Globalization: Good or Bad?

In the midst of this most recent economic recession, Americans are beginning to wonder if globalization was the right strategy to adopt to help the country become the world’s most powerful nation. What benefits the multinational corporations is not necessarily good for the average Joes and Janes. With American jobs shipped overseas to cheap labor countries like China and India, thousands of Americans are out of work. And this is only the domestic face of globalization. Sure this flooded job market in the non-Western world helps to create a middle-class in Asia that has never been seen before, but the need for this cheap labor places many in horrible working conditions. Globalization is an idea committed to the Westernization of the entire world, forcing it, through economics, to respect the American way of life. Globalization also breeds resentment among developing countries and extremists who are suicidally devoted to their own way of life, and go to any measure to defend it. Look at what Western meddling has done to the Middle East. Terrorism is at its worst in years and we constantly hear of conflicts and humanitarian crises in Africa. These are all results of the ideology that Western ideals are the best, and they must be imposed everywhere. Whatever happened to preserving the cultures, languages, religions, and nations that makes humanity so interesting?
Perhaps one reason that globalization has created a Western hegemony of all trade is the fact that Western nations are directly invested in developing countries economies. According to Renato Ruggiero, “There can be no doubt that foreign direct investment has joined international trade as a primary motor of globalization.” (WTO Press Releases, 1996) At the end of 2007, US foreign investment totaled at $7.2 trillion, with $1.2 trillion of that spent in one fiscal year. (Scissors, 2009) The outstanding public debt of the United States as of September 24, 2009 is in excess of $11.8 trillion (Hall, 2009). How can we support globalization and foreign investment when our great nation falls so far into the red? Shouldn’t we be focusing on the worsening crisis at home? Almost 10% of Americans are out of work (US Department of Labor, 2009), and with America’s dwindling industrial base, thousands more stand to lose their jobs in the coming years. US companies continue to ship jobs overseas. Just look at the Detroit Three. At one time they were the biggest car manufacturers in the world, posting record profits quarter after quarter, but now they are practically bankrupt, struggling to find new marketing strategies and better designs, and cutting jobs to stay afloat. Anybody that pays any attention to current events can tell you what a sad state auto-manufacturing in America is in.
We in the US are able to avoid the terrible effects that poorer countries feel in such terrible debt, and we further leech off these third-world nations and eliminate any competition to drive the products they export in an upward trend, therefore upsetting entire economys in the name of capitalism. (Burgi & Golum, 2000) Take this latest US escapade, The War on Terror/The War in Iraq. On top of being very, very expensive to an American in peril, could be argued occurred with a sub-objective of controlling a large amount of oil in the Middle East. Politics are no longer ruled by common values and ideals, but by the power of global finance.
Globalization benefits rich countries, a modern age colonialism, while creating huminatarian crises in third world countries. It creates conflict between occupier and subject, and pits one group against another, often resulting in bloody struggles. To many, especially in the Middle East, this “globalization” is just an extension of the Western expansionism in the 19th century. Then, it was the British, colonizing and creating mercantilistic markets. The same has applied in modern times. The US is able to exploit many countries, sending them into conflict. (Hoffman, 2006) This creates a huge humanitarian crisis that further polarizes the differences between “rich” countries, like the US and the “poor” countries, like those in Africa.
As we worry about our financial futures, how do we justify the widespread globalization that America and the Western world has undertaken in the past 50 years? Globalization obviously causes a lot of trouble, both in the United States and internationally. Countries that are directly invested overseas seek to extend their influence, all in the name of free-market capitalism. In reality though, these investments can cause a loss of culture in developing nations and an unwanted Westernization in places that should be left alone. Conceivably, this American plan for globalization can ruin both our great nation and destroy hundreds of foreign economies.