The Bottle and the Genie of Globalization

Before I get into the main issues, I’d like to take a short, linguistic aside about the whole “bottle and genie” metaphor.

When you get down to it, it does NOT seem to be the metaphor that proponents of globalization really want to be using. Why not? Because the bottle and genie metaphor as I remember it comes from the old myths of evil djinn being freed from their bottles, whereupon they immediately begin wreaking havoc (they often don’t even grant wishes), and they are usually very difficult to get back into imprisonment in their bottles.

So, using this metaphor to describe globalization is to associate globalization with EVIL djinn, which I am sure is not the intent of the PROPONENTS of globalization.

Also, users of the metaphor tend to also be implying that globalization cannot be put back in its bottle. But in the myths, the evil djinn usually are only difficult to trick back into their bottle – implying that globalization would only be difficult to trick back into its. Which, again, would not seem to be an association that proponents want.

And finally, since the evil djinn are EVIL, everyone WANTS to trick them back into imprisonment in their bottles. That would seem to me to be, most of all, an association that proponents of globalization would want to avoid.

Okay, stepping down from the linguistic soapbox now.

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Over the years, I have seen lots and lots of discussions about globalization, both defending and attacking it. However, I have never seen anyone discussing globalization’s actual Achilles heel. Yes, it has one, and it is a big one. And that is – security.

There is actually a lot of evidence of this. Because, despite many modern reports to the contrary, this is not the first time a global specialized system has been implements. On the contrary, it has been implemented many, many times in the past – going all the way back two thousand years, in fact, to the Roman Empire’s world trade network, spanning Europe and parts of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. And going all the way forward to the British Imperial trade network.

Globalized systems have risen and fallen many, many times, and they would seem to tend to arise during times of general peace in the world.

Actually, I would suggest that they ONLY arise during those times. Global specialized networks (as opposed to just a global trade network) need a kind of absolute peace in order to work. Because of that, it is only during eras where a general peace has lasted for long enough that someone, somewhere, somehow comes to think that the world has reached the “End of History.” Only during periods of belief in the End of History can a specialized system become achievable, or even be seen as desirable.

For those who don’t know, the idea of globalization is that each country in a trade network should specialize in whatever it is “best” at. Or to put it another way, each country should channel all of its wealth and resources into producing those goods and services that it can do better than anyone else, and only those goods and services.

To illustrate: The people of an island nation whose climate and soil is not conducive to producing food, but is conducive to producing tobacco, these people should not be producing their own food; they should be producing only tobacco, selling it, cashing in, and buying all of their food from another country whose climate and soil IS conducive to producing food, while using the remainder of their income from tobacco sales to purchase other needs and to make themselves wealthy.

Or, to put it into modern terns: Japan should specialize in producing technology, South America should specialize in farming, Mexico should specialize in industriousness, China should concentrate on maintaining a cheap labor force, and the US should specialize in finance. (Or you can give it the opposite spin, if you want: Japan should specialize in making nifty electronic gizmos, South America should specialize in large corporate cash cropping, Mexico should specialize in training lots of service people, China should concentrate on making lots of babies, and the US should concentrate on gouging a piece out of everyone else every step of the way.)

Why specialize? Because a lot of money can be made really fast with specialization – as long as the peace is maintained. And it MUST be maintained, because otherwise what it makes really fast is hunger and deprivation.

Generally, I have seen globalization cited for the way those of its members specialized in resources (or the banana republics or the cash croppers, or whatever you want to call them) seem to lose the ability to adapt to ANY fluctuation in the marketplace, or the heavy market inequities it constantly engenders, or the way it spreads the lowest common denominator of immorality of every country involved throughout the network, and the social strain that all of these things impose on every culture involved in the network.

Security is never even mentioned. But security is the greatest difficulty and hazard of sustaining a global specialized trade network. Indeed, it is the thing that most often takes them down.

The security issue is immense. A global specialized network cannot bear to have instability in any of the countries involved in the network. A global specialized network cannot bear to have any instability in the countries next to any of the countries involved in the network. A global specialized network cannot bear to have any instability in the countries next to any of the major trade routes involved in the network.

And, mind you, that is any instability – whether economic, social, political, cultural, combative, revolutionary, or piratical.

Why? Because, if any instability happens anywhere that touches upon the system, (through disrupted trade routes, spreading tensions, accidents, displaced markets, or any number of other negative possibilities), it can remove a member’s ability to provide its specialization to the network, and, in such a specialized system, that immediately takes the entire network down.

If instability affects the country supplying – say – food, the entire network loses access to food, and starves. If instability affects the country providing manufactured goods, then the entire network loses access to the tools it needs to continue to provide things like food and shelter, and people starve. If instability affects the country financing everything, then everyone loses access to the money they were using to conduct the entire network, everything stops moving, and people starve.

Which is why so many resources must be used to defend the stability of any globalized network.

You can’t have any war (and here we’re talking about real war, not brush wars or police actions or putting down rebellions, or whatever name they’re currently going by), you can’t have any revolutions, you can’t even have any real democracy - because you never know when those pinkos might decide to nationalize something that is a necessity of the network.

And that is why the network must involve itself in forcing stability in every region that the network exists in. It must in order to maintain not just its success, but its own existence. The network must enforce continuity of trade, continuity of social systems, continuity of leadership, and continuity of agreements in all of its members and all of the regions of its members.

Thus: police actions, elections interference, corruptive bribings, trade embargoes, revolution fostering, and assassinations galore. Those things are the price of maintaining the global specialized system.

For as long as the global system is in place, the network must continuously involve itself in the politics, culture, and trade of every region of the world.

That is why global specialized networks tend to arise in eras of relative peace – it is the only time when the world has been stable enough for long enough that such a specialized, easily toppled system can seem to be a good idea. Only when there is that kind of peace for long enough that people start to believe that this is how it will always be will someone, somewhere, somehow think it is an excellent idea to necessary goods and services produced only in one place that must then be transported across immense distances.

Lots of things can take such an easily toppled system, but the thing that takes most of them down is war. Real war.

Global specialized networks are highly vulnerable to war, because necessary goods have to be transported against such long distances and have to pass through so many hands, giving an attacker an infinite number of points of attack. It is challenging to protect even one long supply line that involves only one group; it is impossible to protect a network of such long lines that involves many, many groups of people. So, war takes a network down hard, and it takes it down fast. As Europe can well attest after the World Wars.

Which is why any such a network has to maintain a stranglehold on the entire world – in order to prevent such a war (or any other major threat) from ever happening, and because the End of History periods never last, and the specialized network that arose during it becomes harder and harder to protect without such a stranglehold.

Inevitably, then, even if the network is not Imperial at its beginning, it becomes Imperial in order to maintain not just the gobs of wealth it is generating, but its very existence. To do otherwise would invite starvation and collapse.

That is, without a great deal of civic planning to re-assemble a more self-sufficient economy, it does.

So, we have the globalization of the modern era – an aggressive, reckless, overly-simplistic system that generates a lot of money really fast while destroying the sovereignty, security, and safety of every country in the world. It is a system of people who look only to the NOW, never to the future. ie It is a system reckless, arrogant fools.