Trade and Globalization

Now, more than ever, America's sucess depends on the success of its neighbors. Thanks to globalization, different countries are holding more economic and political influence than ever before. In Peter Marber's new book, Seeing the Elephant: Understanding Globalization from Trunk to Tail, he examines the connection between economic integration and global policy.

Globalization has become so synonymous with our contemporary, interconnected existence that the word hardly merits usage anymore.

The inauguration of Barack Obama has been greeted by seemingly universal words of welcome and great expectations.

On January 30, 2009, the New America Foundation hosted a panel discussion around the release of a Washington Monthly cover story and new proposal in the "Big Ideas" series. Featured speaker Phillip Longman, Senior Fellow at New America and Research Director of the Next Social Contract Initiative, pitched his plan to dramatically increase investment in freight rail infrastructure as part of the

Even as my plane was landing in Jinan, the capital of China's heavily industrialized Shandong province, I could see cranes. By the time I got to the city center I'd counted 76 more construction cranes along the way. There were probably more, but in the city proper the smog was so thick I couldn't see any farther than the sidewalk. When I visited, just a few weeks before last summer's Olympic extravaganza kicked off, Shandong had just been named to the Chinese EPA's "green blacklist" for its terrible air quality.

During her confirmation testimony last week, Susan Rice, the new United States ambassador to the United Nations, said something both intriguing and significant. After describing the various challenges America faces in the wider world, she called for the world to move past old divisions. "We cannot afford to be burdened with labels such as 'rich' or 'poor,' 'developed' or 'developing,' 'North' or 'South,' or 'the Non-Aligned Movement.' In the 21st century, these false divisions rarely serve anyone's interests." At first glance, this might strike the hard-headed realist as naïve.

When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the 1980s, he sought a truce in the Cold War, a breathing spell that would provide time for reformers to engage in "perestroika," or "restructuring," of the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of the Bush administration's hyperactive militarism and manic overextension, the U.S. needs a similar breathing spell in foreign policy that will permit concentration on rebuilding, not just reviving, the U.S. economy and its social contract. The Soviet Union proved to be unreformable and collapsed.

The inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States, along with the deepening of the Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, marks more than a shift in the pendulum swings of partisan politics. In these pages I have suggested that it marks the dawn of a Fourth American Republic, in the way that the New Deal marked the beginning of Franklin Roosevelt's Third Republic of the United States and the Civil War and Reconstruction began Lincoln's Second Republic.

When future historians look back at the major shift in power that came in the fall of 2008, they will focus not just on the election of Barack Obama. Less than two weeks after Obama's historic election, finance ministers and central bank governors from the G-20 nations convened in Washington at the height of a global panic to discuss the future of global finance.

Michael Lind is director of the American Infrastructure Initiative at the New America Foundation.  

There are worrying signs that what may end up being a stimulus package of a trillion dollars or more is being turned into an ordinary piece of legislation, with its content to be determined by politics, special interests and ideology.