Globalization

2 Pages 585 Words

In 1992, Thomas Friedman took a tour of a Lexus factory in Japan and was amazed at the machines and how they assembled the luxury cars. While eating dinner that night while on a Japanese train he read a story about another confrontation in the Middle East. It was the Israelis and the Palestinians. He concluded that half the world was after the Lexuses and the other half was fighting over who owned the olive tree. His analogy was that the Lexuses were a symbol of brilliant technology because of how they are assembled.
Mr. Friedman is a foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times and has a Pulitzer Prize as a foreign correspondent to his resume. Friedman has degrees in an Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies. He has very few academic qualifications as an expert in globalization. Although he said “ I am an inveterate traveler having crisscrossed the globe numerous times in my work for the Times.
“Globalization” he writes “is driven by enormously powerful technologies which are integrating us more and more everyday whether we like it or not. Theoretically, these aspirations and technologies can be choked off, but only at a huge price to society’s development and only by building even higher and even thicker walls.”
I believe that Globalization is not just a phenomenon and not just a passing trend. The international system replaced the Cold War system. It is also the integration of capitol technology, and information across national borders, ins way that is creating a single global market and to some degree, a global village.
Globalization- the Lexus_ is the central organizing principle of the post Cold War world, even though many individuals and nations resist by holding onto what has traditionally mattered them to them- the Olive Tree. At first glance, the concept is all about American hegemony, about Disneyification of all corners of the earth. But the reality, thank goodness, is far more complex than that, involvin...