs, wokeness, capitalist exploitation, immigration etc. etc. are all deeply connected to the incredible impact of globalisation on the planet.
The modern anti-globalisation movement has roots stretching back into the 90s and late 80s, mostly on the far left. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc created a crisis on the far left. Without the counterweight of the communist superpower, who would protect the world from the ravages of unchecked capitalism?
What followed was lots of activist-led protests about globalisation and the power of international capital. The most notorious of these was the 1999 protest against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle in the United States. During this protest, held during the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, activists demanded an end to free trade, environmental destruction and “exploitation” of workers in the developing world. These protesters, who formed the seed of what would eventually become the ANTIFA movement in the modern US, clashed with police in a dramatic showdown.
At the same time, left-leaning academia churned out tomes decrying the perversion of “indigenous” cultures by consumerism, the ease with which capital flowed, and the horrors of the IMF having conditions on loans to poor countries.
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At the same time, in the more obscure corners of the internet and the fringes of the Evangelical Christian movement, conspiracy theories about the New World Order (NWO), which have their origins in the early and mid-20th century and the opposition to the formation of the League of Nations and the United Nations, began to absorb some of the strands of anti-globalisation. Growing anger about immigration into the West, particularly by Muslim immigrants, grew steadily on the right, and picked up some of the arguments made by the anti-globalisation left, particularly as to the practice of offshoring manufacturing and the destruction of local cultures.
Fused together
The anti-globalisation stuff was finally fused together with the NWO stuff by professional crazy person Alex Jones who popularised the term “globalist”, which has since entered the popular discourse on the right. (For a more complete picture of the beliefs of the right-wing anti-globalisation crowd, see your nearest comments section – probably even the comments section below this article).
Ironically both left-wing and right-wing criticisms of globalisation are remarkably global in their nature, with connections and similarities between these movements across the world.
Critics of globalisation often talk about it as though it was purely some sort of policy decision: something decided in a room by a group of evil moustache-twirling villains. Different dates are given for the supposed origin of the crime: the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, various meetings of the IMF or the WTO, the founding of the United Nations, the formation of the EU. The truth however is that while particular government policies have shaped and influenced globalisation, the forces driving it are much more fundamental and much more technological.
Global markets of a sort have existed for centuries.
The most famous of these is the Silk Road, which is shorthand for the trade network which carried high quality luxury goods between Europe and China. The other important network was the Indian Ocean Trade network.
Even long before any sustained contact between Europe and India, during the height of the Roman Empire, India and Ethiopia played a major role in facilitating trade between China and Rome. Indeed, significant quantities of Roman coinage have been found in India, and the currency was so valuable that local Indian kings sometimes minted their own imitations of Roman coins.
Limited cultural exchange
This early version of globalisation had some cultural exchange but it was limited, as the trade routes often had middlemen so there was rarely direct transfer of goods between east and west. The focus of the trade was often luxury goods, high-quality glass to China, silk to Rome, for example. Disruption brought by war or disease often halted the trade.
This all changed, and the modern form of globalisation began with the Portuguese voyages of exploration from the 1400s and expanded Europe’s trade networks around Africa, and eventually into the Americas.
Small European ships with experienced crews soon allowed people for the first time in history to travel in one voyage across the world, sailing the high seas without relying on the monsoon winds (as was the case in the Indian Ocean.)
By the mid-1500s, silver mined in Peru was being sent to China to buy luxury goods for European nobles, creating a true global market.
By the 1600s, slaves from Africa were working plantations in the Americas to sell goods to European countries, which in turn sold finished goods back to the Americas.
Since then, competition between states and technological advancement have only driven globalisation. Better sailing technology and navigation made sea journeys safer and faster. The printing press allowed ideas to be spread more quickly and cheaply. Eventually the steamship and the telegraph made travel and communication even easier.
People moved or were moved across the world in ever-greater numbers: Europeans and Africans to the Americas; Indians to East Africa, Mauritius, and Guyana; East Asians to Malaysia and California.
Easy and efficient
In the 20th century, telephone networks, the container ship, aeroplanes, satellites and the internet have made travel and communication so easy and efficient that it is now easier to travel across the entire planet than it might have been in the ancient world to travel a province away from your home. Today a Tunisian street vendor can set himself on fire and influence a protest in Vietnam or Bolivia. An obscure internet post written by an American can drive a terror attack in New Zealand.
During this globalisation process, empires and states, kings and presidents, parliaments and senates have at times encouraged it, and at other times tried to halt it. During the 1890s, America tried tariffs and then repealed them. The British Empire tried Imperial preference in the 1930s. Various monopolies, trade closures, boycotts, blockades, great firewalls and bans have been tried, and yet still the incredible power of technology allows goods and ideas to slip through.
Today’s opponents of globalisation think that with a couple of tariffs here, or some capital controls there, they can reverse the tide of globalisation. They are mistaken. While you can slow down or sometimes even temporarily set back globalisation, unless you can uninvent the internet and the container ship, the ease with which goods and ideas flow will relentlessly continue as it has for 500 years.
Even a country like North Korea, which on paper has cut itself off from global information and trade, engages in international crime, shadow investments, counterfeiting of US currency and theft of cryptocurrency.
If a country could somehow isolate itself from the global networks perfectly, it would be at a competitive disadvantage. It would quickly find itself vulnerable to being colonised or vassalised by a country which embraced and benefited from globalisation.
“One world government”
So: is the age of the nation state over? Is the march to “one world government” inevitable?
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Despite what ideologues on the left, right and even the centre sometimes say, no: not at all.
In fact, the appearance of the organised nation-state happened during this period of globalisation. Today there are more nations than there were 100 years ago.
Anyone who looks at the world’s big trade organisations or political blocs and fails to see as much division as unity, if not more, is fooling themselves.
New ideas and new economic connections only create new reasons to form states, blocs, and alliances. However, the lesson I think we should learn is that trying to stand athwart globalisation and crying “Stop!” is a fool’s errand, a project of Utopian politics that will only hurt rather than protect.
Instead of trying to protect your own markets from foreign competition, make them more competitive.
Instead of blocking all immigrants, focus on making your immigration system more rational and more effective, integrating immigrants into your society.
Instead of using the state to support a language or a culture, produce more or write more.
Don’t try to trap capital, rather try to attract it.
The future belongs to those who recognise that globalisation isn’t going anywhere. It belongs to those who ride the globalisation tiger.
*Nicholas Lorimer, a politician-turned-think tank thinker, is the IRR's Geopolitics Researcher and is host of the Daily Friend Show. His interests include geopolitics, and history (particularly medieval and ancient history). He is an unashamed Americaphile, whether it be food, culture or film. His other pursuits include video games and armchair critique of action films from the 1980s.
This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission