Globalization draws fire from critics – and even predictions
of its demise. But living without daily cross-border flows of people, goods,
and ideas would be as impossible as it would be unwise.
اضافة اعلان
Introduction Did you drink a cup of coffee this morning? If you did, you contributed
to the casual globalization of our world. Your humble coffee is much more than
a morning jolt of caffeine. It is globalization in a mug.
Consider the complex, global supply chain that brought your coffee
home. It includes farmers, buyers, financiers, shippers, roasters, grocers, and
brands stretching from Brazil to Vietnam to Beijing. Or consider the financial
markets that grease the wheels of coffee’s commercialization, the world’s
second-most traded commodity after crude oil. From New York to Singapore,
someone is trading coffee futures, affecting the price of your cup and
lubricating its global trade.
As Mark Pendergrast, author of “
Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World,” writes: “The most
stunning feature of the modern coffee trade is its complexity.” He describes
“an intricate web of relationships, from the smallholder farmers who cultivate
the beans to the multinational corporations that roast and sell them.” And he
reminds us that the price of coffee is influenced by “a complex web of supply
and demand factors, including weather, disease, political instability, and
changing consumer preferences.”
All told, the coffee that fuels your morning is a
$466 billion industry born in the Red Sea currents
between Ethiopia and Yemen in the 15th century,
internationalized by European colonialists and traders, and commoditized by a
global, consumer economy. In short, your java is emblematic of the political
and economic forces that power our planet today – and will continue
to do so for years to come.
In defense of globalization
Globalization gets a bad rap, vilified as the source of climate
change, the driver of income inequality, the disruptor of labor markets. But
like many overused terms, globalization has taken on too many meanings, when
it’s simply a fancy way to say cross-border flows of people, goods, services,
capital, and ideas. The term is a modern one, but the practice is as old as
civilization, when traders first began bartering
wheat for metals in the Fertile Crescent.
Globalization gets a bad rap, vilified as the source of climate change, the driver of income inequality, the disruptor of labor markets. But like many overused terms, globalization has taken on too many meanings, when it’s simply a fancy way to say cross-border flows of people, goods, services, capital, and ideas. The term is a modern one, but the practice is as old as civilization, when traders first began bartering wheat for metals in the Fertile Crescent.
Consider, for example, how trade – and the coffee trade in
particular – contributed to the emergence of modern science in the 16th and
17th centuries. As journalist Tom Standage notes in his lively book, “
A History of the World in 6 Glasses,” “London's coffeehouses became hubs of
scientific discussion …Scientists, including Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton,
visited coffeehouses to talk about their latest discoveries and debate theories
…In this way, coffee played a role in the development of the scientific
revolution.”
With globalization under fire from a wide range of critics – and
several prominent global investors
predicting its demise – it’s worth considering how pervasive the phenomenon
is in our daily lives.
Trade, trade everywhere
Turning off globalization would be akin to turning off the lights
– which, by the way, work only because of the global market for energy in oil,
gas, coal, and renewables.
Access to electricity to charge our phones, light our homes, run
our appliances, and power our businesses has become so common that 85 percent
of the world’s population hardly thinks about it. We only notice when it’s
gone. Just ask any modern Lebanese, Nepali, or South African what it’s like to
live without a reliable supply of electricity.
Phones are another example of casual globalization in action. The average
smartphone – there are nearly 7 billion in use globally – owe their existence
to a dizzying supply chain of parts whirring around the world, assembled in one
place and then shipped everywhere in between. The iPhone, for instance, is
composed of
hundreds of parts sourced in 43
different countries. The device itself might not exist without globalization.
Or maybe you power your phone in your car, another marvel of
global trade (the average car is made of roughly 30,000 parts sourced from
multiple countries). Chances are your car burns fossil fuels, a globalized
market that earns some $500 billion in sales annually.
As Daniel Yergin writes in his classic work, “
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power,” “Without oil, modern life
would be impossible. Virtually everything we encounter in our daily lives has
its roots in petroleum. It is the lifeblood of our modern society. Without it,
we could not move our cars, fly in airplanes, make the asphalt for our roads,
build the plastic bottles for our water, or produce the synthetic fabrics that
make up so much of our clothing. The world we know simply could not exist
without oil.”
We are what we eat
Even if you don’t burn oil for mobility – perhaps you bike to
work or drive an electric vehicle – it’s nearly impossible to remove yourself
from the global supply chain. Think about your dinner.
Vast agri-businesses worldwide produce enough food to feed the 8
billion people on our planet. If you’re a meat eater, chances are you’ve eaten
beef or chicken produced by one of the world’s massive food conglomerates,
traded by one of the world’s largest commodities exporters, and bought at a
major grocery store. All told, nearly
900,000 cattle are
slaughtered every day worldwide. The number of chickens slaughtered daily is
vastly higher, according to the US Department of Agriculture, with one report
noting that nearly 200 million chickens are killed every day for human
consumption. Meatless protein alternatives are proliferating with the added
advantage of having shorter supply chains than the traditional meat industry,
though other elements of globalization – particularly energy inputs – play a
role.
As for fruits and vegetables, the UN estimates that global exports
of fresh and dried fruits and vegetables amount to some
20 percent of the $1.4 trillion global food export market. While there has been a
justifiable movement toward more local sourcing of fruits and vegetables, owing
to the environmental impact of shipping, chances are you’ve eaten a fruit, nut,
or vegetable recently from one of six countries: the United States, Chile,
Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, or China.
A new era of connectivity
If we’re looking for a star in this tale of globalization, it
might be Malcolm McLean, the founder of container shipping. “The invention of
the container was an innovation as important as the steam engine, the
transistor, or the internet,” wrote Marc Levinson, author of “The Box: How the
Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger.” “It
has changed the way people live, the way companies do business, and the way
countries interact. Without the container, globalization as we know it would be
impossible.”
The COVID-19 pandemic brought supply chain issues to the front
pages of newspapers. Suddenly, we were all reading about an essential but
esoteric part of global business. In fact, the pharmaceutical companies that
saved lives were also beneficiaries of our global system. The vaccines that we
injected into our arms should be seen as
globalization in a needle – its component parts
sourced from dozens of countries and its researchers connecting across the
globe in their search for a viable inoculation.
To some, globalization has become a buzzword for excess, a
blueprint for the destruction of the planet. But if humanity is to navigate the
myriad challenges we collectively face – climate change, conflict, disease – we
cannot do so in a vacuum. We must engage collectively, across borders and time
zones.
The Middle East’s moment
As William J Bernstein noted in his seminal work, “
A Splendid Exchange: HowTrade Shaped the World,” “Globalization is not a recent phenomenon, but has been ongoing
for thousands of years. The ancient world was far more interconnected than is
commonly thought, and people and goods traveled vast distances across the
globe, exchanging ideas, technologies, and cultures.”
At the heart of that ancient world’s connectivity were the sea
lanes and land bridges of what is known today as the Middle East. The term
“Middle East” was coined by an American naval strategist,
Alfred Thayer Mahan. The designation arose from
“late 19th century strategy and diplomacy, which needed a name for the region
between the ‘Near East,’ based on Turkey, and the ‘Far East’ based on China,”
wrote the historian Clayton R Koppes. The term “reflected a Europe-centered
view of the world, in which the strongest powers politically, economically,
militarily, and (perhaps to a lesser extent) culturally were European and
Europe-oriented.”
That Europe-centered order no longer exists. In a multipolar world,
the “Middle East” has found its moment as a crucial node in the global flow of
goods, people, services, capital, and ideas.
The broader region from North Africa to West Asia constitutes
vital commercial geography – a resource that never depletes. That’s why four of
the world’s leading airlines – Emirates, Etihad, Qatar Airways, and Turkish
Airlines – have reshaped commercial aviation by challenging legacy European and
American carriers with long-haul routes that connect Asia and Africa to the
world without European stop-overs. Saudi Arabia’s new aviation strategy and new
airline, Riyadh Air, will further intensify competition among the key regional
players.
The region’s ports, most notably in the United Arab Emirates, with
Saudi Arabia rapidly gaining, have also become major centers of trade and
transshipment. Opened in 1979, Dubai’s Jebel Ali Port has emerged as a major
global container shipping hub and the largest port between Rotterdam and
Singapore. A visit to Jebel Ali with its miles of containers stacked
high – the emblems of the world’s leading shippers glinting in the sun – tells
a story of our relentlessly global world. Somewhere stacked deep in those
containers are the clothes you wear, the appliances you use, or maybe even the
device you are using to read this article.
Did you drink a cup of coffee this morning? If you did, you contributed to the casual globalization of our world. Your humble coffee is much more than a morning jolt of caffeine. It is globalization in a mug.
Not far from Jebel Ali, Abu Dhabi’s Khalifa Port is one of the
fastest growing in the region, while Jeddah’s King Abdullah Port has been
described as the
most efficient in the world by the World Bank.
As for North Africa, the region on the Mediterranean was the
center of the ancient world’s gravity, and it is once again growing in stature
as North African states leverage their geography. Tanger Med Port in Morocco is
ranked sixth in terms of container port efficiency by the World Bank, higher
than all African and European ports. Algeria is emerging as a more important
natural gas lifeline to Europe after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and both
Morocco and Tunisia have become important centers of auto and aerospace
manufacturing for Europe. If Libya could settle its political conflicts, its
potential is also immense.
So, the Middle East might better be called the “Middle World.”
It’s already leveraged its geography to become a major trade, aviation, and
logistics hub, while also spending surplus capital to invest in the region’s
trade infrastructure. Those everyday acts of ships and planes and construction
are the nerves of our globalized world – not always noticed, but vital to our
survival.
The modern world needs the connective tissue of globalized trade
and the commerce that flows through its veins. The Middle East is once again at
the center of this global economy. The modern world needs this Middle World to
continue to invest, innovate, and compete. We can afford no less.
Afshin Molavi is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute
of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and editor and
founder of the Emerging World newsletter. Twitter @AfshinMolavi
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