Globalization can’t solve everyone’s problems. Despite being based on an ideal of universal benefits, globalization has proved itself to be a system that has complicated the problems of many nations. Globalization would actually benefit everyone if it were carried with perfectly equal representation of and influence by all nations, but such perfection is only utopian. It is simply too difficult to create global policies that are general enough to apply to everyone yet maintain effectiveness and justice in dealing with specific concerns. The reality is that globalization has been often used instead as an excuse to advance agendas of specific nations. For as long as globalization remains an excuse to meddle with another nation, nations will remain compelled to respond with a nationalistic spirit to preserve their place in the world.
Globalization is a modern phenomenon trying to integrate many nations into a single system. It involves the sharing of markets for collaborative economies, the exchange of technology, migration and unified response to transnational threats. It fundamentally relies on the hope that everyone can get along, that every nation is willing to have its own identity assimilated into some greater whole so that they can all be better than as individually.
America placed the alleged Iraqi threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction in a global perspective. The main American argument was that Iraq was a breeding ground for the terrorists of the world, and so the entire U.N. must join it in suppressing what President Bush described as “a grave threat to peace” (October 7, 2002 in Cincinnati). In fact, this was the main principle behind the “War or Terror”, which was to eliminate all terror threats wherever they were.
However, America was concerned only with eliminating threats to itself. That is understandable, since every nation is responsible for its own security, and September 11 did happen in America. But to assume that a threat to America is a threat to all is a different story. Had America had its way, all nations would deal with Iraq collectively with military support and economic embargoes only for the sake of America. America invaded Iraq even without U.N. sanction because it was all about America in the first place.
It was the same argument for incessantly pestering Iran regarding its nuclear program. In the words of Bush in an October 17, 2007 press conference in Washington, “I told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested [in ensuring Iran not gain the capacity to develop such weapons.]” Like Iraq, Bush’ word choice clearly attempts to make everyone worried about Iran and consider it a hinderance to global unity and peace.
But Ahmadinejad’s defense was unwavering as the accusations he received. He explicitly cried nationalism in stating that the program was only meant for peacefully providing his nation with energy. He saw the program as a symbol of national technological prosperity, which explains why he would not submit to America’s accusations.
Another similar yet supposedly more benign instance is American intervention in Somalia. American soldiers with support from militaries of other nations like Bostwana and Nigeria escorted humanitarian aid into the starving country because they were being pirated by warlords. Global thinking made it America’s responsibility to help a struggling nation. The movie Black Hawk Down makes for excellent commentary on the real event it commemorated. Said one Army Ranger, “I could either watch a country destroy itself, or I could help”.
But the same movie provides another comment from the other side of the conflict. A Somali rhetorically asks his captured American pilot, “if you kill our leader, do you think we will just drop our weapons and adopt American democracy?” Such a statement throws America’s supposedly benign and global actions into another light. It is possible that if the warlords were eliminated, America would indeed restructure Somalia just like itself. Because America has “operated on the ideological conviction that liberal democracy is the only legitimate form of government and that other forms are not only illegitimate but transitory,” (Robert Kagan, Old World Order) it is most probable that it will. After all, it was done to Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines.
It turns out that America’s global moves aren’t what they are meant to look like. If America were so global-minded, then it would have no reason not to adopt the Kyoto Protocol, one of the most widely accepted treaties in reducing greenhouse gases. Bush’ reason is that adopting the protocol would hurt the American economy. Such a reason is anything but global, nor is it even a good one as America produces 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases while accounting for only four percent of its population (BBC, The US and Climate Change).
Globalization isn’t that global after all. The cases mentioned above are really closer to a form of a nation’s imposing its will than some kind of globally unifying ideology. A phenomenon like that keeps many other nations worried if not scared. Nations are forced to be concerned with globalization because their very own nationalism is at stake.
China felt such global pressure very recently when Steven Spielberg announced last week that he was withdrawing as creative consultant for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. His reason for withdrawing is that Beijing has failed to place any significant pressures on Darfur to end its military conflict that has already claimed 400,000 lives and displaced 2.5 million others. Spielberg reasoned that “the international community, and particularly China, should be doing more to end the continuing human suffering there." It wouldn’t be as much of a problem if China wasn’t using the Olympics as a political tool to assert its affluence in the international scene . But that fact is that it is, and so any damage done to the Olympics is damage done to China’s national image and spirit. Should others follow Spielberg out, China’s pride may further be marred by issues regarding Tibet, the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement and China's support of Burma's ruling junta (Austin Ramzy, Beijing’s Spielberg Problem).
It is true that the Darfur problem is something easily condemnable internationally, which is globalization principle. It may be alluded to the Nuremberg Trials persecuting war crimes with an international perspective (Ulrich Beck, Nation-state politics can only fail the problems of the modern world). But what makes China unique is that its pressures are coming mostly from a single country: Speilberg, Microsoft, Coca-Cola and General Electric. That isn’t exactly globalization principle.
It may be argued that other nations that would like to pressure China regarding Darfur are simply not as vocal, and thus don’t receive as much press. But that argument leads to a fundamental problem of globalization. There are differences between the power and influences of nations, making it inevitable that any attempt to integrate them into one global order would inevitably lead to weaker nations being overshadowed by the more affluent ones. To be overshadowed like that is nothing comfortable for any developing nation’s nationalism as much as it is a reason for powerful nations to advance their own.
As a result, developing countries have stepped up to resist that kind of hierarchy. In 1973, Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos ordered the creation of the Bataan Nuclear Powerplant as a response to the 1973 oil crisis. He believed that nuclear energy would account for the deficit in the Philippines’ energy needs even if it would plunge the country into thirty years of debt. However, while the plant was completed, it was never used. Marcos was overthrown by a People Power Revolution in 1986 and replaced by Cory Aquino. In the wake of Chernobyl, Cory decided that the plant was too volatile to ever be used.
The idea turned out to be a disaster because Marcos was trying to integrate technology that was beyond his countries’ capacity. Nevertheless, it reflected the pressure a nation felt in trying to keep up with a global status quo. Failures like this send the message out to nations that globalization won’t work equally for everyone, thus giving them a reason to strive on their own nationalistic systems instead.
There is growing awareness regarding the workings of globalization. That is why many still take to the Philippine streets in response to the annual Balikatan military excercises which are geared towards mutual development of the Militaries and the Philippines. But how mutual these exercises have been or will be is dubious. The American military is much more developed than the Philippine Armed Forces. In fact, America sells its obsolete military hardware to the Philippines. There really isn’t much that America can learn from the Philippine military. America must have other reasons. Likewise, in light of the Somali fighter’s words, Iraqi rebels have not dropped their weapons simply because Saddam Hussein is dead. For as long as America is on their soil and they get the impression that the Iraqi provisional government is being modeled to do the bidding of America, Improvised Explosive Devices will continue to be Washington’s conundrum.
Globalization is trying to take over the world order even though the world is not ready for it, resulting only in the aggravation of international problems. Consequently, nations are forced to resist this modern movement with an effort to keep their identity, influence and culture preserved in nationalism. After all, globalization has been nothing more than an instrument of nationalistic competition.
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