Falmouth Citizen

 

“The two processes of globalization and regionalization are articulated within the same larger process of global structural transformation…”
— Björn Hettne, “Globalization, the New Regionalism and East Asia,” Globalism and Regionalism. [1]

Strategic landscapes are radically changing. No longer does a person’s country represent the core of citizenship or identity. Today, a new murky world is dawning, one that advocates global governance [2] as the portent to humanity’s social, political, and economic future. Indeed, in this post-Cold War environment, “nation-states” – like the societies they serve and accommodate – find themselves in a relentless swell of transformation. National interests give way to global loyalties, just as world citizenship is touted as preferable to the narrow views of nationalism; no individual, corporation, or country is immune to this revolution. Welcome to “globalization,” where everyone is either a pawn or a player.

As an end to itself, the concept of globalization seems to rest on one central pillar: the consolidation of power. No matter what stripe or ideology globalization comes packaged in, this singular component cannot be denied. And in a society where “power begets power,” a global system, by definition, has the capability to expand this characteristic to new levels.

Politically, globalization represents the leveraging of power beyond that found in any one nation. Using the clichés of global governance, we would call this a “new world civilization,” one that’s built with international management in mind. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last true master of the Soviet style of centralized power explains, “The time has come to develop integrated global policies.” [3]

But political globalization is not an overnight game. We don’t stop work Friday afternoon, take a break over the weekend, and poof, find ourselves on Monday morning immersed in global governance. Rather, this macro-political transformation is the product of generations of changes, bumps and corrections, and decades of decisive planning. Already in 1945, leading socialist Scott Nearing penned,

“A world society cannot be haphazard. Since there are no precedents, it cannot be traditional at this stage in its development. It can only be deliberative and experimental, planned and built up with particular objectives…” [4]

Much more recently, Trilateral Commission co-founder Zbigniew Brzezinski espoused similar notions, albeit with an American-focused bent. In his book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, the former National Security Advisor maintains that America’s purpose for global engagement is “that of forging an enduring framework of global geopolitical cooperation” and to “unapologetically” position itself as the arbitrator of “global management.” [5] Capping off this assertion, Brzezinski closes with these sobering words, “Geostrategic success in that cause would represent a fitting legacy of America’s role as the first, only, and last truly global superpower.” [6]

Jim Garrison, founder and President of the Gorbachev Foundation/USA (at the behest of Mikhail Gorbachev), [7] likewise sees America as the forging element in globalization.

“…America must consciously view itself as a transitional empire, one whose destiny at this moment is to act as midwife to a democratically governed global system. Its great challenge is not to dominate but to catalyze. It must use its great strength and democratic heritage to establish integrating institutions and mechanisms to manage the emerging global system so that its own power is subsumed by the very edifice it helps to build.

President Wilson established the League of Nations out of the ashes of World War I. President Roosevelt and Truman established a new international order after World War II. America must now build the third iteration of global governance. If it attains this level of greatness, it could become the final empire, for it will have bequeathed to the world a democratic and integrated global system in which empire will no longer have a place or perform a role.” [8] [italics in original]

Nearing, Brzezinski, and Garrison all point to the reality of internationalism – it’s not accidental. And the last two individuals, global players in their own right, directly call for America’s guiding hand in planetary transformation.

America, however, isn’t the only major agent for global change. Europe too, and more specifically for the 21st century, the European Union, is a fantastic factor in the globalization process. Indeed, Brzezinski calls for America to act with the European Union “for sustained global political planning.” [9]

Not surprisingly, an American-European approach to global order already exists under the Transatlantic Alliance heading. Over the years, this alliance has been greatly shaped by men such as Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, and John J. McCloy on the US side – and by key Europeans such as Paul-Henri Spaak, Jacques Delors and Javier Solana.

Presently this Transatlantic system is comprised of a myriad of political, military, and economic linkages. Some of its components include,

• • NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)
  • OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe)
  • OECD [10] (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), which originally started out as the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation.
  • Various joint commissions and private policy groups – such as the Trilateral Commission, [11] the Atlantic Council of the United States, the British American Security Information Council, and the less well known Streit Council – along with numerous programs such as the Transatlantic Foreign Policy Discourse.
  • Massive business and corporate ties within aircraft and shipping industries, petroleum and petro-chemical companies, defense and aerospace ventures, all major automobile manufacturers, and many more commercial connections.

This last point bears special significance. Elizabeth Pond, writing for the European Union Studies Association’s U.S.-EU Relations Project, tells us, “So intertwined have transatlantic companies become, especially in the past decade, that it is often impossible to tell if firms are actually ‘American’ or ‘European’.” [12]

For many outside observers, the question arises: Does this Transatlantic connection represent the Americanization of Europe, or is Europe shaping America?

Maybe it’s neither. Too often we in North America perceive such quandaries through nationalistic lenses, instead, when viewed through the glasses of globalization, a whole new world comes into focus.

What the Transatlantic ideal ultimately represents is the “Third Wave” – the route of globalization. As social scholars Alvin and Heidi Toffler assert, “what is happening now is nothing less than a global revolution, a quantum leap.” [13]

But please don’t misunderstand: this “global revolution” is not a seamless process. As one facet of the revolution, the Transatlantic partnership – like all other relationships – has growing pains, setbacks, and observable differences. Indeed during the last number of years, sizeable rifts have occurred between European and American population segments, especially in light of Middle Eastern developments. [14] Although this fissure is more apparent in the general citizenry and within certain policy circles, and may even have spill over effects within Transatlantic markets such as defense spending, [15] it’s a rift that temporarily detracts from the global reality.

And what is the “global reality”? That America is on the threshold of having to reshape itself, just as it helped re-shape post-war Europe, and is now looked upon as the “midwife” of a new global order.

It’s the shift from nationalism to globalization, via the European model of regionalism.

Globalization, European Regionalism, and Anti-Nationalism

Immediately after the close of the Cold War, the Trilateral Commission – a private policy group comprised of American, European, and Asian counterparts – released its study, Regionalism in a Converging World. [16] According to its Introduction,

“…regionalism need not be opposed to globalism. The world should not have to choose between one or the other. It needs to live with both. The challenge…is how to channel the forces of regionalism in directions compatible with and supportive of globalism.” [17] [italics in original]

It’s important to understand that sponsorship for regionalism as a step in the globalization process hasn’t just been confined to the Trilateral Commission and its members. Thankfully, the many builders of this regional-global order have left their fingerprints plastered throughout the twentieth century. More significantly, their motives are also discernable.

Back in 1942, The Brookings Institute released its report, Peace Plans and American Choices, highlighting a variety of hopeful post-war concepts for “world order.” Options were reviewed such as explicit US mastery over international affairs, the creation of a British-American Alliance, harmonizing world order through a “Union of Democracies” (which was being touted at the time by Clarence Streit [18] ), and the collaboration of a larger “United Nations” package. Regionalism was considered in detail, with the Western Hemisphere, Europe, and Asia comprising the main blocks.

Arthur Millspaugh, author of the Brookings report, was candid in his linking of regionalism to the “bigger picture,”

“Such regional arrangements may be considered either as steps or stages in the evolution of a universal world order, as substitutes for a universal order, or as something to be combined with a world-wide system.” [19]

Although the Brookings report focused on the anticipated aftermath of World War II, the idea of a Europe-State had been birthed decades earlier. Already in 1914, the first year of The Great War (WWI), Nicholas Murray Butler – President of Columbia University and later recipient of the 1933 Nobel Peace Prize – suggested that European unification and the advent of a supra-national government was needed to replace the “existing national system.”

“What will be in substance a United States of Europe, a more or less formal federation of the self-governing countries of Europe, may be the outcome of the demonstrated failure of the existing national system to adjust government to the growth of civilization…

There is no reason why each nation in Europe should not make a place for itself in the sun of unity which I feel sure is rising there behind the war-clouds. Europe’s stupendous economic loss, which already has been appalling and will soon be incalculable, will give us an opportunity to press this argument home…

…the time will come when each nation will deposit in a world federation some portion of its sovereignty for the general good. When this happens it will be possible to establish an international executive and an international police, both devised for the especial purpose of enforcing the decisions of the international court.” [20]

Attempts to promote European integration and cooperation after The Great War were made. In 1923 the Pan-European Union was founded, attracting a number of individuals who would later play a post-Word War II role, including Konrad Adenauer. [21] And France’s foreign minister, Aristide Briand, envisioned a scheme to organize Europe around unified lines as opposed to nationalistic tendencies, even bringing the debate to the League of Nations. [22] None of these campaigns, however, were generally effective.

Ironically, while the League of Nations and the Pan-European Union ideas floundered, a type of continental integration almost occurred via the National Socialist German Worker’s Party – better known as the Nazis. John Laughland, author of The Tainted Source, details the extensive European unification platform espoused by the Nazi leadership, including plans for a Central European Economic Community, a customs-free market area, and the eventual creation of a European monetary area. [23] What’s more, as Laughland points out, “Nazi plans for European integration were as political as they were economic.” [24]

The influence of Nazi-era concepts on European integration cannot be understated. Stationed in Germany during the early years of World War II, George F. Kennan, one of the most important American diplomats of the twentieth century and the first Director of Policy Planning Staff at the State Department, candidly shared his observations,

“When stationed in Berlin during the war I had been struck with the fact that Hitler himself, albeit for the wrong reasons and in the wrong spirit, had actually accomplished much of the technical task of the unification of Europe. He had created central authorities in a whole series of areas: in transportation, in banking, in procurement and distribution of raw materials, in the control of various forms of nationalized property. Why, I asked myself, could this situation not be usefully exploited after an Allied victory? What was needed was an Allied decision not to smash this network of central controls when the war was ended but rather to take it over, to remove the Nazi officials who had made it work, to appoint others (and not necessarily all non-Germans) in their place, and then to supplement this physical unification with a new European federal authority. When I returned from Germany, in 1942, I tried to win understanding for this idea in the Department of State…” [25]

After the war, Kennan (who was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and later in life involved in the Trilateral Commission) became the US counsellor to the European Advisory Commission and a primary architect of the Marshall Plan – America’s rebuilding program for Europe. In his Memoirs, the diplomat noted,

“The United States government, animated primarily by a belief that something should be done to ‘integrate’ the economies of the European countries in the interests of economic recovery, had been adding words of encouragement, if not pressure.” [26]

This immediate post-war “encouragement” was essentially channeled via the Marshall Plan, with European integration “tacked on every proposal made in Washington for export to Europe.” [27]

Theodore H. White, a US foreign journalist and later member of the Council on Foreign Relations, describes the situation in his book, Fire in the Ashes,

“American’s had, for many years, been loftily instructing Europeans in the virtues of their own great Union of the States, and chided Europe on the stupidities of its rivalries and separatisms. During the war several American brain trusters had even toyed with the idea that, come Liberation, it would be best to sweep away all currencies of the Liberation countries and replace them with one new common European currency issued by the United States Army…” [28]

White continued,

“It was the Marshall Plan that hardened American convictions that Europeans must unite…When visiting Congressmen asked the Marshall Planners what they were trying to do, they would answer, ‘We’re trying to pull them together, we’re trying to integrate them.’ ‘Integration’ was a convenient word and each successive delegation asked sternly, ‘How far have you got with integration now?’ as if expecting the Marshall Plan to pull out of its desk drawers a draft constitution and a design for a European flag.

By 1949, in the second appropriation of the Marshall Plan, Congress, without debate, set the unification of Europe as one of the major purposes of the Plan.” [29]

Later in life White would reflect, “The story of the Marshall Plan, it turned out, began with the Meaning of Money. It was also about Money and Europe, and Money and the Peace – but above all, Money and Power and America.” [30]

While the Marshall Plan was operational, three members of Europe’s Christian Democratic community – Alcide De Gasperi, Konrad Adenauer, and Robert Shuman – led the way towards rousing continental interest in unification. Giving us some insight into the motivational factors of these three “Fathers of Europe,” R.W. Keyserlingk, General Manager of the British United Press during the 1940s, writes,

“…all three [had] been formed in their youth by the Catholic social movements activated by the papal teachings of Rerum Novarum. They were all deeply religious, fervent patriots but determined anti-nationalists. All three came from frontier areas of border disputes and border contacts…This had taught them that only a Europe as a federation, not Europe torn by hatreds bred by narrow nationalism, could assure freedom and liberty to their beloved, more intimate border homelands.” [31] [italics in original]

Demonstrating the depth of this European ideal within an anti-nationalistic framework and of the subsequent roadmap to regionalism, Keyserlingk reminds us, “Integration into a federal system, along political, economic and military lines, involving the sacrifice of absolute national sovereignty, was their objective.” [32]

How to achieve this objective? The continuity between assimilation approaches is truly remarkable,

“First, the political line was attempted and although this proved almost to be putting the cart before the horse, it had considerable merit for the future. It created the Council of Europe and the European Parliament…

When the political approach revealed the insurmountable difficulties of getting down to practical working measures, Robert Shuman came up with the second possibility, economic integration; a merging of interlocking interests, the abolition of trade barriers eliminating economic competition…working out of common policies for use of the labour market…freedom of movement for workers…and a gradual strengthening of joint economic policies…” [33]

Through this decided act of economic amalgamation, which has since borne itself out via the European Union and Euro currency, Europe became for the rest of the world a recognized model to advance internationalism above single state interests. This reality was perceived early on by European federalists and is evident in the 1946 Hertenstein Program,

“A European Community on federal lines is a necessary and essential contribution to any world union…The members of the European Union shall transfer part of their sovereign rights – economic, political and military – to the Federation which they constitute…By showing that it can solve the problems of its destiny in a federal spirit, Europe will make its contribution to reconstruction and to the creation of a world community of peoples.” [34]

Less than one year after the Hertenstein announcement, the “World Movement for World Federal Government” released a similar platform known as the Montreux Declaration. After stating that national sovereignty required limitations and that nations needed to transfer powers to a “world federal government,” the Declaration added,

“We consider that integration of activities at regional and functional levels is consistent with the true federal approach. The formation of regional federations – insofar as they do not become an end in themselves or run the risk of crystallizing into blocs – can and should contribute to the effective functioning of a world federal government.” [35]

In the decades immediately following World War II, Transatlantic ties between Euro-federalists and American elites broadened international acceptance of a European Community. Moreover, Europe’s march to amalgamation successfully achieved strategic goals. The European Coal and Steel Community, the Treaty of Rome and the subsequent European Economic Community and Euratom agency, and the gradual harmonization of agricultural and fiscal policies all demonstrated the strength of this trans-national agenda.

By the time the 1970s rolled around with its OPEC petroleum crisis and the revamping of the Bretton Woods financial system, the opportunities regionalism offered as a tool for global transformation was clearly evident. The Trilateral Commission, the Club of Rome, and the Institute for World Order all looked to regionalism as a trump card over nationalism. [36]

As one of the most prolific advocates of regional modeling, the Club of Rome – an elite body acting as a “global catalyst of change” [37] – deserves special attention. Its report, Mankind at the Turning Point, envisioned a world zoned into ten different blocs, and acknowledged that the regional view was necessary for global development. [38] In another report released during this same time period, the Club of Rome merged the steering of world change, anti-nationalism, and regional cooperation.

“In the present international order huge power is concentrated in individualized nation-States. Seen from a world viewpoint, this must be deemed undesirable. Some of the means which could be employed to attain those objectives of vital importance to the international community can more effectively be handled by higher levels of decision-making…the achievement of some aims, such as the creation of larger markets through regional and sub-regional cooperation (collective self-reliance), would be facilitated by decision-making on a level higher than the nation-State.” [39]

Richard A. Falk, a Professor of International Law with connections to the Council on Foreign Relations and the World Federalist Association, postulated similar directives in the mid-1970s. Contributing to the World Order Model’s Project (a program of the Institute for World Order), he wrote that,

“…regionalism has considerable appeal as a world order half-way house. It seems more feasible in the near term as a step beyond state sovereignty that can be used to dilute nationalist sentiments during a period when global loyalties need to grow stronger.” [40]

Falk had seen the handwriting on the wall less than a decade earlier. Touching on the increasing role of regional institutions and the United Nations as it related to global transitional strategies, he offered an interesting perspective to the World Law Fund’s Strategy of World Order program: “The result of these challenges to the traditional international legal system is to create a situation of transitional crisis. For the inadequacies of the old order have given rise to the beginnings of a new order…” [41]

Today, global elites from both Europe and America consider regionalism to be a prime stratagem for global governance. In fact, this “new regionalism” is now embraced by a multitude of key individuals, organizations, and governmental agencies. As two United Nations University document released in 2005 state,

“…regional governance is not incompatible with and does not negate global governance. On the contrary, it has the potential to strengthen global governance. The regional logic has always been inherent to the global body…” [42]

And,

“Regional integration between sovereign states…is a booming phenomenon, and, not surprisingly, it is nowadays seen as a process that, together with globalization, challenges the existing Westphalian [Ed., nation-centered] world order.” [43]

American Choices and World Realities

Nations-states will not go away, either under regionalism or through some form of global governance. Roles, functions and the sovereign status of nations, however, will be fundamentally altered. But the “country,” like state/provinces and city/local governments, will remain intact. Just add another layer to the pile – after all, it’s the Third Wave style of global transformation.

As social engineers Alvin and Heidi Toffler reminds us, “Change so many social, technological and cultural elements at once and you create not just a transition but a transformation, not just a new society but the beginnings, at least, of a totally new civilization.” [44]

Globalization and regionalism go hand-in-hand, and the relevancy of this is extraordinary. Currently, the EU is assisting in the creation of new regional blocs around the world: including the Gulf Cooperation Council, an Asian zone, the development of the South American Community of Nations, and new blocs in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

One 2004 EU document spells out this strategy,

“Because of its history and its own integration process, support for regional integration is an area in which the EU has real added value to contribute. The EU is ready to share this unique experience with other world regional groupings. It also hopes to help them draw on the substantial gains made in the regional integration process. It therefore encourages other countries in the world to forge even stronger links with their neighbours and to organize themselves within institutionalised regional organisations.” [45]

In discussing its own enlargement we can, moreover, catch a glimpse of what the EU envisions: “Enlargement strengthens the role and position of the Union in the world, in external relations, security, trade and in other domains relating to world governance.” [46] And, “In political terms, by adding to the power, cohesion and influence of the Union on the international arena, enlargement strengthens the Union’s hand when it comes to globalisation…” [47]

What does this have to do with the United States of America? Everything.

At the financial level, the US has to monetarily and economically compete with the European Union and its Euro currency. This competition not only impacts America’s trading power with Europe directly, but the growing influence of the Euro around the world raises the stakes even higher. In 2004, Toshihiko Fukui, a board member with the Bank for International Settlements, noted; “Today, we can discuss the euro’s potential to bring a sea change to the global financial architecture, without being criticized for fantasizing.” [48] Fukui then talked of a time when, like the European Union, Asia too will work as an economic bloc with a single powerful, globally recognized currency. [49]

The Euro’s importance as a rival to the US dollar, and as a model for other currency zones, cannot be ignored. And as different regions develop – with the possibilities of China, India, and Brazil becoming natural magnets for the creation of massive economic/regional power blocs – America, with its debt loads expanded beyond comprehension and its dollar losing face internationally, finds itself treading economically dangerous waters.

But there’s one other element added to this mix. As stated earlier, the European Union is involved in creating other competitive regional blocs. Not only does this cause a deflection in US dollar strength at the international level, it also shifts foreign interests away from the US and back to Europe. Hence American influence, especially in terms of advancing US interests abroad, weakens as Europe’s influence grows.

These facts haven’t escaped US policy makers. The irony is that America’s answer is to follow Europe’s footsteps, blending domestic realities with regional/global trends, and try to assist foreign nations to integrate under US guidance. The paradox deepens: America, in order to counter the Europe it helped establish, now has to create a North American Community incorporating itself, Canada, and Mexico into a new super-region. However, this is only a paradox to those in America who view the US through nationalist lenses, as already witnessed, its elite view things very differently.

North American integration isn’t a pie-in-the-sky idea. It’s been batted around by a host of privileged tri-national organizations, including the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (Canada’s top business leaders), the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (a Washington DC think tank with Trilateralist Brzezinski playing a key role), and the New York Council on Foreign Relations.

In the spring of 2005, the CFR came out with an “independent task force” report titled Building a North American Community. This document details an economic and security mandate that binds North America by establishing a common security perimeter, a North American border pass program, common external tariffs, the seamless movement of goods, full mobility of labor between Canada and the US, a continental energy platform, and the creation of a single economic tri-national region; with 2010 as a target date for many of these arrangements. [50]

Responding to this report, the US Embassy in Canada – “pointing to increased competition from the European Union and raising economic powers such as India and China” – called the CFR’s agenda a “blueprint for a powerhouse North American trading area.” [51]

A few short weeks after the CFR announced that its upcoming integration report would go public, [52] US President Bush, Mexican President Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Martin met in Texas to announce a tri-national agenda to “ensure that North America remains the most economically dynamic region of the world.” [53] The Council on Foreign Relations final report directly acknowledged this tri-national leadership summit, and pointedly said that, “The Task Force is pleased to provide specific advice on how the partnership can be pursued and realized.” [54] And tucked into the taskforce chairman’s statement was a simple but vital comment; the “process of change must be properly managed.” [55]

This wasn’t anything new to the banking community. In 1991, the Dallas Federal Reserve issued a research paper titled, North American Free Trade and the Peso: The Case for a North American Currency Area. [56] In the late 1990’s the Bank of Canada published a string of working papers looking at the pros and cons of a North American economic and monetary zone. [57] One US Treasury Department official, outlining world financial trends at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta in October 2000, candidly remarked that “a quantum increase in global economic and financial cooperation” would be needed to meet future international challenges,

“Successful globalization requires a parallel international process of harmonization of rules, including rules governing the financial system, a process that has been going on largely silently for many years in the central banking community…

…I believe that it is at least possible that in the years ahead we will witness a dramatic decline in the number of independent currencies in the world…I would not like to put a time frame on an evolution to a world with substantially fewer currencies, but I am sure you have noted that the president elect of Mexico, Vincente Fox, has suggested a long-term evolution towards a North American currency area. Such trends may lead to new challenges and institutions in the area of international economic cooperation.” [58]

Regionalism as a stepping-stone to globalization is the inseparable blending of politics and economics across the board. On the “political side,” consider what Richard N. Haass had to say when he was the Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the US Department of States back in 2002 (remember George F. Kennan was its first director).

“There clearly is a consistent body of ideas and policies that guides the Bush Administration’s foreign policy. Whether these ideas and policies will evolve into a formal doctrine with a name, I’ll leave to history to decide. But this coherence exists and can be captured by the idea of integration.

In the 21st century, the principle aim of American foreign policy is to integrate other countries and organizations into arrangements that will sustain a world consistent with U.S. interests and values.

…Integration is about bringing nations together and then building frameworks of cooperation and, where feasible, institutions that reinforce and sustain them even more.

…Integration reflects not merely a hope for the future, but the emerging reality of the Bush Administration.” [59]

Haass should know. Not only is he a member of the Trilateral Commission, he’s the President of the Council on Foreign Relations. In fact, Haass wrote the forward to the CFR report, Building a North American Community.

The bottom line is this: Just as politics and economics are bonded at the hip, regionalism and all it entails – including the unification of North America – fits part-and-parcel with the strategy of globalization. It’s the pursuit of the Third Wave global society as a replacement to the archaic world of nationalism.

In conclusion, the question must be asked; How far will this process reach? Alvin and Heidi Toffler let the cat-out-of-the-bag.

“The fact is that building a Third Wave civilization on the wreckage of Second Wave institutions involves the design of new, more appropriate political structures in many nations at once. This is a painful yet necessary project that is mind-staggering in scope…

In all likelihood it will require a protracted battle to radically overhaul the United States Congress, the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the French Chamber of Deputies, the Bundestag, the Diet, the giant ministries and entrenched civil services of many nations, their constitutions and court system – in short, much of the unwieldy and increasingly unworkable apparatus of existing representative governments.

Nor will this wave of political struggle stop at the national level. Over the months and decades ahead, the entire ‘global law machine’ – from the United Nations at one end to the local city or town council at the other – will eventually face a mounting, ultimately irresistible demand for restructuring.

All of these structures will have to be fundamentally altered, not because they are inherently evil or even because the are controlled by this or that class or group, but because they are increasingly unworkable – no longer fitting to the needs of a radically changing world.” [60]

Can’t you hear it? That’s the sound of the crucible of globalization being fired up.