Dmitry Kosyrev
What is happening in the world, th-at is, in the wo-rld as a whole, and what will happen next? Here, the clearest answers, of course, are given by astrologers, not forgetting to recall that everyone has predicted for a long time: where will you go from the Age of Aquarius. But there are other people who offer their versions of the general diagnosis to the world and humanity, people who are inclined to see this world not even from a bird’s eye view, but from the level of the stratosphere.
And one such person once again reminds us : do you still think that you live in the age of globalization? Yes, for many years now, everything has been the other way around – deglobalization is taking place, and something needs to be done about it.
We are talking about the Indian, the former head of the Reserve Bank of the country, Raghuram Rajan. He has been promoting his idea for a long time and once again reminded us: since 2008, the share of exports of goods and services in the formation of world GDP has gone down. And back in 2007, the curve of foreign investment broke – then 5.3 percent of global GDP was invested outside their economies, then less and less, and in 2020 – only 1.3 percent.
He is echoed by a multinational chorus about who is to blame and what to do. But for the time being, for the beginning, we note: the music did not play for long. It was only in the 90s that they explained to us that the world has become one forever, saturated everywhere with the same goods and universal ideas (mandatory for everyone), there are no longer any borders, and this is excellent, and this is forever, if you please obey. But it turns out that this holiday lasted only ten or fifteen years?
The most interesting thing in the ongoing disputes, of course, is who is to blame for what is happening, that is, who made the wrong globalization, which not everyone liked. And here there are unexpected opinions, for example, this one: it was not so global, this globalization. If we talk only about the economy, then something else happened: the strengthening of economic integration within large regions. But if you look at how go-ods and investments move between regions, then ever-ything is not so cheerful.
And it turns out to be an anomaly, you won’t believe, the USA, which has fallen out of regional integration within the Americas. The states, if you look at the statistics, showed little interest in their neighbors, and developed ties with someone more distant, and sometimes more for ideological reasons. True, the powerful merger of the American and Chinese economies turned out to be an exception, but America did not like this much, and the crazy idea of \u200b\u200bbreaking this alliance and creating two separate world economies – ideologically correct and incorrect (Chinese) – began to play with all colors. But real globalization will eventually build up anyway (albeit in competition between two economic poles instead of domination by one), and this is good.
This is strongly reminiscent of the article that has already appeared in Russian translation by two doves of the world from the United States – Monica Toft and Sidita Kushi, who, in fact, are promoting a book they wrote together under the beautiful title “We perish by the sword.” The point is that America is carried away by military interventions around the world, which undermines its prestige and position in the family of peoples, and at the same time its own economy, not to mention the world economy. And the conclusion from all this is again “Chinese”: I would like to believe that now that there are two superpowers in the world again, Washington will return to the almost lost skills of diplomacy, instead of terrorizing everyone. He will return simply because he will learn again to be afraid of a serious collision – already with Beijing.
And one more publication during this discussion: it is about the results of 2022, when at several international meetings (the ” Group of Twenty ” in Indonesia and others) the world told the West: there must be some limits to confrontation. Let’s urgently end this deglobalization of yours and return to relative normality.
It’s all about sanctions. That is, about artificially imposed rules of trade and everything else under whatever pretexts you like, but after all, sanctions are reduced to the same deglobalization.
What happens together? The story with the “end of history” according to Francis Fukuyama: it turns out that it did not so much end as it went the wrong way the West wanted.
And here we must proudly say that our experts also took part in this conversation, and this happened quite a long time ago: we are talking about the material from the spring of 2021 by Andrey Kortunov, CEO of the Russian International Affairs Council. And there appear simple and understandable thoughts.
In particular, if you go through the subheadings, the process of rapprochement of economies, countries and peoples will go on without a single hegemon or leader who will drag this process along. That is, globalization awaits us not under pressure from above, but in the form of the development of horizontal ties. Further, this process will not have a center and periphery, its goal will be not so much the growth of global GDP, but the sustainable development of everyone and everyone – justice. Not only states will participate here, but also private corporations, industry interests and many other non-state players. The axis of tension will not be “East-West”, but rather “North-South”, that is, countries that are too developed and too poor.
Here we can add that from the very beginning the idea of globalization smelled of ideological theft. It was just a beautiful word, invented at that very moment of the “end of history”, in the 90s, to impress on all of us the inevitability of what is happening and the senselessness of resistance.
But after all, no fundamentally new processes began precisely in the 90s. Mankind, due to unhealthy curiosity and healthy adventurism, has always integrated tirelessly. How about the era of the Great Migration of Nations on the Eurasian continent, which mixed cultures and technologies in the most radical way? How about the Great Silk Road across Eurasia, that is, the centuries-old logistical trade link between the two great empires of that time – Roman and Chinese? And there was also the era of Spanish galleons crossing the Pacific Ocean from Acapulco to Manilaand other smaller trade routes. Or (if we are only talking about the exchange of ideas) you can long and joyfully figure out what ancient religions the current ones have developed from: what, for example, reminds us of Isis with the baby Horus on her knees.
And what happened in the 90s is a typical information phantom, such a thing when you see the facts, but do not draw obvious conclusions from them, because someone tried to draw the conclusions for you. But in fact, at first the West tried to secure for itself the role of a dictating rule in the long, centuries-old process of communication between peoples – that is, by new means to prolong the era of its colonial conquest of the world. Then it turned out that the same West was upset by the result, and tried to stop the centuries-old process. But then they began to explain to him: guys, give it up.
