A Short History of the 21st Century
The Pulitzer awarded writer Thomas L. Friedman is one of the most significant theoreticians of the “Neo-Liberal Ideology” that is widely adopted by the Democrat Party in the USA. He is also accepted as a respected ideologist of the powerful Jewish Diaspora known to be quite influential in the US political elite. In 2006, he has written a book titled “The World is Flat–A Short History of the 21st Century” which soon draw attention in the world politics and the business circles causing repercussions.
Liberal ideologist T.L. Friedman bases his ideas on the phenomenon of “economic development process, globalization and free trade” rather that on “military and protective approaches centered on Christianity/Protestantism and Western culture” of the Neo-Conservative Ideology. In his most recent book he states that a new age has been entered with the spread of worldwide Internet use as of the year 2000 and that in this way the world has become an integrated plane of global cooperation and free trade while analyzing the information and data with respect to this situation.
According to the assessment of Friedman, following World War II the USA included Europe and Japan in the global economy as a result of which each passing year the global production level, information accumulation and the living standard of people improved and along with this improvement China, India and Russia also became included in this process.
While in 1985, the Global Economic World (GEW) consisted of North America, Western Europe, the Far East (Japan – N.Korea) and Latin America; currently it has expanded to comprise the whole World after the USSR dissolved , China adopted the market economy and India gave up its isolation.
Globalization, liberalization and the expansion of free trade evolved in parallel with the living standards of the societies. In 1990, 375 million of the Chinese population and 462 million of the South Asian population (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) lived under the level of poverty that was 1 US dollar a day. Today this number has decreased to 212 million people in China and 431 million people in South Asia. However, the Sub-Sahara African region, where the globalization process progresses slow, impoverishment increases and the number of people living under the absolute level of poverty that used to be 313 million increased in 2005 to 340 million.
Within the framework of GEW, international companies that have made investments in many regions of the world do not only represent the interests of the country where their main office is located but also of all the countries where they conduct activities. As it is the case for the “DELL Company” that has its main office in the USA but that has also factories in Ireland, India, Malaysia, Taiwan and China; everything that is of the interest for the international company is also for the interest of all the countries where the company has made investments.
Although the countries in Latin America, Africa, the Arab World and the former USSR have become part of global economy, the poverty and unemployment in these countries derive from the clumsy and centralized bureaucratic structures of these countries’ governments. Bureaucracy is assessed as the biggest handicap for economic improvement. In Australia where the establishment of a new business can be completed in 2 days, this takes 215 days in Haiti and Congo. A simple contract can be signed in 39 days in the Netherlands, whereas this takes 1500 days in Guatemala. Bankruptcy procedures take six months in Ireland and Japan, but in Brazil it takes 10 years.
According to the writer, the process named as culturalization is as important as economic development. Attention is drawn to the fact that in countries where the level of education is higher, more success is being achieved in the globalization process. It is noted that in Russia and India that benefits from a high level of education and qualified manpower is at a more advantageous position than Arab countries such s Egypt that offers extremely inexpensive manpower.
The writer supports that shaping the global system in the framework of liberalization and the principles of free market economy is a necessity for the general welfare of the world. He also supports that only free trade initiatives such as NAFTA are not sufficient to achieve global welfare and draws attention to the fact that countries all over the world should establish national strategies that will lead them further ahead.
The writer does not add any importance to concepts such as Neo-Conservatism, the cultural domination of the West and the absolute superiority of Christian values and asserts that countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela are in lack of democratic environments not because they do not have Western values or because they have conflicts of civilizations but because these countries are oil producing countries. The writer names this situation as the “curse of oil” and claims that rulers and dictators who exploit their countries’ natural resources benefit from their oil revenues to monopolize the police, the army and the intelligence services by which they prevent the region to become democratic.
In order to integrate these countries which are victims of oil to the global system the US administration is advised to encourage these countries to make reforms that shall modernize their systems and liberalize their economies and also to sign bilateral free trade agreements with these countries.