Toward a Single Global Economy: 1991 to 2008

The end of the first Gulf War was an important signpost of the major transformation in the global economy that was to ensue over the next decade. George H. W Bush’s proclamation of a New World Order was an initial acknowledgment of this shift, and although it took a number of years to fully develop, by the beginning of the twenty-first century the United States would have achieved the position of global “hyper-power.” The collapse of the state socialist bloc and China’s opening to the world market during the 1990s meant that a single global capitalist economy was brought into existence. The key feature of this new phase of internationalization was a further qualitative leap in the importance of finance to the functioning of capitalism and, simultaneously, the construction of a world market based upon fully global manufacturing and distribution chains. Both tendencies had enormous implications for the GCC and helped to underpin the rise of Khaleeji Capital at the onset of the twenty-first century.