How to Think About Globalization?

Recent changes have been so swift, complex, and widespread that our old assumptions have become risky roadmaps to navigate new realities. While the world was riveted by the TV coverage of the invasion of US and British soldiers invading Iraq, for example, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was spreading across Asia. Soon it was infecting people in North America, especially Canada, a major destination of passengers coming from Asia. Thus an improbable result of SARS was that a public health crisis in a Chinese province dealt a severe blow to Toronto, whose economy suffered from massive cancellations of passengers afraid to travel there. No expert could have predicted the strange and swift trajectory of this contagion. No expert predicted, either, that the 1998 crash of the Russian ruble would deeply damage the Brazilian economy on a continent with negligible economic links to Russia. That the repression of political opponents by the Saudi government would force them into exile in Afghanistan and that from there they would stage terrorist attacks against New York is yet another example of our strangely interconnected world.

Many of these connections are concrete; poor immigrants in rich countries are sending more money home than ever before, changing the economy and social fabric back home. But many of the connections are also driven by the spread of ideas such as murderous anti-Americanism. And almost all are multifaceted, defying any single avenue of explanation. SARS, for example, was not just a health crisis in China; it was also a transnational economic one.

Many aspects of globalization are here to stay. They are creating new realities at a faster pace than our capacity to understand them. Some have held enormous benefi ts for the poorest people in the world. Others have devastated rich and poor alike. Some are immune to human action or public policy while others should be addressed by governments and indeed by all of us. In general, an open mind can help us make more sense of global changes than can ideological or theoretical conceptions. A predisposition to look for developments that counter common wisdom is the best way to anticipate global trends and understand the larger meaning of events that keep surprising us.