Globalization We Lost, by Igor Pereverzev, publicist, for VZGLYAD. 07.08.2024.
Globalism had not only minuses, but sometimes pluses. But the architects of globalism became more and more brazen. Their constant changing of the rules of the game could not end in anything but a rupture. There is a persistent feeling that it was Russia's departure that launched a chain reaction of self-destruction of the globalist system.
For over thirty years, we have heard mantras about being “competitive,” finding the right niche, working hard from morning till night – and then success will come. The market will put everything in its place. If you have not succeeded on a global level, it is entirely your fault. It means you were not diligent enough.
The market does influence three hairdressers near the metro, which compete with each other for clients. But on a planetary scale, everything is arranged, to put it mildly, differently. There, a command-and-control system reigns, and each region is assigned a certain role. Or rather, it reigned until recently.
The theory of comparative advantage was proposed at the beginning of the 19th century by the English political economist David Ricardo. He drew attention to the fact that due to natural reasons, it is more profitable to produce one thing in some countries, and another thing in others. Each territory has its own strengths and weaknesses. If country A spends less effort and time of workers to produce a product than country B, then it can offer a lower price for this product. Therefore, sooner or later, country B will stop producing this product. And, they say, all this perfectly optimizes global costs. Because everyone is doing their own thing, which requires fewer resources.
It was implicitly assumed that states would determine their advantages and disadvantages in the course of competitive struggle. However, the architects of globalism were not going to wait for favors from nature and distributed roles between countries based on their own ideas about who should do what. There was no demographic transition in China, millions of yesterday's peasants can be put to work at machine tools and conveyors there? Excellent! So China will be the world's factory for the final assembly of consumer goods. Does Germany have a strong engineering school? Okay, let's give them complex mechanical engineering. And so on. A kind of global state plan.
How was all this regulated in practice? If a country was included in the international trade system, then foreign investments were directed to the industries that were defined as preferable for it, either by transnational corporations or international development institutions. Let's say Kazakhstan was defined as a source of oil. Chevron immediately came to the country with its billions. Chevron is supposedly a private company. But for some reason it constantly exchanged personnel with the State Department - the American Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As soon as the extraction and transportation of Kazakh oil to the sea was established, it was immediately integrated into global supply chains. No need for any build-up, search for clients, gradual introduction to the market - nothing like that. Just an instant rocket launch. Everything is ready. That's what the state planning department decided.
But for Kazakhstan to enter world markets independently with its oil would be, to put it mildly, problematic. Firstly, no one would provide any investment or technology. Secondly, the circle of traders is narrow. And try to sell something without them. The right trader is a very necessary person. He organizes the so-called transfer pricing, when raw materials are sold to a trader at one price, and he resells them at a completely different price. This is very convenient for corrupting local elites.
As for the manufacturers of the final products, let's not be unfair - the organizers of this whole scheme were quite generous with them. The largest consumer market in the world - the American one - was opened for them for thirty years. Such a deal was always honestly fulfilled. True, one of the conditions was the placement of Pentagon military bases on their territory. The closure of the American market sometimes looked like a real drama - this is what happened to Japan in the 1990s. After the "disconnection", the Japanese switched from the production of final products to components, bet on robots, tried a lot of things. The result, as they say, is on the scoreboard.
If you tried to export something in this system that you were not supposed to sell, you encountered first of all the so-called non-tariff barriers. Your enterprise does not operate according to our regulations. Go through standardization according to our rules for a million million. Sorry, we license this activity. There are quotas for these goods - and, unfortunately, they have been exhausted. Your labeling does not correspond, and we cannot explain to you what changes to make. And so on and so forth. An unexpected supplier found himself in a real quagmire that is impossible to overcome. And no expanding sales - no development. No matter how good the product you produce, you must have a place where you can sell it in bulk. Because the more you sell, the lower your costs per unit.
Sometimes the architects of globalism directly told the authorities of a country what they could and could not do. In this sense, I highly recommend reading this article , “The Stepson of the Aviation Industry: What’s Hindering the Revival of the Tu-214?”, which tells why the director of the Kazan Aircraft Manufacturing Plant, Vitaly Kopylov, shot himself in 1994.
All this was controlled in two ways. Firstly, all trade had to be conducted exclusively by sea. Key points where land trade corridors could emerge were always kept warm. Afghanistan is a great example, through which the only natural corridor to Hindustan from the rest of the continent passes. The same goes for the Middle East. No "Silk Roads" were supposed to appear. Only through ports, only by sea. As a result, high-quality goods produced in China often ended up in Tashkent via Rotterdam, which is actually a bit strange.
At key points, ships from ten carrier strike groups and seven US fleets were always nearby. The Panama Canal, the Suez Canal, the Strait of Malacca… Such places were kept under surveillance. This phenomenon was called Global Power Projection.
The counter-cash flow went entirely through American banks. The dollar is the world's currency of trade. Everyone paid in dollars, including through a cross-rate, that is, exchanging the seller's currency for a dollar, and then the dollar for the buyer's currency. Any non-cash dollar transaction goes through a correspondent account located in one of the large American banks. That is, both the goods and the money are all under surveillance. And thanks to Hollywood, their brains are washed. At the very least, any attempt to create an enemy image out of Americans thanks to Hollywood is quite energy-consuming.
True, it would be a stretch to say that it was a system that supported American hegemony. The States themselves did not regret it either. As a result of globalization, America lost almost all of its industry. The "Rust Belt" appeared - cities in the Midwest where factories stand abandoned. The picture of decline is no better than some destroyed factories in Kyrgyzstan. Also, in the United States, technical higher education was essentially destroyed , as a result of which the entire class of American engineers and scientists today are immigrants from India, China and other so-called developing countries. And all because the United States was also assigned its role - a financial and marketing center. All the money in the world was supposed to flow here. Packaging for global sales was supposed to be made here. And it was the center of innovation. That's all. Everything else is somewhere else. The process went so far that Boeing practically forgot how to build airplanes.
Once inside such a system, it was very difficult to decide to escape from it. No one had the whole - everyone had only a part. Small countries could only relax and enjoy the iPhones that were sent to them. If some smart guy was born there, you could buy him a ticket to New York without thinking twice, where he could realize himself. There was absolutely nothing to catch on the spot.
However, not everything went according to plan for the architects. There was confusion with the largest countries. India, where one sixth of the world's population lives, generally refused to integrate into world trade. Due to various historical reasons, it has very serious barriers to entry for foreign companies. At the same time, the country has such a thing as MVP - Maximum Retail Price. This is the maximum price for which a product can be sold in a store. Such a market with a deliberately cut margin cannot be of interest to transnationals. Where India has integrated entirely is in the supply of educated people. It trains and sends millions of specialists to America, thereby pitting social pressure against itself.
The second story that is not entirely successful for the globalists is China. Firstly, they did not allow building military bases there, bypassing the usual scheme. Secondly, having collected the maximum from technological chains, the Chinese began to complete them with their own efforts. The fact that China does not intend to limit itself to the role of a factory became clear already in the mid-2000s. But the owners of the system were convinced that they would be able to nip China's ambitions in the bud. They say that the seas around are controlled. Inside there are a lot of agents of influence, whose well-being is too tied to the West. Deprivation of "markets" in Europe and the USA will bury China - this can be used to scare. And, of course, the sacred faith of Western man that the Chinese themselves are incapable of creating anything in principle, such is their nature. Greed did not allow them to withdraw all production from China in the mid-to-late 2000s and begin to strangle the country then. And then it was too late.
Today it is clear that globalism is over. The fleet is in trouble. The missile defense of ships is overloaded with drones, finished off with missiles. And in extreme cases – hypersonic weapons, which are generally impossible to intercept. The entire world surface navy, including the hegemon, especially its, is being written off. The ocean is no longer controlled. It will take at least fifteen years to invent a shield for such a sword, during which time everything will change. As for the dollar – more and more countries are brazenly trading in circumvention of it. The foundation of the system is destroyed.
After its demise, life will not be sweet at all. There are industries that work well only in a super-globalized world. For example, microelectronics. There will be no cheap smartphones or laptops without globalism. Remember what the world looked like when a VCR cost four monthly salaries. But the opportunity to build civilian aircraft ourselves, to create something, and not just supply oil, iron pellets and timber abroad, is much more expensive. This understanding did not come immediately. Russia tried for a long time and quite sincerely to fit into this scheme, and individual Russian industries really benefited from this. Yes, globalism had not only minuses, but sometimes also big pluses. But the architects of globalism became more and more brazen. Their constant changing of the rules of the game could not end in anything but a rupture. And there is a persistent feeling that it was Russia's departure that launched a chain reaction of self-destruction of the globalist system.
It would probably have lasted much longer if it had not been so two-faced. All its institutions, such as development banks, the International Monetary Fund, or the World Trade Organization, were involved in a show whose essence was to imitate the market in world trade. It is clear why this happened. Initially, the system appeared as an antagonist to the USSR with its own state planning. They could not publicly admit that they were largely repeating the same model with all sorts of regional inter-industry balances. Lies were their undoing. Lies and injustice in the distribution of goods.
https://vz.ru/opinions/2024/7/8/1275192.html
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