Globalization and Interdependence

Lsn 20

Origins of Global Interdependence

• People had long interacted with each other based on established trade routes such as the Silk Roads and the trans-Sahara caravan routes

• In the 1400s the process was accelerated when European mariners began exploring sea routes to the markets in Asia– The result were globe-girdling networks that supported cross-

cultural interactions much more systematic and intense than those of early years

• By 1500 peoples of the world had established intricate transportation networks that supported travel, communication, and exchange between societies

The Rise of the West

• Before 1500, contact between people of the eastern hemisphere, western hemisphere, and Oceania had only sporadic contact with each other

• From 1500 to 1800, networks linked all the world’s religions and peoples

• From 1800 to the present, national states, heavy industry, powerful weapons, and efficient technologies of transportation and communication enabled “the West” to achieve political and economic dominance in the world

The Change in Scope of Globalization

• The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War abruptly opened up possibilities for trans-global connections that had previously been limited

• Globalization is the increasing interconnectedness of all parts of the world in all areas, most notably communication, commerce, culture, and politics

• It is welcomed by some and vilified by others

Interdependence

• The interrelatedness of national societies, which are in varying degrees sensitive and vulnerable to each other’s policies

• Refers to a condition or state of affairs characterized by reciprocal effects among countries or actors in different countries

• It can increase or it can decline

Interdependence Example: China, USSR, North Vietnam, and US

• In 1971 the US was becoming increasingly frustrated with the slow progress of peace talks with the North Vietnamese

• President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger sought to exploit the strained Sino-Soviet relations by making plans to visit both countries in hopes of dissuading them from continuing to provide support for North Vietnam

• This new development greatly concerned the North Vietnamese and motivated them to launch a massive conventional assault (the Easter Offensive) to try to win the war on the battlefield and therefore negate any gains that the US made in its diplomatic endeavor

Globalization

• Unlike interdependence which can increase or decrease, the implication of globalization is that it is increasing

• Thomas Friedman argues that contemporary globalization goes “farther, faster, deeper, and cheaper”

• Others explain contemporary globalization as having “thickened”

Thickened Globalization

• Increased density of networks

• Increased “institutional velocity”

• Increased transnational participation

Increased density of networks

• The “network effect” refers to a situation where something becomes more valuable or important the more people use it (like the Internet)

• As globalization has thickened, systemic relationships among different networks have become more important and different relationships of interdependence intersect more deeply at more points

Increased density of networks: EUFOR

• The European Union began as a political and economic union in 1993

• After NATO intervened in the Kosovo crisis in 1999, it was decided that “the Union must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them, and the readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises without prejudice to actions by NATO”

• In 2004 when SFOR ended its mission in Bosnia, EUFOR picked it up with a force of 7,000 troops

Institutional Velocity

• How rapidly a system and the units within it change• The critical factor in increasing institutional velocity has

been the reduced cost of communicating– Between 1930 and 1990 the cost of a three minute

phone call from New York to London fell from $244.65 to $3.32

– By 2000, the Internet made global communication virtually free

• Markets react more quickly than before because information diffuses so much more quickly and huge sums of capital can be moved at a moment’s notice

Institutional Velocity Example: The News Cycle

• 1938: the first regular broadcast of daily news began on radio, with the World Today program on CBS for 15 minutes every evening,

• 1948: the CBS TV News began • 1963: CBS Evening News

expanded from 15 to 30 minutes, followed shortly by NBC, and then by ABC in 1967

• 1968: CBS began the 60 Minutes news magazine/documentary weekly show

CBS News correspondent Eric

Sevareid, 1955

Institutional Velocity Example: The News Cycle

• 1980: Cable News Network (CNN) became the world's first 24-hour cable television news channel

• 1996: MSNBC and Fox News Channel began 24-hour news

• Collectively, expanded television news coverage creates “the CNN effect” which affects political, diplomatic, and military decision making on a global level

Increased Transnational Participation

• Reduced costs of communications have increased the number of participating actors and increased the relevance of “complex interdependence”– Complex interdependence is a condition in which

economic, environmental, and social complex transnational connections (interdependencies) between states and societies are increasing while the use of military force and power balancing are decreasing

– The decline of military force as a policy tool and the increase in economic and other forms of interdependence should increase the probability of cooperation among states

Increased Transnational Participation

• While traditional power remains important, cheaper communications have vastly increased the number and variety of participants

• An example would be nongovernmental organizations

Increased Transnational Participation Example: The Ottawa

Convention• Throughout the 1990s,

concern mounted over the use of land mines

• Land mines left in place after fighting stopped in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, Bosnia, and elsewhere were continuing to claim victims, many of which were children

Cambodia land mine victim

Increased Transnational Participation Example: The Ottawa

Convention• A new NGO, the International

Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) acted as the “master NGO” for a group of over 1,000 NGOs from more than 60 countries

• A small core group of states, led by Canada, provided the necessary element of state leadership– Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd

Axworthy told the delegates in Ottawa the goal was to have a treaty in 15 months Lloyd Axworthy

Increased Transnational Participation Example: The Ottawa

Convention• The NGOs waged what

Axworthy called “the mobilization of shame” using faxes, email, cell phones, and displays to strengthen their message and ridicule opposition

• The US was left on the sidelines and by the time it recovered, the momentum was strongly with the NGOs

American Jody Williams and the ICBL shared the 1997 Nobel

Peace Prize for their efforts to ban anti-personnel land mines

Practical Exercise

Different Perspectives of Globalization

Globalization: The Pro Argument

• The global economy delivers markets that operate with maximum efficiency

• Globalization is the only way to bring prosperity to the developing world

• Globalization is inevitable and should be embraced

Globalization: The Con Argument

• The global economy is an untamed juggernaut that rewards the few and impoverishes the many

• Globalization is neither inevitable or desirable• It diminishes the sovereignty of local and

national governments and transfers the power to shape economic and political destinies to transnational corporations and global institutions

• It is responsible for the destruction of the environment, the widening gap between rich and poor societies, and the worldwide homogenization of local, diverse, and indigenous cultures

Technology

• “… Advances in technology just increase our ability to do things, which may be either for the better or for the worse. All of our current problems are unintended negative consequences of our existing technology.”– Jared Diamond, Collapse, 505

Conflict

• “The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural…. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”– Samuel Huntington, Clash, 1

West vs the Rest

• “The central axis of world politics is likely to be… the conflict between ‘the West and the Rest’ and the responses of non-Western civilizations to Western power and values.”– Samuel Huntington, Clash, 11

Anti-Americanism

• “Throwing sand into the gears of globalization is seen as a way to spit on America’s hegemony, if not to limit the exercise of it in the political, cultural, and economic domains.”– Jagdish Bagwati, Defense, 27

Western Dominance

• “…. The West has driven the globalization agenda, ensuring that it garners a disproportionate share of the benefits, at the expense of the developing world.”– Joseph Stiglitz, Discontents, 7

Yali’s Question

• “”Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?” – Jared Diamond, Guns, 14

The Environmental Explanation

• “History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among people’s environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves.”– Jared Diamond, Guns, 25

Eurocentric Explanation

• “In a world of relativistic values and moral equality, the very idea of a West-centered (Eurocentric) global history is denounced as arrogant and oppressive. It is intended, we are told, ‘to justify Western dominance over the East by pointing out European superiority.’ What we should have instead is a multicultural, globalist, egalitarian history that tells something (preferably something good) about everybody. The European contribution– no more or less the invention of and definition of modernity– should be seen as accidental or to use the modish word, contingent.”– David Landes, Wealth, 513-514

McDonaldization

• “…. America’s enormous cultural vitality and technological creativity, combined with hegemonic status in world politics, make her a net exporter of culture, giving her therefore no sense of threat from that direction either: it is her culture that spreads. But this spread of American culture threatens others to whom it goes.”– Jagdish Bagwati, Defense, 120

Greed

• “Globalization has little to do with people or progress and everything to do with money.”– Ignacio Ramonet, Debate, 118

Haves and Have-nots

• “A growing divide between the haves and the have-nots has left increasing numbers in the Third World in dire poverty, living on less than a dollar a day.”– Joseph Stiglitz, Discontents, 5

Different Realities

• “People in the West may regard low-paying jobs at Nike as exploitation, but for many people in the developing world, working in a factory is a far better option than staying down on the farm and growing rice.”– Joseph Stiglitz, Discontents, 4

Global Institutions

• “…. The current system run by the IMF [International Monetary Fund] is one of taxation without representation.”– Joseph Stiglitz, Discontents, 20

Perspective

• “…. From one’s luxury hotel, one can callously impose policies about which one would think twice if one knew the people whose lives one was destroying.”– Joseph Stiglitz, Discontents, 24

The World is Flat

• “The world is flat… the global competitive playing field was being leveled. The world was being flattened.”– Thomas Friedman, Flat, 7-8

Opportunity

• “Globalization has reduced the sense of isolation felt in much of the developing world and has given many people in the developing countries access to knowledge well beyond the reach of even the wealthiest in any country a century ago.”

Joseph Stigltiz, Discontents, 4

Debate: Is globalization good or bad?

• Global inequality

• Free trade

• Communications technology

• Power

• Culture

Why is there global inequality,and is it getting worse?

• Pro: Globalization opens up new opportunities for developing countries, and only those countries who have not embraced world trade have suffered.

• Con: Globalization has made the rich, richer and the poor, poorer.

What are the costs and the benefits of free trade?

• Pro: Free trade reduces prices for consumers and creates jobs in developing countries.

• Con: Free trade has primarily meant that global corporations now are able to exploit foreign markets in terms of cheaper labor, low worker protections, and looser environmental regulations. In the US, this has cost workers their jobs as production moves overseas.

What is the role of the internetand communications technology in

globalization?

• Pro: The internet ensures everyone has access to information.

• Con: The predominance of English on the internet threatens other languages and cultures, and transnational corporations have made the internet a tool for disseminating their marketing information to the global economy.

Is globalization shifting power from nation states to undemocratic organizations?

• Pro: Nation states will always be the center of the international system because they control territory and military power. International governmental organizations are made up of individual nation states so the nation state is in fact represented.

• Con: Under globalization, international organizations such as the World Trade Organization and NGOs have increased in power at the expense of nation states. Some global corporations have greater assets than the GDPs of some nations. These powerful organizations are not democratically elected and make decisions behind closed doors.

How does globalization affect culture? Is it ‘Americanization’?

• Pro: There is no way a world of over 6 billion people can become a monoculture. In fact, some forces of globalization such as the internet can be used to project traditional cultures in a way previously impossible.

• Con: America dominates the world economy to such an extent that mass distribution of its products have negatively impacted global cultural diversity.

Next

• Student Article Presentations