Marshall McLuhan (1962) states that ‘the new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village’. The rise of the British Reuters, the French Havas agency and the German Wolff made instantly their way throughout the world followed by the US Associated Press. The beginning of the twentieth was marked by a congress in Berlin establishing the International Radiotelegraph Union by 28 member states (Thussu 2006: 14). Modernization and the free flow of information in the public sphere are essential for the process of globalization. Thus, mass media, world television, cyber space and the press are in the bottom of international relations. Broadcast networks and formations like Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Bross, Walt Disney, Cable News Network (CNN) are just few examples of media globalization.
However, how can we have a global world when the global economy is centralized in the northern latitudes (Waltz 2000: 47) and is governed by individuals protecting their own interests? The world has global powers starting with United States of America, United Kingdom and Canada that have spread over their ideas and understandings like a plague leaving ‘out of the process: most of Africa, Russia, all of the Middle East (except Israel), and large parts of Asia’ (Waltz 2000: 47). Peoples’ ‘desire for a world of equality and freedom’ (Hardt and Negri 2005: xi) crushes with the rough truth of global terror, a new concept of a global war with globalized weapons of mass destruction, democracy meltdown, bureaucracy and smoke and mirrors paperwork. In their book Hardt and Negri (2005: 231) quote Edward Rutledge (1776) saying: ‘A pure democracy may possibly do, when patriotism is the ruling passion; but when the State abounds with rascals, as it is the case with too many at this day, you must suppress a little of that popular spirit’. However, the G20 may have other options. The ruling power ‘convene meeting after meeting, conference after conference, doing deals behind the scenes and spending endless hours renegotiating their way out of doing anything that’s ever likely to affect any tangible change.’ (Elliot 2010). In the summit of G20 in London at the very end of 2008, Gordon Brown advocated no different, but more ‘free market globalization’ (Hilary 2009). Having in mind the ‘root causes of the current crisis’ (Hilary 2009), what should be put into action is a whole new approach to the world ‘economic turmoil’ (Hilary 2009). It may not be in favor of North Korea and Cuba’s self-sufficient aims (Waltz 2000: 47), but it cannot be ‘Brown’s free market fundamentalism’ (Hilary 2009). Instead, the world may be better to face a new age of global democracy to lead it out of the current financial deregulation and more – to lead it up to a new stage of rethinking moral principles and act in ‘public benefit and environmental sustainability’ (Hilary 2009). Moreover, the world is not unfamiliar with the ‘economic turmoil’ and the current situation of ‘credit-default swaps and banks “too big to fail”’ (Zilber 2009) should have come to no surprise.
The course of globalization has two options - like every period that comes and goes. It will either come to an end, a global end, or it will continue developing and spreading throughout the world for quite a long time. The movement from triumph to crisis that started in the middle 1990s has brought the question of a growing de-globalization period. Globalization is ‘competing with everyone from everywhere for everything’ (Sirkin et.al. 2008) and at the same time it ‘have led people to rethink their identities and to redefine them in narrower, more intimate, communal terms’ (Huntington 2004: 13). It has come a time when moralization should turn to have a leading role in the changing course of Nature, deciphering the global not only into a transnational ‘liberalisation and deregulation of existing markets’ (Hilary 2009), but establishing worldwide connections for developing a new plan on the basis of previous failures. Many countries implemented the Washington consensus, adopting it as an ideology and economizing tool. However, they were not warned not to dive with avidity in the money flood opening up the capital account and ‘overvalue the currency’ (Williamson 2002) which resulted in the Mexico crisis of 1994. Moreover, according to Paulo Fernando Gomes, executive director of Bank’s Poverty Reduction and Economic Development network, ‘60% of Africans live below the poverty line and long-term growth projections suggest unsatisfactory outcomes’ (2004). In 2008 the World Bank admitted with regret that ‘three decades of globalization and open markets have left some 1.4 billion people’ to live in poverty (Hilary 2009). Moreover, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO), another 200 million are expected to face extreme wants because of the current crisis (Hilary 2009). In the article of John Hilary (2009), he also points out that in sub-Saharan Africa ‘four in five of the continent’s workers remain mired in poverty’. It is maybe because ‘low-income countries were caught in a trap of dependency’ (Kaplinsky 2005) by the countries that control global development. Any new approach of global governance for prosperity and development should have a crisis solution plan because ‘the rational economics of an irrational world’ (Harford 2008) have become irrational economics of an irrational world.
The term ‘globalization’ is said to be ‘out of fashion’ (The Economist 2009) because of the recent recession. The statement is based on a diagram researched by The Economist on the usage of the very word in articles of the newspaper. This leads to the question if the crisis is good for globalization. According to Neri Zilber (2009), there are some causes that affect it positively. However, he is convinced that if there is new ideology that could replace the one that is empowered nowadays, it might be worth a try. The recession has forced private enterprises to engage with multinational profitable corporations. They have come to no choice, but sell because of bankruptcy. . Major cause of the crisis are said to be international banks. Loan-giving competition has led the world to face a break-down where banks are supposed to have more money that they actually possess. They give loans to people that have no settled or prospective income. Recently, the United Kingdom has suffered from several crashes. The car-making companies Jaguar Land Rover and Honda ‘laid off workers’ (Wood 2010) and introduced short-time working because their sales slumped with more than 30%. Furthermore, MG Rover has been sold to Nanjing Automobile because of credit-default swaps (BBC News Business). The Cadbury Bourneville chocolate factory has been sold on a knockdown price to Kraft because the pound ‘has dropped 16% in value against the dollar over the last two years, while the euro is down 2%’ (Dyson 2010). Moreover, British Airways experienced extreme troubles that resulted in a massive staff stalk, and loss of clients that turned to EasyJet and Ryan Air. General Motors is another company that got sold to Consortium of Transit Agencies, making it a part of the entity National Car Lines (2009).
As seen above, the crisis has had negative impact in multinational dimensions. The globalized recession has also led to a process of de-globalization. This is true, because of the fact that banks may have bankrupted operating in international level, but they have been taken over by nation states governments. This means that some banks have gone under state control, whether they are international or not. The Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group are one of the nationalized ones ‘while Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns have all disappeared’ (Wood 2010). The reverse process of globalization ‘is not about withdrawing from the international economy. It is about reorienting economies’ (Bello 2002: 113) from export to import in favor of the states.
All in all, I understand the term ‘globalization’ as a massive widespread ideology that has led people to a period of great achievements on international level, but lowered the living standards of people and the moral aspect of the everyday life. It is irreversible and its continuation is inevitable. Throughout the development of that idea, there have been ups and downs. The recent recession has brought up the question of growing process of de-globalization. However, the world leading countries have proved themselves not to want any change in the current plan. They are now to struggle with the raging crisis on a global scale and through a period of de-globalization, they are about to bring globalization back on the world stage. It is not because this ideology is so well-working – because it has proved not to be – but because it is much more profitable for the leading powers. True it is that there have been established vital connections between the Global North and South, but serious holes have led to great depression, increase in poverty and inequality numbers. It has come a time to give a chance to the G20 to come up with a decent new prospectus to resolve the current problems and to determine what is it that they are going to do with the growing de-globalization on a large scale.
List of references
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