Chapter One
Tourist with an Attitude
At the wonderful science museum in Barcelona, I saw an exhibit that beautifully illustrated "chaos." A nonlinear version of a pendulum was set up so that the visitor could hold the bob and start out in a chosen position and with a chosen velocity. One could then watch the subsequent motion, which was also recorded with a pen on a sheet of paper. The visitor was then invited to seize the bob again and try to imitate exactly the previous initial position and velocity. No matter how carefully that was done, the subsequent motion was quite different from what it was the first time ... I asked the museum director what the two men were doing who were standing in a corner watching us. He replied, "Oh, those are two Dutchmen waiting to take away the `chaos.'" Apparently, the exhibit was about to be dismantled and taken to Amsterdam. But I have wondered ever since whether the services of those two Dutchmen would not be in great demand across the globe, by organizations that wanted their chaos taken away.
—Murray Gell-Mann, author of The Quark and the Jaguar
What was it that Forrest Gump's mama liked to say? Life is like abox of chocolates: you never know what you’re going to get inside.For me, an inveterate traveler and foreign correspondent,life is like room service—you never know what you're going to find outsideyour door.
Take for instance the evening of December 31, 1994, when I beganmy assignment as the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times. Istarted the column by writing from Tokyo, and when I arrived at theOkura Hotel after a long transpacific flight, I called room service withone simple request: "Could you please send me up four oranges." I amaddicted to citrus and I needed a fix. It seemed to me a simple enoughorder when I telephoned it in, and the person on the other end seemedto understand. About twenty minutes later there was a knock at my door.A room service waiter was standing there in his perfectly creased uniform.In front of him was a cart covered by a starched white tablecloth.On the tablecloth were four tall glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice,each glass set regally in a small silver bowl of ice.
"No, no," I said to the waiter, "I want oranges, oranges—not orangejuice." I then pretended to bite into something like an orange.
"Ahhhh," the waiter said, nodding his head. "O-ranges, o-ranges."
I retreated into my room and went back to work. Twenty minutes laterthere was another knock at my door. Same waiter. Same linen-coveredroom service trolley. But this time, on it were four plates and on each platewas an orange that had been peeled and diced into perfect little sectionsthat were fanned out on a plate like sushi, as only the Japanese can do.
"No, no," I said, shaking my head again. "I want the whole orange." Imade a ball shape with my hands. "I want to keep them in my room andeat them for snacks. I can't eat four oranges all cut up like that. I can'tstore them in my mini-bar. I want the whole orange."
Again, I did my best exaggerated imitation of someone eating an orange.
"Ahhhh," the water said, nodding his head. "O-range, o-range. Youwant whole o-range."
Another twenty minutes went by. Again there was a knock on my door.Same waiter. Same trolley, only this time he had four bright oranges,each one on its own dinner plate, with a fork, knife and linen napkin nextto it. That was progress.
"That's right," I said, signing the bill. "That's just what I wanted."
As he left the room, I looked down at the room service bill. The fouroranges were $22. How am I going to explain that to my publisher?
But my citrus adventures were not over. Two weeks later I was inHanoi, having dinner by myself in the dining room of the MetropoleHotel. It was the tangerine season in Vietnam, and vendors were sellingpyramids of the most delicious, bright orange tangerines on every streetcorner. Each morning I had a few tangerines for breakfast. When thewaiter came to get my dessert order I told him all I wanted was a tangerine.
He went away and came back a few minutes later.
"Sorry," he said, "no tangerines."
"But how can that be?" I asked in exasperation. "You have a table fullof them at breakfast every morning! Surely there must be a tangerinesomewhere back in the kitchen?"
"Sorry." He shook his head. "Maybe you like watermelon?"
"O.K.," I said, "bring me some watermelon."
Five minutes later the waiter returned with a plate bearing threepeeled tangerines on it.
"I found the tangerines," he said. "No watermelon."
Had I known then what I know now I would have taken it all as a harbinger.For I too would find a lot of things on my plate and outside mydoor that I wasn't planning to find as I traveled the globe for theTimes.
Being the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times isactually the best job in the world. I mean, someone has to have the best job,right? Well, I've got it. The reason it is such a great job is that I get to bea tourist with an attitude. I get to go anywhere, anytime, and have attitudesabout what I see and hear. But the question for me as I embarked on thisodyssey was: Which attitudes? What would be the lens, the perspective,the organizing system—the superstory—through which I would look atthe world, make sense of events, prioritize them, opine upon them andhelp readers understand them?
In some ways my predecessors had it a little easier. They each had avery obvious superstory and international system in place when they werewriting. I am the fifth foreign affairs columnist in the history of theTimes. "Foreign Affairs" is actually the paper's oldest column. It wasbegun in 1937 by a remarkable woman, Anne O'Hare McCormick, and was originallycalled "In Europe," because in those days, "in Europe" was foreignaffairs for most Americans, and it seemed perfectly natural that the paper'sone overseas columnist would be located on the European continent.Mrs. McCormick's 1954 obituary in the Times said she got her start inforeign reporting "as the wife of Mr. McCormick, a Dayton engineer whomshe accompanied on frequent buying trips to Europe." (New York Timesobits have become considerably more politically correct since then.) Theinternational system which she covered was the disintegration ofbalance-of-power Versailles Europe and the beginnings of World War II.
As America emerged from World War II, standing astride the world asthe preeminent superpower, with global responsibilities and engaged in aglobal power struggle with the Soviet Union, the title of the columnchanged in 1954 to "Foreign Affairs." Suddenly the whole world wasAmerica's playing field and the whole world mattered, because every cornerwas being contested with the Soviet Union. The Cold War internationalsystem, with its competition for influence and supremacy betweenthe capitalist West and the communist East, between Washington,Moscow and Beijing, became the superstory within which the next threeforeign affairs columnists organized their opinions.
By the time I started the column at the beginning of 1995, though,the Cold War was over. The Berlin Wall had crumbled and the SovietUnion was history. I had the good fortune to witness, in the Kremlin, oneof the last gasps of the Soviet Union. The day was December 16, 1991.Secretary of State James A. Baker III was visiting Moscow, just as BorisYeltsin was easing Mikhail Gorbachev out of power. Whenever Bakerhad met Gorbachev previously, they had held their talks in the Kremlin'sgold-gilded St. Catherine Hall. There was always a very orchestratedentry scene for the press. Mr. Baker and his entourage would wait behindtwo huge wooden double doors on one end of the long Kremlin hall,with Gorbachev and his team behind the doors on the other end. Andthen, by some signal, the doors would simultaneously open and eachman would stride out and they would shake hands in front of the camerasin the middle of the room. Well, on this day Baker arrived for his meetingat the appointed hour, the doors swung open and Boris Yeltsin walkedout, instead of Gorbachev. Guess who's coming to dinner! "Welcome toRussian soil and this Russian building," Yeltsin said to Baker. Baker didmeet Gorbachev later in the day, but it was clear that power had shifted.We State Department reporters who were there to chronicle the eventended up spending that whole day in the Kremlin. It snowed heavilywhile we were inside, and when we finally walked out after sunset wefound the Kremlin grounds covered in a white snow blanket. As wetrudged to the Kremlin's Spassky Gate, our shoes crunching fresh tracksin the snow, I noticed that the red Soviet hammer and sickle was still flyingatop the Kremlin flagpole, illuminated by a spotlight as it had beenfor some seventy years. I said to myself, "That is probably the last time I'llever see that flag flying there." And, indeed, in a few weeks it was gone,and with it went the Cold War system and superstory.
But what wasn't clear to me as I embarked upon my column assignmenta few years later was what had replaced the Cold War system as thedominant organizing framework for international affairs. So I actuallybegan my column as a tourist without an attitude—just an open mind.For several years, I, like everyone else, just referred to "the post-ColdWar world." We knew some new system was aborning that constituted adifferent framework for international relations, but we couldn't definewhat it was, so we defined it by what it wasn't. It wasn't the Cold War. Sowe called it the post-Cold War world.
The more I traveled, though, the more it became apparent to me thatthis system had its own logic and deserved its own name: "globalization."Globalization is not a phenomenon. It is not just some passingtrend. Today it is the overarching international system shaping the domesticpolitics and foreign relations of virtually every country, and weneed to understand it as such.
When I speak of the "the Cold War system" and "the globalizationsystem," what do I mean?
I mean that, as an international system, the Cold War had its ownstructure of power: the balance between the United States and theU.S.S.R. The Cold War had its own rules: in foreign affairs, neither superpowerwould encroach on the other's sphere of influence; in economics,less developed countries would focus on nurturing their ownnational industries, developing countries on export-led growth, communistcountries on autarky and Western economies on regulated trade.The Cold War had its own dominant ideas: the clash between communismand capitalism, as well as detente, nonalignment and perestroika.The Cold War had its own demographic trends: the movement of peoplesfrom east to west was largely frozen by the Iron Curtain, but themovement from south to north was a more steady flow. The Cold Warhad its own perspective on the globe: the world was a space divided intothe communist camp, the Western camp, and the neutral camp, andeveryone's country was in one of them. The Cold War had its own definingtechnologies: nuclear weapons and the second Industrial Revolutionwere dominant, but for many people in developing countries the hammerand sickle were still relevant tools. The Cold War had its own definingmeasurement: the throw weight of nuclear missiles. And lastly, theCold War had its own defining anxiety: nuclear annihilation. Whentaken all together the elements of this Cold War system influenced thedomestic politics and foreign relations of virtually every country in theworld. The Cold War system didn't shape everything, but it shaped manythings.
Today's era of globalization, which replaced the Cold War, is a similarinternational system, with its own unique attributes.
To begin with, the globalization system, unlike the Cold War system,is not static, but a dynamic ongoing process: globalization involves theinexorable integration of markets, nation-states and technologies to adegree never witnessed before—in a way that is enabling individuals,corporations and nation-states to reach around the world farther, faster,deeper and cheaper than ever before, and in a way that is also producinga powerful backlash from those brutalized or left behind by this new system.
The driving idea behind globalization is free-market capitalism—themore you let market forces rule and the more you open your economy tofree trade and competition, the more efficient and flourishing your economywill be. Globalization means the spread of free-market capitalism tovirtually every country in the world. Globalization also has its own set ofeconomic rules—rules that revolve around opening, deregulating and privatizingyour economy.
Unlike the Cold War system, globalization has its own dominant culture,which is why it tends to be homogenizing. In previous eras this sortof cultural homogenization happened on a regional scale—the Hellenizationof the Near East and the Mediterranean world under theGreeks, the Turkification of Central Asia, North Africa, Europe and theMiddle East by the Ottomans, or the Russification of Eastern and CentralEurope and parts of Eurasia under the Soviets. Culturally speaking,globalization is largely, though not entirely, the spread ofAmericanization—from Big Macs to iMacs to Mickey Mouse—on a global scale.
Globalization has its own defining technologies: computerization,miniaturization, digitization, satellite communications, fiber optics andthe Internet. And these technologies helped to create the defining perspectiveof globalization. If the defining perspective of the Cold Warworld was "division," the defining perspective of globalization is"integration." The symbol of the Cold War system was a wall, which dividedeveryone. The symbol of the globalization system is a World Wide Web,which unites everyone. The defining document of the Cold War systemwas "The Treaty." The defining document of the globalization system is"The Deal."
Once a country makes the leap into the system of globalization, itselites begin to internalize this perspective of integration, and always try tolocate themselves in a global context. I was visiting Amman, Jordan, inthe summer of 1998 and having coffee at the Inter-Continental Hotelwith my friend Rami Khouri, the leading political columnist in Jordan.We sat down and I asked him what was new. The first thing he said to mewas: "Jordan was just added to CNN's worldwide weather highlights."What Rami was saying was that it is important for Jordan to know thatthose institutions which think globally believe it is now worth knowingwhat the weather is like in Amman. It makes Jordanians feel more importantand holds out the hope that they will be enriched by having moretourists or global investors visiting. The day after seeing Rami I happenedto go to Israel and meet with Jacob Frenkel, governor of Israel's CentralBank and a University of Chicago-trained economist. Frenkel remarkedthat he too was going through a perspective change: "Before, when wetalked about macroeconomics, we started by looking at the local markets,local financial system and the interrelationship between them, and then,as an afterthought, we looked at the international economy. There was afeeling that what we do is primarily our own business and then there aresome outlets where we will sell abroad. Now we reverse the perspective.Let's not ask what markets we should export to, after having decided whatto produce; rather let's first study the global framework within which weoperate and then decide what to produce. It changes your whole perspective."
While the defining measurement of the Cold War was weight—particularlythe throw weight of missiles—the defining measurement of theglobalization system is speed—speed of commerce, travel, communicationand innovation. The Cold War was about Einstein's mass-energyequation, e = mc². Globalization is about Moore's law, which states thatthe computing power of silicon chips will double every eighteen totwenty-four months. In the Cold War, the most frequently asked questionwas: "How big is your missile?" In globalization, the most frequentlyasked question is: "How fast is your modem?"
If the defining economists of the Cold War system were Karl Marxand John Maynard Keynes, who each in his own way wanted to tamecapitalism, the defining economists of the globalization system areJoseph Schumpeter and former Intel CEO Andy Grove, who prefer tounleash capitalism. Schumpeter, a former Austrian Minister of Financeand Harvard Business School professor, expressed the view in his classicwork Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy that the essence of capitalismis the process of "creative destruction"—the perpetual cycle of destroyingthe old and less efficient product or service and replacing itwith new, more efficient ones. Andy Grove took Schumpeter's insightthat "only the paranoid survive" for the title of his book on life in SiliconValley, and made it in many ways the business model of globalizationcapitalism. Grove helped to popularize the view that dramatic,industry-transforming innovations are taking place today faster and faster.Thanks to these technological breakthroughs, the speed by which your latestinvention can be made obsolete or turned into a commodity is now lightningquick. Therefore, only the paranoid, only those who are constantlylooking over their shoulders to see who is creating something new thatwill destroy them and then staying just one step ahead of them, will survive.Those countries that are most willing to let capitalism quickly destroyinefficient companies, so that money can be freed up and directedto more innovative ones, will thrive in the era of globalization. Thosewhich rely on their governments to protect them from such creative destructionwill fall behind in this era.
James Surowiecki, the business columnist for Slate magazine,reviewing Grove's book, neatly summarized what Schumpeter and Grove havein common, which is the essence of globalization economics. It is the notionthat: "Innovation replaces tradition. The present—or perhaps thefuture—replaces the past. Nothing matters so much as what will come next,and what will come next can only arrive if what is here now gets overturned.While this makes the system a terrific place for innovation, itmakes it a difficult place to live, since most people prefer some measure ofsecurity about the future to a life lived in almost constant uncertainty ...We are not forced to re-create our relationships with those closest to us ona regular basis. And yet that's precisely what Schumpeter, and Grove afterhim, suggest is necessary to prosper [today]."
Indeed, if the Cold War were a sport, I would be sumo wrestling, saysJohns Hopkins University foreign affairs professor Michael Mandelbaum."It would be two big fat guys in a ring, with all sorts of posturing and ritualsand stomping of feet, but actually very little contact, until the end ofthe match, when there is a brief moment of shoving and the loser getspushed out of the ring, but nobody gets killed."
By contrast, if globalization were a sport, it would be the 100-meterdash, over and over and over. And no matter how many times you win,you have to race again the next day. And if you lose by just one-hundredthof a second it can be as if you lost by an hour. (Just ask Frenchmultinationals. In 1999, French labor laws were changed,requiring—requiring—-every employer to implement a four-hour reductionin the legal workweek, from 39 hours to 35 hours, with no cut in pay. ManyFrench firms were fighting the move because of the impact it would have on theirproductivity in a global market. Henri Thierry, human resources directorfor Thomson-CSF Communications, a high-tech firm in the suburbs ofParis, told The Washington Post: "We are in a worldwide competition. Ifwe lose one point of productivity, we lose orders. If we're obliged to go to35 hours it would be like requiring French athletes to run the 100 meterswearing flippers. They wouldn't have much of a chance winning amedal.")
To paraphrase German political theorist Carl Schmitt, the Cold Warwas a world of "friends" and "enemies." The globalization world, by contrast,tends to turn all friends and enemies into "competitors."
If the defining anxiety of the Cold War was fear of annihilation froman enemy you knew all too well in a world struggle that was fixed and stable,the defining anxiety in globalization is fear of rapid change from anenemy you can't see, touch or feel—a sense that your job, community orworkplace can be changed at any moment by anonymous economic andtechnological forces that are anything but stable.
In the Cold War we reached for the hot line between the WhiteHouse and the Kremlin—a symbol that we were all divided but at leastsomeone, the two superpowers, was in charge. In the era of globalizationwe reach for the Internet—a symbol that we are all connected but nobodyis in charge. The defining defense system of the Cold War wasradar—to expose the threats coming from the other side of the wall. Thedefining defense system of the globalization era is the X-ray machine—toexpose the threats coming from within.
Globalization also has its own demographic pattern—a rapid accelerationof the movement of people from rural areas and agriculturallifestyles to urban areas and urban lifestyles more intimately linked withglobal fashion, food, markets and entertainment trends.
Last, and most important, globalization has its own defining structureof power, which is much more complex than the Cold War structure. TheGold War system was built exclusively around nation-states, and it was balancedat the center by two superpowers: the United States and the SovietUnion.
The globalization system, by contrast, is built around three balances,which overlap and affect one another. The first is the traditional balancebetween nation-states. In the globalization system, the United States isnow the sole and dominant superpower and all other nations are subordinateto it to one degree or another. The balance of power between theUnited States and the other states still matters for the stability of thissystem. And it can still explain a lot of the news you read on the front page ofthe papers, whether it is the containment of Iraq in the Middle East orthe expansion of NATO against Russia in Central Europe.
The second balance in the globalization system is between nation-statesand global markets. These global markets are made up of millions ofinvestors moving money around the world with the click of a mouse. I callthem "the Electronic Herd," and this herd gathers in key global financialcenters, such as Wall Street, Hong Kong, London and Frankfurt, which Icall "the Supermarkets." The attitudes and actions of the Electronic Herdand the Supermarkets can have a huge impact on nation-states today, evento the point of triggering the downfall of governments. You will not understandthe front page of newspapers today—whether it is the story of thetoppling of Suharto in Indonesia, the internal collapse in Russia or themonetary policy of the United States—unless you bring the Supermarketsinto your analysis.
The United States can destroy you by dropping bombs and the Supermarketscan destroy you by downgrading your bonds. The United Statesis the dominant player in maintaining the globalization gameboard, butit is not alone in influencing the moves on that gameboard. This globalizationgameboard today is a lot like a Ouija board—sometimes piecesare moved around by the obvious hand of the superpower, and sometimesthey are moved around by hidden hands of the Supermarkets.
The third balance that you have to pay attention to in the globalizationsystem—the one that is really the newest of all—is the balance betweenindividuals and nation-states. Because globalization has broughtdown many of the walls that limited the movement and reach of people,and because it has simultaneously wired the world into networks, it givesmore power to individuals to influence both markets and nation-statesthan at any time in history. So you have today not only a superpower, notonly Supermarkets, but, as I will also demonstrate later in the book, youhave Super-empowered individuals. Some of these Super-empowered individualsare quite angry, some of them quite wonderful—but all of themare now able to act directly on the world stage without the traditionalmediation of governments, corporations or any other public or privateinstitutions.
Without the knowledge of the U.S. government, Long-Term CapitalManagement—a few guys in Greenwich, Connecticut—amassed morefinancial bets around the world than all the foreign reserves of China.Osama bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire with his own global network, declaredwar on the United States in the late 1990s, and the U.S. Air Forcehad to launch a cruise missile attack on him as though he were anothernation-state. We fired cruise missiles at an individual! Jody Williams wonthe Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her contribution to the internationalban on landmines. She achieved that ban not only without much governmenthelp, but in the face of opposition from the Big Five majorpowers. And what did she say was her secret weapon for organizing 1,000different human rights and arms control groups on six continents? "E-mail."
Nation-states, and the American superpower in particular, are stillhugely important today, but so too now are Supermarkets and Super-empoweredindividuals. You will never understand the globalization system,or the front page of the morning paper, unless you see it as a complexinteraction between all three of these actors: states bumping upagainst states, states bumping up against Supermarkets, and Supermarketsand states bumping up against Super-empowered individuals.
Continues...
Excerpted from The Lexus and the Olive Treeby Thomas L. Friedman Copyright © 2000 by Thomas L. Friedman. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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