In his recent speech before the United Nations in New York, Donald Trump took the opportunity to attack the very purpose, the raison d’etre of this organization. “If you want freedom, hold on to your sovereignty, and if you want peace, love your nation. The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots. The future belongs to strong, independent nations.”
It’s hard to know where to begin with rebutting the latest example of dangerous ignorance. Apart from the obvious point that the future depends to a considerable degree on what we make of it (or not), there is a fundamental misconception at work here. Globalization – the process of knitting the countries and peoples of the world into an interdependent world community – has been going on for several centuries. It’s a tapestry with many different strands, and, for better or worse, it’s almost certainly irreversible – not without a lot of self-inflicted, mutually-destructive consequences. Consider some of the relevant evidence:
- Economics –International trade in goods and services in 2018 represented about one-quarter of the total global GDP of $84 trillion dollars, including $1.5 trillion in food and $1.7 trillion in agricultural products. The U.K., for example, imports some 40% of its food. China imports about 80% of the world’s total soybean crop, while the U.S. imports more than half of its fruits and one-third of its vegetables. All told, some 37 countries with about 1.4 billion people are currently listed as being unable to grow all their own food.
International travel and tourism accounts for another 10% of the world’s total GDP, or about $8.8 trillion in 2018, and it accounted for an estimated 315 million jobs, almost 10% of all global employment that year. Likewise, international business investments last year alone totaled $1.8 trillion. The sum-total of all foreign exchange monetary transactions in 2015 was a staggering $5.3 trillion.
Our global economic interdependence can also be seen in the growing role (and power) of transnational corporations (often called TNCs). In 1970, there were only about 7,000 of them. By 2015 the number of TNCs had increased to over 100,000, with the largest 200 firms alone accounting for over half the world’s total industrial output. Their business strategies, resource purchases, manufacturing locations, component supply chains, marketing efforts, and labor practices have a huge combined impact on the global economy.
- Politics and government – The nation-state is still a central actor in global politics, but it is increasingly hemmed in, constrained, and superseded by a great many external economic and political obligations, and pressures that are beyond the control even of the largest superpowers. Despite the recent upsurge of nationalism, there is an ever-thickening web of transnational organizations, agreements, rules, and norms that amount to a process of piecemeal growth in global self-governance and a global “superorganism”.
There is, first, the evolving domain of “international law” dating back to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 — a set of mostly consensual agreements, rules and practices that were initially related to the conduct of war but have gradually expanded to include an array of conflicts between nations, from territorial disputes and labor policies to financial and environmental issues. Nowadays, disputes between nations can be arbitrated through the International Court of Justice in the Hague (in the Netherlands), while criminal actions (from crimes against humanity to genocide) can be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court, which dates from the 1990s.
In a similar way, early international agreements about navigational “rules of the road” at sea have evolved over time into a global ocean regime, culminating in the 1994 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). UNCLOS codified navigational rules and territorial boundaries, defined fishing rules, and spelled out the rights of coastal nations to claim seabed mineral resources, among other things. UNCLOS is also surrounded by a network of private organizations concerned with wildlife conservation, fisheries, reducing pollution, saving coral reefs, and more.
In the same vein, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), was established immediately after World War Two to oversee and administer such things as international flight rules and procedures, equipment standards, aviation infrastructure, and accident investigations. Like UNCLOS, the ICAO is surrounded by an array of organizations representing airlines, airports, pilots, navigation service providers, etc.
An even more extensive domain of global self-governance can be seen in the World Trade Organization (WTO). The traditional practice of erecting trade restrictions between nations to protect local industries was a major contributor to the Great Depression in the 1930s and to World War Two. This motivated the victors, led by Britain and the U.S., to establish a post-war trading regime dedicated to enhancing trade and reducing trade barriers. This resulted in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1948 and the more comprehensive WTO in the 1990s. Though it still has shortcomings, the WTO provides broad regulation of international trade, along with a framework for negotiations, and for arbitrating disputes.
Of course, the most visible and far-reaching step toward global governance is the United Nations itself. Established immediately after World War Two with the primary objective – lodged in the Security Council and General Assembly – of mediating conflicts between nations and preventing another destructive world war, the U.N. is supplemented by a wide range of special-purpose agencies that play a many-faceted role in world affairs, like the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Postal Union, the World Meteorological Organization, the International Telecommunications Union, and, of course, UNCLOS and the ICAO. The quiet work done by the U.N.’s many “alphabet soup” agencies plays an important role in world affairs.
Then there is the European Union with its 27 members (after the “Brexit” of the U.K.), as well as the NATO alliance with 30 member-states, plus regional organizations like the African Union, the Arab League, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Union of South American Nations (USAN). These days there are also a growing number of cooperative bilateral relationships between cities, states and provinces in different countries, not to mention the increasingly intense cooperation between police agencies around the world. And let’s not forget the landmark – though imperfect – Paris Climate Accord in 2015, where 195 nations pledged to undertake various (voluntary) efforts to curb climate warming.
In addition to these formal transnational agreements and institutions, there are literally millions of so-called Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) – mostly voluntary, not-for-profit groups that encompass an enormous variety of social “missions” and provide many different kinds of goods and services within and across national borders. They do everything from providing food assistance, like Oxfam, to underwriting education, health care, infrastructure improvements, agricultural development assistance, political advocacy, and much more. Their overall global influence is very important and still growing.
- Transportation – Travel across national borders has reached mind-staggering numbers. All told, there were more than 4.1 billion international airline passengers in 2017. Of the 36.8 million commercial airline flights worldwide that year, an estimated 33,000 each day (or 12 million) crossed national borders. And this doesn’t even count corporate and private air travel, or flights by government agencies, or the vast tonnage of air cargo (an estimated 63 million metric tons in 2019). Or the countless trips between countries by cars, buses, trains, and cruise ships.
- It almost goes without saying that our communications technologies are having a similar transformative effect on our global society. The number of Internet users at the end of 2017 was 4.15 billion, or more than half of the estimated total world population. And the number of mobile phone users world-wide in 2019 was about 4.6 billion. These new communications technologies are having a huge effect, especially in the world’s poorest countries, enabling them to leapfrog the developmental process in many ways.
What all of this adds up to is that we live in a far more complex and interconnected world than many of us (especially Trump) may realize. This global superorganism creates huge networks of synergy – unique combined effects that are otherwise unattainable – but it also creates huge interdependencies.
Perhaps the most egregious misconception in Trump’s U.N. speech is that international relations involves a zero-sum game – a competitive dynamic of winners and losers. As Trump expressed it: “Globalism exerted a religious pull over past leaders, causing them to ignore their own national interests. Those days are over.” On the contrary, as I suggested above, much of what goes on between nations involves cooperative, mutually beneficial, win-win relationships. To be sure, there is also much competition and serious conflicts, but the world has developed a number of constructive ways to deal with them over time, and we can do even better. We’re not finished with the task of building institutions for conflict resolution.
Contrary Trump’s divisive views, “patriotism” is not, in fact, something that should be exclusively devoted to our national interests. We live in a world where multiple group loyalties are the rule – to our families, our local communities, our schools and colleges, our businesses, our religious institutions, our political parties, international organizations, and more. At times we may have to make choices between our varied interests and loyalties, but mostly we try to strike a balance between them. In short, there is no reason why we can’t be both patriots (in the traditional nation-state sense) and, at the same time, support the benefits of globalization.
Happily, we don’t need to choose sides, and those who seek to foment a conflict between patriotism and globalism are promoting a dangerously self-serving and destructive agenda. We need to call out this “fake news” and focus instead on how to reduce international conflicts and enhance cooperation. For this to occur, it’s clear we will need new leadership in this country.