Tom: Angell or not?

Curzon of Coming Anarchy discusses Norman Angell. It caught my eye because Tom is sometimes accused of being Angell in the sense of 'optimistically predicts an end to great power war because of globalization, but tragically wrong'. Tom says the difference is that now we have nukes, which have ended great power war. So Tom says he's Angell, with NUKES! Tom says globalism plus nukes ends great power war. I think this is one of the places where he and the Coming Anarchists (and their patron saint, Robert Kaplan) are in fundamental disagreement.

I solicited Tom's input on this one, and he wrote:

I also argue that the European-derived globalization of the late 19th Century and early 20th century was both corrupt and fatally flawed, as well as being nowhere near as integrating globally as the U.S.-source-coded globalization of today. As Steve DeAngelis likes to point out, there were no Dells, Wal-Marts or IBMs running hyper-efficient global platforms of integrated/localized centers of production, sales, and R&D. There were no globally integrated enterprises back then, just colonial holding companies that moved raw materials in uncompetitive bilateral markets from the colonies to the colonial powers.

So not only was Angell painfully right back then, his logic is made unassailable today thanks to America's source-code for this era's globalization, plus nukes.

Then again, many strategists prefer living in the 19th century. Things seemed easier to understand back then. You could just argue "interests" and "power" and get away with almost no understanding of global economics because--gasp!--there were no global economics back then, just an integrating core of colonial powers in Europe that ultimately turned on one another out of foolish greed.

Comments

[zenpundit]

19th century globalization was driven by industrialization and national unification/modernization programs - there was a hell of a lot more things to sell in 1900 than 1800 and fewer international borders.

Unfortunately, tariffs were also rising and free trade was dying poltically, even in Great Britain. The U.S. was a particularly egregious offender in raising tariff rates because our need for imported raw materials at the time was very small, rubber and a few other minor commodities.

Brooks Adams predicted tariffs - disconnectivity essentially - would eventually provoke a great power war back in the 1890's and he was right.

[Tom Barnett]

Good way of putting it: national unification/modernization.

Countries accessed foreign markets and materials to that end, but no one really building global markets per se.

[zenpundit]

Thanks Tom !