Thomas Friedman is at it again, with a new book, extracts of which are in today’s Guardian. In it, he has to update his highly spurious Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention, namely that once countries is developed enough to support McDonald’s franchises, then they will be unwilling to fight one another, a fact sadly disproved by the American and British bombing of Belgrade (which had seven branches) in 1998. Undeterred, he’s modified (well, outright changed it, if we’re being honest) from McDonald’s (because everyone has them now), to Dell (whose example he tediously recounts), or rather any mulinational firm that has a global supply chain. Two countries that depend on trade between the two will never fight.

The problem is that being trading partners does not always entail peace. France was Nazi Germany’s biggest trading partner right up until 1939; this week, although China is Japan’s biggest trading partner, the two are still bitterly exchanging harsh words, with China more or less condoning outright anti-Japan demonstrations over a matter a piffling as school textbooks, which are only entering a tiny minority of Japan’s schools. Alright, it’s unlikely to go to war, and there are deeper reasons, but it is still likely to damage the two nations’ economic relations. Prosperity does not guarantee sanity.

And anyway, we’re all trading partners. There have been global supply chains for centuries; Neal Stephenson’s The Confusion details a wonderful example of Spanish silver, mined in Mexico, smelted and exchanged by the Dutch, transported by the Turks and traded with the Chinese in exchange for Japanese steel. Global trade has existed for far longer than we credit; what has changed is the speed and ubiquity it now possesses; for some reason we need a new word, ‘globalisation’, to describe it, but much of what did apply before the word was coined still applies now.

Trade is, on the whole, a good thing (just look at economies ruined by sanctions, like Iraq’s in the 1990s), but like many good things can also be misused for evil ends; what goods we buy and sell (butter or guns?), and who profits from them (as many people in as many countries or the capitalist elite?), are all still very much of our own choosing. Friedman seems to happily surrender to just letting trade go (and who can blame him? He got a cheap working Dell out of it) but building any sort of global society, as outlined by the globalisation evangelists, is not as simple as just acquiescing to the invisible hand.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 21st, 2005 at 11:59:49 and is filed under General.