SYMPHONIC SUPERPOWER:

The One-Note Superpower: A funny thing has happened. While the war on terrorism has dominated headlines, the great engine of globalization has kept moving (Fareed Zakaria, 2/02/04, Newsweek)

Covered in blankets of snow, Davos was looking stunning last weekend. The sight even moved the normally unflappable vice president of the United States. Dick Cheney began his speech to the World Economic Forum noting reflectively that settings like these force one to step back from day-to-day pressures and take "the long view." Unfortunately, his own address, well-crafted and thoughtful on its own terms, did not really take up that challenge.

Cheney spoke intelligently about the dangers of terrorism. He noted that today's technology makes possible the killing not just of 3,000 people, but 300,000. His solutions were persuasive: help end the ideologies of violence by promoting reform in the greater Middle East; increase cooperation among countries to battle terrorism, and if and when diplomacy fails, take decisive (meaning military) action.

But the speech fell flat. It's not that people at the conference disagreed with it. But it seemed quite disconnected from what they—politicians, businessmen, religious figures, social activists and writers from around the world—had been talking about and grappling with over the previous few days. You see, a funny thing has happened around the world over the past two years. While the war on terrorism has dominated headlines, the great engine of globalization has kept moving, rewarding some, punishing others, but always keeping up the pressure by increasing human contact, communication and competition. For almost every country today, its primary struggle centers on globalization issues—growth, poverty eradication, disease prevention, education, urbanization, the preservation of identity.

On all these, America is now largely silent.

Is this not just a question of where our responsibility appropriately lies? We're not much use to them in the realm of poverty eradication and the like--except by force of example and the thoroughgoing penetration of our ideas into their cultures, which will eventually destroy their identities--but we're the only ones who can co-ordinate a global crackdown on terror. Isn't the point here that we can force globalization quite passively while fighting the war rather actively?

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 25, 2004 10:48 AM