Globalisation makes way for culture wars

I’m from a fortunate generation. I can remember a time — about a quarter-century ago — when the world seemed to be coming together. The great Cold War contest between communism and capitalism appeared to be over. Democracy was still spreading. Nations were becoming more economically interdependent. The internet seemed ready to foster worldwide communications. It seemed as if there would be a global convergence around a set of universal values — freedom, equality, personal dignity, pluralism, human rights. We called this process of convergence globalisation. It was an economic and a technological process — about growing trade and investment between nations and the spread of technologies. But globalisation was also a political, social and moral process.

In the 1990s, the British sociologist Anthony Giddens argued that globalisation is “a shift in our very life circumstances. It is the way we now live.” It involved “the intensification of worldwide social relations.” Globalisation was about the integration of world-views, products, ideas and culture. This fit in with an academic theory called Modernisation Theory. The idea was that as nations developed, they would become more like the already modernised West. It was sometimes assumed that nations would admire the success of the Western democracies and seek to imitate; that as people “modernised,” they would become more bourgeois, consumerist, peaceful; that as societies modernised, they’d become more secular; that they would be more driven by the desire to make money than to conquer others; they would be more driven by the desire to settle down into suburban homes than by the fanatical ideologies or the sort of hunger for prestige and conquest that had doomed humanity to centuries of war.

This was an optimistic vision of how history would evolve. Unfortunately, this vision does not describe today’s world. The world is not converging anymore; it’s diverging. The process of globalisation has slowed and, in some cases, even kicked into reverse. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine highlights these trends. While Ukraine’s brave fight against authoritarian aggression is an inspiration in the West, much of the world remains unmoved, even sympathetic to Vladimir Putin.

The Economist reports that between 2008 and 2019, world trade, relative to global GDP, fell by about five percentage points. There has been a slew of new tariffs and other barriers. Immigration flows have slowed. Global flows of long-term investment fell by half between 2016 and 2019. The causes of this deglobalisation are broad and deep. The 2008 financial crisis delegitimised global capitalism for many. China has apparently demonstrated that mercantilism can be an effective economic strategy. All manner of anti-globalisation movements have arisen: those of the Brexiteers, xenophobic nationalists, Trumpian populists, the anti-globalist left. There’s just a lot more global conflict. Trade, travel and even communication across political blocs have become more morally, politically and economically fraught.

Hundreds of companies have withdrawn from Russia, many Western consumers don’t want trade with China because of accusations of forced labour and genocide, many Western CEOs are rethinking their operations in China as the regime gets more hostile to the West and as supply chains are threatened by political uncertainty. Joe Biden has strengthened “Buy American” rules so that the US government buys more stuff domestically.

The world economy seems to be gradually decoupling into a Western zone and a Chinese zone. Foreign direct investment flows between China and America were nearly $30 billion per year five years ago. Now they are down to $5 billion. As John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge wrote in an essay, “geopolitics is definitively moving against globalisation — toward a world dominated by two or three great trading blocs.” This broader context, and especially the invasion of Ukraine, “is burying most of the basic assumptions that have underlain business thinking about the world for the past 40 years.” Sure, globalisation as flows of trade will continue. But globalisation as the driving logic of world affairs seems to be over. Economic rivalries have now merged with political, moral and other rivalries into one global contest for dominance. Globalisation has been replaced by something that looks a lot like global culture war.

Looking back, we probably put too much emphasis on the power of economics and technology to drive human events. This is not the first time this has happened. In the early 20th century, Norman Angell wrote a now notorious book called “The Great Illusion” that argued that the industrialised nations of his time were too economically interdependent to go to war with one another. Instead, two world wars followed. Human behaviour is often driven by forces much deeper than economic and political self-interest, deeper motivations that are driving events right now and are sending history off into wildly unpredictable directions. Human beings are powerfully driven by the thymotic desires – to be seen, respected, appreciated. If people think they are unseen, disrespected and unappreciated, they will become enraged, resentful and vengeful, and respond with aggressive indignation.

Global politics over the past few decades functioned as a massive social inequality machine. In country after country, groups of highly educated urban elites have arisen to dominate media, universities, culture and often political power. Great swaths of people feel looked down upon and ignored. Populist leaders have arisen to exploit these resentments: Donald Trump in the United States, Narendra Modi in India, Marine Le Pen in France. I’ve lost confidence in our ability to predict where history is headed. I guess it’s time to open our minds up to the possibility that the future may be very different from anything we expected.

The Chinese seem very confident that our coalition against Putin will fall apart. Western consumers won’t be able to tolerate the economic sacrifice. The Chinese also seem convinced that they will bury our decadent systems before long. These possibilities can’t be dismissed out of hand. But I have faith in the ideas and the moral systems that we have inherited. What we call “the West” is not an ethnic designation or an elitist country club. The heroes of Ukraine are showing that at its best, it is a moral accomplishment that aspires to extend dignity, human rights and self-determination to all. That’s worth reforming and working on and defending and sharing in the decades ahead.

Brooks is an Opinion Columnist with NYT©2022

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