Mike OSullivan The end of globalization and the beginning of something new TED
We are at the end of globalization.
We’ve taken globalization for granted,
and as it drifts into history,
we’re going to miss it.
The second wave of globalization
began in the early ’90s,
and it delivered a great deal.
Billions of people rose out of poverty.
More impressively, wealth per adult
in countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh
increased by over six times
in the last 20 years.
The number of democracies rose,
and countries as diverse
as Chile, Malaysia, Estonia,
held free and fair elections.
The role of women improved
in many parts of the world,
if you look at wage equality
in countries like Spain,
or access to education
in countries like Saudi Arabia.
Economically, supply chains
spread like webs around the world,
with car parts criss-crossing borders
before the final product came into place.
And globalization has also changed
the way we live now.
It’s changed our diets.
It’s changed how we communicate,
how we consume news and entertainment,
how we travel and how we work.
But now, globalization is on its deathbed.
It’s run into the limitations
of its own success:
inequality and new,
record levels of indebtedness –
for example, world debt-to-GDP
is now pushing levels not seen
since the Napoleonic Wars 200 years ago –
show us that the advantages
of globalization
have been misdirected.
The Global Financial Crisis
was the result of this mismanagement,
and since then policymakers
have done little but contain,
rather than solve,
the problems of our age.
Now, some highly globalized countries
such as Ireland and the Netherlands,
have managed to improve
income inequality in their countries
by better distributing
the bounties of globalization
through higher taxes
and social welfare programs.
Other countries have not been as good.
Russia and, especially, the United States,
have extreme levels of wealth inequality,
more extreme even than during
the time of the Roman Empire.
And this has convinced many people
that globalization is against them,
and that the bounties of globalization
have not been shared with the many.
And now, in 2020,
we’re confronted by the pandemic,
which has shaken the ground under us
and further exposed the frailties
of the globalized world order.
In past international crises,
most of them economic or geopolitical,
there has usually ultimately been a sense
of a committee to save the world.
Leaders and leading nations
would come together.
But this time, uniquely,
there has been no such collaboration.
Against a backdrop of trade wars,
some countries like the US
have outbid others for masks.
There’s been hacking of vaccine programs,
and a common enemy, the pandemic,
has not been met with a common response.
So any hope that we might
have a world vaccine
or a world recovery program is in vain.
So now we’re at the end
of an era in history,
an era that began
with the fall of communism,
that set in train the flow of trade,
of finance, of people
and of ideas,
and that now comes to an end
with events like the shutting down
of democracy in Hong Kong.
The question now is, what’s next?
Well, if the era we’re leaving
was characterized by a connected world
trying to shrink and come together
on the basis of economic goals
and geography,
the new world order
will be defined by rival, distinct
and different ways of doing things,
and ultimately collaboration
based on values,
and this new world order
is very much a work in progress.
“Disorder” might be a better word,
and it has been for some time.
But think appropriately
of great sheets of ice breaking apart,
some drifting away
and others later reforming.
And the internet is a bit like this.
It used to be global.
Google used to have 30 percent
of the market share in China,
and now it has close to zero percent.
And the big regions of the world
increasingly look at the internet
from a values-based point of view.
America values tech innovation
and its financial rewards.
China takes a political view
of the internet
and cordons it off,
and at the same time China
has this incredible e-commerce economy
that no other country
has come close to matching.
And then there’s Europe,
and in Europe a conversation
about the internet
is effectively a conversation
about data and privacy.
So there you have it:
one common problem,
and three increasingly different,
competing views.
This shows us that rival ideologies
will drive very distinct
ways of doing things.
But what about collaboration
and cooperation?
Well, I’m going to start with the example
of three small countries:
Scotland, Iceland and New Zealand.
And a couple of years ago,
they signed up to the
Wellbeing Economy Governments,
whose aim is to foster
ecological and human well-being
as well as economic growth.
Practically speaking,
these countries are already discussing
things like well-being budgeting,
well-being-led tourism,
and using the well-being framework
in the fight against COVID.
Now, these three countries
are about as geographically distant
and diverse as you can get,
but they’ve come together
on the basis of a shared value,
which is a common understanding
that there is more to government policy
than merely GDP.
Similarly, in the future,
other small countries and city-states –
Singapore, Switzerland,
the United Arab Emirates –
will find that they have more
in common with each other
than with their larger neighbors.
They’re all global financial centers.
They all invest in strategic planning.
And they are all geopolitical micropowers
and will collaborate more as a result.
Another good example
of how values, rather than geography,
will increasingly shape destinies
and alliances is Europe.
During the period of globalization,
one of the key phenomena
was the eastward expansion
of the European Union.
From 2004, it added 13 new members,
despite the near existential
crisis of the euro,
constant pressure from Russia,
and of course the trauma of Brexit.
And, like a company
that has grown too fast,
Europe needs to stop
and think about where it’s going
and ask whether its values
can steer it in the right direction.
And this is beginning to happen,
albeit slowly.
European leaders talk a lot
about European values,
but frankly most Europeans,
be they German, Greek,
Latvian or Spaniards,
really don’t know or have a clear idea
what those shared common values
are supposed to be.
So European politicians
need to do a very good job
of asking them how they feel
about these common values
and then communicating
the answers back to them
in a clear and tangible way.
And of course social media
is a very important tool to deploy here.
And as Europe moves [towards] a union
that’s based more on values
and less on geography,
its contours
and those values themselves
will increasingly be defined
by the tension between Brussels
and countries like Hungary and Poland,
who are increasingly behaving in ways
that go against basic values
such as respect for democracy
and the rule of law.
The treatment of women
and the LGBT community
are other important markers here.
And in time Europe will, and should,
tie financial aid to these countries
and policy
to their adherence
to Europe’s shared values.
And these countries, and others
in Eastern Europe, and Cyprus,
still have close financial ties
to Russia and China.
And again in time
they will be forced to choose
between Europe and its values
and these other countries
and their own distinct values.
Like Europe, China is another big player
with a very distinct set of values,
or contract between
the people and the state.
And I have to say that this set of values
is not one that is well-understood
in the West.
And given China’s extraordinary
economic and social transformation
in the last 30 years,
we should really be more curious.
China’s values are rooted
deep in its history,
in a desire to regain the place
it once enjoyed hundreds of years ago
when its economy was the dominant one.
Indeed, Xi Jinping talked
of the China Dream
well before Donald Trump was elected
with the catchphrase
“Make America Great Again.”
And China’s system,
viewed from the outside,
is based around a contract or a bargain
where people will sacrifice their liberty
in return for order, prosperity
and national prestige.
It’s one where the state
is very much in control,
which is something that most Europeans
and Americans would find alien.
It’s also a system that has worked
very well for China.
But the biggest risk it faces
is a period of high
and prolonged unemployment
that will break this contract
between the state and the people.
And for other countries,
China can be an attractive partner.
It can provide capital and know-how.
I’m thinking for example
of Pakistan and Sri Lanka,
two members of the Belt and Road program.
But this partnership comes at a price;
they’re beholden to Chinese technologies
such as the controversial Huawei.
Chinese investors own their debt,
and as a result control key infrastructure
such as the main port in Sri Lanka.
Now I find that when
we talk about globalization,
the end of globalization
and the new world order,
we spend far too much time
discussing America, Europe and China,
and not enough time
on the many exciting things
happening in fast-growing economies,
from Ethiopia, Nigeria, to Indonesia,
Bangladesh, Mexico and Brazil.
And in the new world order,
the question for these countries
is what model to follow
and what alliances to build.
And many of them during
the period of globalization
had become used to being told what to do
by the likes of the IMF,
the International Monetary Fund.
But the age of condescension is now over,
so the tangible opportunity
in a less uniform,
more value-driven world
for these countries
is that they have much greater choice
in the path to follow,
and arguably greater pressure
to get it right.
So should, for example,
Belarus and Lebanon
follow the Irish model or that of Dubai?
Does Nigeria still think
it has shared values
with the Commonwealth countries,
or will it ally itself
and its fast-growing population
to China and its model?
And then think of one of the few
female leaders in Africa,
President Sahle-Work Zewde of Ethiopia,
and whether she might be inspired
by the work of Jacinda Ardern
in New Zealand
or Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland,
and tangibly how she
can transfer their example
to policy in Ethiopia.
Of course, it may be that
in this new world order,
countries like Kenya and Indonesia
decide to go their own way
and build out their own value sets
and their own economic infrastructure,
and in this way the arrangements
and the institutions of the future
will be crafted much less
in Washington and Beijing,
but really by countries
like Tunisia and Cambodia,
comparing notes on how
to battle corruption through technology,
how to build education
and health care systems
for burgeoning populations,
and how to make their voice heard
on the world stage.
So as globalization ends
and chaos seems to reign,
these countries, their young populations
and the scope they have
to build new societies
are the future
and the promise of the new world order.
Thank you.