Thursday, April 10, 2014

Geo-economics vs. Globalism

This piece nicely captures the essence of the (flawed) US strategy over the last few decades.  Mandelbaum says keep pushing globalism, the free movement of goods and people, and the use of American power to break down the pockets of resistance (in the BRIC nations).  It is the economic version of Fukuyama's "end of history" and liberal democracy: the end of history is the unfettered global market.

The trouble is this ideology is it is leading to a decline in American power and relative prosperity.  This form of global capitalism cuts the rug out from under us if we no longer have a manufacturing base and if we are constantly importing poverty in the service of the free movement of peoples. 

Anyway, Berkowitz writes approvingly on it here:  http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/04/09/global_capitalism_a_vital_foreign_policy_tool_122212.html

We will post more extensively on this theme.  As Edward Luttwak has written, we should let "strategy" determine our global economic policy.   His book on China and the logic of strategy goes into this in detail, which will be the theme of a later post.

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