Egypt, Elsewedy review progress on Ain Sokhna phosphate complex    US employment cost index 3.6% up in year to June 2025    Egypt welcomes Canada, Malta's decision to recognise Palestinian state    Pakistan says successfully concluded 'landmark trade deal' with US    Sterling set for sharpest monthly drop since 2022    Egypt, Brazil sign deal to boost pharmaceutical cooperation    Modon Holding posts AED 2.1bn net profit in H1 2025    Egypt's Electricity Ministry says new power cable for Giza area operational    Egypt's Al-Sisi, Italian defence minister discuss Gaza, security cooperation    Egypt's FM discusses Gaza, Nile dam with US senators    Aid airdrops intensify as famine deepens in Gaza amid mounting international criticism    Egypt exports first high-tech potato seeds to Uzbekistan after opening market    Health minister showcases AI's impact on healthcare at Huawei Cloud Summit    On anti-trafficking day, Egypt's PM calls fight a 'moral and humanitarian duty'    Egypt strengthens healthcare partnerships to enhance maternity, multiple sclerosis, and stroke care    Egypt keeps Gaza aid flowing, total tops 533,000 tons: minister    Indian Embassy to launch cultural festival in Assiut, film fest in Cairo    Egyptian aid convoy heads toward Gaza as humanitarian crisis deepens    Culture minister launches national plan to revive film industry, modernise cinematic assets    I won't trade my identity to please market: Douzi    Sisi sends letter to Nigerian president affirming strategic ties    Two militants killed in foiled plot to revive 'Hasm' operations: Interior ministry    Egypt, Somalia discuss closer environmental cooperation    Egypt's EHA, Huawei discuss enhanced digital health    Foreign, housing ministers discuss Egypt's role in African development push    Egypt reveals heritage e-training portal    Three ancient rock-cut tombs discovered in Aswan    Sisi launches new support initiative for families of war, terrorism victims    Egypt expands e-ticketing to 110 heritage sites, adds self-service kiosks at Saqqara    Egypt's Irrigation Minister urges scientific cooperation to tackle water scarcity    Palm Hills Squash Open debuts with 48 international stars, $250,000 prize pool    On Sport to broadcast Pan Arab Golf Championship for Juniors and Ladies in Egypt    Golf Festival in Cairo to mark Arab Golf Federation's 50th anniversary    Germany among EU's priciest labour markets – official data    Paris Olympic gold '24 medals hit record value    A minute of silence for Egyptian sports    Russia says it's in sync with US, China, Pakistan on Taliban    It's a bit frustrating to draw at home: Real Madrid keeper after Villarreal game    Shoukry reviews with Guterres Egypt's efforts to achieve SDGs, promote human rights    Sudan says countries must cooperate on vaccines    Johnson & Johnson: Second shot boosts antibodies and protection against COVID-19    Egypt to tax bloggers, YouTubers    Egypt's FM asserts importance of stability in Libya, holding elections as scheduled    We mustn't lose touch: Muller after Bayern win in Bundesliga    Egypt records 36 new deaths from Covid-19, highest since mid June    Egypt sells $3 bln US-dollar dominated eurobonds    Gamal Hanafy's ceramic exhibition at Gezira Arts Centre is a must go    Italian Institute Director Davide Scalmani presents activities of the Cairo Institute for ITALIANA.IT platform    







Thank you for reporting!
This image will be automatically disabled when it gets reported by several people.



Which globalization will survive?
Published in Daily News Egypt on 12 - 04 - 2009

CAMBRIDGE: The world economy will shrink this year for the first time since 1945, and some economists worry that the current crisis could spell the beginning of the end of globalization. Hard economic times are correlated with protectionism, as each country blames others and protects its domestic jobs. In the 1930s, such "beggar-thy-neighbor policies worsened the situation. Unless political leaders resist such responses, the past could become the future.
Ironically, however, such a grim prospect would not mean the end of globalization, defined as the increase in worldwide networks of interdependence. Globalization has several dimensions, and, though economists all too often portray it and the world economy as being one and the same, other forms of globalization also have significant effects - not all of them benign - on our daily lives.
The oldest form of globalization is environmental. For example, the first smallpox epidemic was recorded in Egypt in 1350 BC. It reached China in 49 AD, Europe after 700, the Americas in 1520, and Australia in l789. Bubonic plague, or the Black Death, originated in Asia, but its spread killed a quarter to a third of Europe's population in the fourteenth century.
Europeans carried diseases to the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that destroyed up to 95 percent of the indigenous population. In 1918, a flu pandemic caused by a bird virus killed some 40 million people around the world, far more than the recently concluded world war. Some scientists today predict a repeat of an avian flu pandemic.
Since 1973, 30 previously unknown infectious diseases have emerged, and other familiar diseases have spread geographically in new, drug-resistant forms. In the 20 years after HIV/AIDS was identified in the 1980s it killed 20 million people and infected another 40 million around the world. Some experts project that that number will double by 2010. The spread of foreign species of flora and fauna to new areas has wiped out native species, and may result in economic losses of several hundred billion dollars per year.
Global climate change will affect the lives of people everywhere. Thousands of scientists from more than 100 countries recently reported that there is new and strong evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities, and average global temperatures in the twenty-first century are projected to increase between 2.5 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit. The result could be more severe variations in climate, with too much water in some regions and not enough in others.
The effects will include stronger storms, hurricanes, and floods, deeper droughts, and more landslides. Rising temperatures have lengthened the freeze-free season in many regions, and glaciers are melting. The rate at which the sea level rose in the last century was 10 times faster than the average rate over the last three millennia.
Then there is military globalization, consisting of networks of interdependence in which force, or the threat of force, is employed. The world wars of the twentieth century are a case in point. The prior era of economic globalization reached its peak in 1914, and was set back by the world wars. But, while global economic integration did not regain its 1914 level until half a century later, military globalization grew as economic globalization shrank.
During the Cold War, the global strategic interdependence between the United States and the Soviet Union was acute and well recognized. Not only did it produce world-straddling alliances, but either side could have used intercontinental missiles to destroy the other within 30 minutes.
This was distinctive not because it was totally new, but because the scale and speed of the potential conflict arising from military interdependence were so enormous. Today, Al-Qaeda and other transnational actors have formed global networks of operatives, challenging conventional approaches to national defense through what has been called "asymmetrical warfare.
Finally, social globalization consists in the spread of peoples, cultures, images, and ideas. Migration is a concrete example. In the nineteenth century, some 80 million people crossed oceans to new homes - far more than in the twentieth century. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, 32 million US residents (11.5 percent of the population) were foreign-born. In addition, some 30 million visitors (students, businesspeople, tourists) enter the country each year.
Ideas are an equally important aspect of social globalization. Technology makes physical mobility easier, but local political reactions against immigrants had been growing even before the current economic crisis.
The danger today is that short-sighted protectionist reactions to the economic crisis could help to choke off the economic globalization that has spread growth and raised hundreds of millions of people out of poverty over the past half-century. But protectionism will not curb the other forms of globalization.
Modern technology means that pathogens travel more easily than in earlier periods. Easy travel plus hard economic times means that immigration rates may accelerate to the point where social friction exceeds general economic benefit. Similarly, hard economic times may worsen relations among governments, as well as domestic conflicts that can lead to violence.
At the same time, transnational terrorists will continue to benefit from modern information technology, such as the Internet. And, while depressed economic activity may slow somewhat the rate of greenhouse-gas build-up in the atmosphere, it will also slow the types of costly programs that governments must enact to address emissions that have already occurred.
So, unless governments cooperate to stimulate their economies and resist protectionism, the world may find that the current economic crisis does not mean the end of globalization, but only the end of the good kind, leaving us with the worst of all worlds.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr.,a professor at Harvard, was recently rated as one of the most influential scholars of the past 20 years by other scholars of international relations. This commentary is published by DAILY NEWS EGYPT in collaboration with Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org).


Clic here to read the story from its source.