Reviews of The Lexus and the Olive Tree and The Great Betrayal.
by Darris McNeely
In last month's issue of World News
and Prophecy (see article, "What to Watch to Discern the Times"),
I referred to a book about globalization called The Lexus and the
Olive Tree, written by the foreign affairs columnist for the New
York Times, Thomas L. Friedman (Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, New York,
1998). Since then several have commented about the book and its value
in helping to understand the world economy. It is a fascinating subject
and an important one for our readers to understand. In this issue I'd
like to review Friedman's book and another called The Great Betrayal. This
second book is written by Pat Buchanan and gives another perspective.
Read together, these books can help us see globalization as more than
an economic system.
The One Big Thing
Friedman states: "I believe that if you
want to understand the post-Cold War world you have to start by understanding
that a new international system has succeeded it-globalization. That
is 'The One Big Thing' people should focus on." The lens which Friedman
uses goes back to the 19th century to show that the world had a previous
period of globalization. What we see today is another round of a continuous
cycle of the world economy.
The last period of globalization started
in the mid-19th century and lasted through the 1920s. The amount of
trade and capital flows between nations was similar to today. Then,
Great Britain was the dominant global power as its empire reached its
zenith. The steamship, telegraph, railroad, telephone and transatlantic
cable helped to transport people, goods and even crises from one continent
to the other in a period when one could go between countries without
the need of a passport. Indeed, the world did shrink in size during
this period.
