what is globalization?

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"The Paradox of a Global USA."

Stanford University Press. 2007.

Review by Patricia Mohr

 

“Paradox” is a tricky word. Webster’s II New Riverside defines it as a “statement that seems to conflict with common sense or to contradict itself but that may nevertheless be true.” So it is with the “Global U.S.A.”—a phrase that connotes a sense of irony while implying something about U.S. hegemonic power most Americans don’t accept.

“The paradox of the Global U.S.A.” is the central theme that binds together an eclectic collection of essays written by scholars of history, sociology, film studies, political science, and international relations. The essays emanated from a 2003 Yale Center conference on globalization, which defined its paradoxical theme as follows:

“The USA is the foremost power promoting globalization, but is on many counts pursuing policies that are anti-global in their essence; i.e., the USA is uneasy about living in the global society that it is helping to create. The intent is to look deeply, and in non-partisan fashion, at the historical, cultural, social, etc. roots of this paradox.”

The authors do look deeply into the U.S. role the international system. The essays vary in their scope and context. Some are targeted to specific fields. For example, N.J. Demerath III, a sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts, examines the U.S. influence on world religions and world religions influence on U.S. society. He finds that “globalization is easily exaggerated in all directions,” especially in regards to religion.

While Demerath doubts that one religion will dominate world cultures, he asserts that President Bush’s “religious zeal” is bringing about Samuel Huntington’s prediction that civilizations will clash in the post-Cold War. “Unilateral coercion serves neither salvation nor globalization well,” Demerath asserts.

Many of the authors put U.S. power in the context of history. Ian Tyrrell, a historian at University of New South Wales, is one. His essay discusses America’s traditional worldview of opposing colonial/empirical impositions on foreign countries. In the past, U.S. ideals of democracy and personal liberty sustained that worldview. Today, U.S. leaders have adapted those ideals to promote U.S. involvement in and invasion of sovereign nations. Tyrrell also says U.S. regional preferences for trade protection limit the United States from fully integrating into the global trading system.

Ian Roxborough, a sociology professor at the State University of New York, penned one of the more useful essays. It is significant because it defines the key weaknesses of U.S. foreign policy and calls for a wholesale reassessment. “Such a reassessment is urgently required,” Roxborough asserts. “Rethinking America’s global strategy, including its strategy for transforming the institutions underpinning globalization, will require serious and sustained collective debate.”

Roxborough discusses the U.S. preponderance of military power, Washington’s efforts to promote international trade and order during and after the Cold War, and the U.S. military’s unwillingness to downsize after the Soviet Union collapsed.He says the “peace dividend” at the end of the Cold War never materialized. He walks us through contemporary foreign policy debates, which he says have been “poorly articulated” during the last decade, and explains how President Bush shifted President Clinton’s “hands-off” approach to one that wields U.S. power around the world.

According the Roxborough, Bush advances a “new American Century” approach, which seeks to legitimize American military intervention, reduce the role of the United Nations, transform the basis for existing military alliances like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and cultivate a “second tier of client states” that back U.S. leadership. The Bush administration is actively restructuring the international system to match its values.  

Roxborough also points out that the U.S. “global war on terrorism” has yet to be sufficiently defined. The ambiguous nature of this “war” further complicates the U.S. role in the new global order. He predicts that the U.S. will continue to stretch its resources to maintain its military preponderance.

Roxborough is right to say the key questions policymakers need to ask themselves are: (1) does the United States have economic resources to maintain its authoritative ambitions; and (2) does U.S. strategy have the “clarity to coherently and consistently” perform its role as the head of a global empire.

James Kurth, a political science professor at Swarthmore College, adds another layer of complexity. The U.S. plan for a new global order now faces a direct challenger: radical Islamists who have their own global presence and systematic set of alliances. He suggests that the next decade “will be defined by a titanic and bloody struggle between two warring globalizations, that of America and that of Islamism.”

Many of the book’s essays are substantive and thought provoking. However, as a whole, the various essays don’t coalesce into a robust analysis of the U.S. foreign policy in the 21st Century. Furthermore, the authors rely too heavily on the term “globalization”—an overused word that connotes many meanings. But then, part of the editors’ purpose publishing the book and of the Yale Center’s purpose in hosting the conference that originally collected the essays was to establish dialogue about “globalization” among scholars of different fields and vernaculars.

“What is required is more collaboration across disciplinary and institutional lines,” Strobe Talbott, head of the Yale Center on Globalization, writes in the introduction. Talbott succeeded in establishing that dialogue. It is not clear whether that effort will impact the larger debate over U.S. foreign policy, which continues to evolve in competing directions as the United States tries to maintain its deteriorating grip on power.