An Agenda for Phase 4 of Globalization

The future of globalization will be quite different from its past. Or it will not be at all. It could remain just an episode, like other phases of opening and integration in history that ended in crisis, struggle and chaos. Globalization, this has become evident even before the global recession that started in 2008, provokes counter-forces that are able to outplay productive economic forces. Like other eras of international integration that have gone before, the current phase would be ended by its antithesis – it could even turn into its opposite. The notion of re-nationalization is not fetched, unfortunately. It is noteworthy that, while it lasted, the nineteenth-century liberal world order too seemed to be spreading around the world unstoppably – until it broke down in the battles of World War I. Efforts to reanimate the open international regime in the 1920s were not successful: In the course of the Great Depression of the 1930s, national governments gradually closed the borders – the trade war, which amplified the global depression, turned out to be the prelude to World War II, the great man-made catastrophe of the twentieth century. These changes are driven by a historical pattern, warns Harold James, a historian at Princeton. “All of these previous globalization episodes ended almost always with wars.” Globalization never was a one-way street but could regress anytime. James opposes the popular view which claims that an open economy would lead to world peace quasi-automatically because economic openness, mutual cultural fertilization and the peaceful resolution of international conflicts would reinforce each other.1 Peace, freedom, prosperity – this accord may resonate in some historic phases, but eventually ever louder dissonances will disturb the formerly prevailing harmony. However, this is the lesson history teaches, and history certainly does not necessarily repeat itself.