The epitaph, not of Trump, but of globalization

The pendulum is swinging right back

(This article was published by swarajya on 7th Nov at https://swarajyamag.com/world/the-epitaph-not-of-trump-but-globalization-the-pendulum-is-swinging-right-back. Here’s an excerpt.)

Excerpt:

For a few years, perhaps since the fall of the Soviet Union, there has been this mad rush to globalize. There was an implicit assumption that “The End of History” had arrived (poor Francis Fukuyama has never been able to live down that unfortunate conceit popularized by his essay).

No, it wasn’t the end of history. Nor was it the beginning of the endless triumph of certain American (or was it ‘Enlightenment’?) memes: democracy, the free-market Washington Consensus, the ‘rule of law’, ‘liberalism’, and other such nice words.

….

Is it blasphemy to suggest that Kissinger, alleged mastermind, in fact was fooled?

For short-term gain, America, it turns out, gave a lot away to China, which grabbed it with both hands. It’s hard to believe now, but in 1995, twenty-plus years after Nixon went to China, the latter had not yet pulled away from India. I unearthed an old Economist Intelligence Unit Business Asia Special Report: China & India from that time, and India was within striking distance of China.

Of course, the ‘lost decade’ of rule by proxy by Sonia Gandhi (2004-2014) pulled India down so much that it’s now 30 years behind China, but in that 1995 report, things were not that bad. I hesitate to look at the corresponding figures for 2020, as I am sure they are very bad for India.

But tellingly, look at the FDI picture:

It looks bad for India, doesn’t it? But it turns out to have been even more damaging to the US.

Says the report:

“… the need for a critical mass of India euphoria in the world’s media and business organizations to activate the “herd instinct” among multinationals: the herd has performed admirably for China, frequently investing in loss leader projects on the grounds that the market is so fantastically important.

The Chinese, of course, have been helped by a mixture of a chauvinist Hong Kong press and smart public relations: multinational CEOs, who are routinely picked up at Beijing airport by limousines and police outriders and feted on national television, have enjoyed the ego massage and stayed.

India does not go in for limousine convoys, and will have to rely more on a Western press sympathetic to democratic legalistic traditions.”

Of course, that last bit never happened: the Western press is notoriously patronizing and contemptuous of India. Just read The Economist to see what amounts to foaming-at-the-mouth anti-India views.

… end of excerpt.