 Globalization is over here on Global Connections. Think Tech Hawaii, it's a given Monday, the three o'clock block. And we have Rupemati Kandekarju joins us from New York City. And she is writing a book about this very subject. Hi, Rupemati. Hello, Haji, and a pleasure to be on Think Tech Hawaii, as always. And it's a topic which we have come to after mentioning globalization in so many of our previous programs. So let's go. Okay, well, we have to tackle this because it's a big subject. And I guess what raised it from me was an article by David Brooks, columnist in the New York Times where he said globalization is over. And then I looked that up, I found it, my goodness, this has been a subject of discussion for some time. And they call it de-globalization, they call it reverse globalization. And it has to do with isolationism and siloism, if you will, in various countries around the world. Often, if not usually, autocratic countries. Democratic countries would like to see globalism, but autocratic countries are not so interested. And I want to examine a couple of points with you. Number one is, what are the indications of this? I mean, how can I tell that globalism is reversing? And the second part, which we can get to a little way down the show, is what's gonna happen here? What effect does this reverse globalization have? So I guess the first thing is, how do we know what are the indicators that tell us that globalization, which we used to think was a great idea, was actually not happening? So Jay, we came into globalization in the 1990s, when we had liberal globalization, that is you say the idea of economics, which came into being. You could say that economics was going to drive the international system. So we have something which is coming up in the global order, which is saying, let's work on our common goods. Let's come together on common grounds. So we have issues like, let's have trade liberalization. We have, let's discuss tariffs and exports imports in such a way that it is symbiotic or mutual benefits for both the countries, multilateral countries. You have this system where you can see the global players coming into agreements with each other. Let's have the NAFTA, let's have the ASEAN. Let's have these free trade zones where we don't have tariffs. There is free movement of goods, of people, and of ideas. So this entire tenet of globalization is where there is a free movement. And the crux of this was the political norm of democracy. So you have a political norm which is floated, saying that make your institutions democratic. But we have China also joining in with their unique system. So you have something of a accommodating system where you are bringing in everybody, come on, irrespective of the differences. Let's come together for common goods. Then you have the idea of we have a monetary fund. Let's have money floating in. So money is the common factor, right? Which will give loans, which will give you restructuring, which will help you come in and take in the, what is that? You have drawbacks, you have shortfalls in adjusting to globalization. These monetary institutions will help you. Then you have climate, which is a common factor which binds together people. So you have these things. You have immigration, which are crossing boundaries. These tenets don't have boundaries. So globalization is speaking. We are all traveling. We are all staying in each other's countries, fine. But when does it implode? We have the real implosion when we have these pandemic, this pandemic which struck. And you have countries which closed the national borders. Correct? Then the reliance on the others was just on essential imports and exports and only on your supplies for COVID. So suddenly you had countries going back to, you know, tightening, restricting movement. That is when, before this when conflicts used to happen, they used to be regional, they used to be targeted. We didn't have a global impact. The pandemic bought about a global impact. And then you have the Russia-Ukraine crisis where you have sanctions putting on one of the biggest players in the economic market. We have to take a neutral stand on this in the sense that Russia is one of the largest suppliers of Europe. So, and we have America which is monitoring, which is the hegemon of the liberal economic order. And we do sanction and to try to isolate this is bringing a wave of turmoil, which is not seen yet. And that is when we can say that globalization is really imploding right now. Because what he has done, what Mr. Putin has done is he has bought in the global system instead of the petrodollar. Now that has really shaken up the foundation of the global economic liberal financial system, which was also dependent on the dollar. So when an idea which is floated on economics and economics rocks, so you have to have something which is now, people are talking about, it's the end, the beginning of the end. So that's what globalization is on a decline and very fast. That's a happy thought. So I remember when I was traveling in Europe, this is maybe 20, even 30 years ago, and I was traveling from France to Germany. And there's a river, I wanna say it's the Rhine River possibly, it was a river there. And you cross the river into Germany. And we were driving, it was remarkable that there was no sign of the boundary at all. The border was completely invisible. There was no guardhouse, there was not even a mark on the road, there was no indicator, whatever. And the only thing is the next town you got to, they spoke German, that's all. And I said to myself, this is a new kind of enlightenment that you can get around Europe without even knowing where the borders are. This is a marvelous thing. It only speaks of, and then a few years later, Thomas Freeman wrote his first flat world article for the New York Times. And that was really important because he, as usual, he recognized a development that we hadn't noticed, a sea change. And that was also very enlightening. And you thought, gee whiz, with all these trade agreements that you spoke of, with the travel restrictions being lifted, all that heavy bureaucracy on passports and visas, gradually being lifted. And of course, technology helps to communicate across the borders and to translate an automatic translation, automated translational. The world was becoming one. And of course, there were points of resistance here and there, points of disagreement and violence and wars, even genocides were happening. But in general, it seemed to be coming together with the exception of a few areas that were focused on negative things and destructive things. But what's happened, and let me ask you, what's happened in the last couple of years, it hasn't been that long. Tom Friedman has to change his mind and David Brooks. Changes his mind too. The Enlightenment seems to be over. And the first thing that happens, that suggests that we have to reinstate national boundaries, that we have to reinstate travel, we have to be careful, even paranoid, is COVID? COVID dropped the curtain around every country and to some extent still is. So what effect do you think that, the COVID pandemic had on this process, this trend we were seeing on the flat world, on globalization? CJ, the oneness of the global system was just, you had these small little ripples when you had make in America, make in China, make in India. Nobody said, stay inside your boundaries. It was always make here and try to prosper outside. But this, which struck was giving something people to, it forced people to stay inside their boundaries. You couldn't give outside. So you have to look within your boundaries. And that is when the entire concept of borderless, limitless, transparent interactions comes to a standstill. So now to work across this implosion is going to be something of a task because you have to have these bilateral, multilateral agreements, you have to keep them going because we cannot undo the work of four, five decades in a minute because globalization was bringing prosperity to all. The political norm of democracy was bringing peace more than it was because two democracies never go to war, rarely go to war together. That is a proven talent. That's very interesting. That's a very interesting notion. Yes. So you have these thriving concepts. Why should we let them go at the blink of an eye? It's a phase. We have to pass through this phase and we have to bring the entire international system to such a point that we come back to the oneness because this oneness helped us in the exact COVID pandemic when supplies were being transferred from the HAVNOTs to the HAVs, sorry, the HAVs to the HAVNOTs. So you have this COVAX system where economies of countries from people who are vaccines going to no vaccines. You have this give and take, you have this balancing act going on. Can you let it go just on the basis of two worlds to a pandemic? No, these two points cannot make you has say that it's the end of the pandemic. So we have to look forward on this, isn't it? Well, Ben, the other thing, as I mentioned in my remarks a minute ago, that there were, even as globalization was arising, there were certain parts of the world that where it wasn't happening, which were focused on violence and terrorism and so forth. And one of those places, of course, is the Middle East, which has a pension for violence and all that. It's not like you wanna get up and take a trip to the Middle East. Back in the 100 years ago, people would go to the Middle East regularly. I mean, some of these countries that are now impossible, they would go and they would have a nice tourist experience. But all that has ended. You wouldn't go to Syria in a million years now. And so what's happened while we were enjoying, if you will, the globalism in say the Western countries and the larger country, India certainly was enjoying globalism. And to some extent, Africa and Latin America, not to a lesser extent, I would say. In the Middle East, it was decompensating. It was getting more and more violent. And then now you look and you realize that Mr. Putin was involved in destroying Aleppo. And the same general that he's bringing in for the Donbass in Ukraine is the general who destroyed Aleppo. How interesting a coincidence is that. And so what you find is that the areas that have gone, that have resisted globalism have created violence and anti-globalism are the areas like that, like the Middle East. And Mr. Putin is involved in both places. We weren't really watching. We weren't watching that general. We weren't watching what was going on in Aleppo. Donald Trump wasn't watching for sure. He was completely naive about it. And so now we find looking back that actually this process that David Brooks writes about, this anti-globalism, reverse globalism actually has been happening in some areas of the world for a while. We just weren't watching. And we weren't watching who was responsible. And we weren't connecting the dots. It seems to me your point a minute ago is really, really important that democratic countries don't generally go to war with each other. It's the autocrats who are seeking territory and power and I don't know, genocide, whatever it might be. They're the ones who are going backward. They're the ones who don't want globalism. Is that right? Yeah, there were areas of perpetual conflict. Why? Because it is in the interest of this Mr. Putin to keep them in perpetual conflict. It gave him a hold over there and gave him a hidden hold. We did not know he is supporting Syria so wholeheartedly for over 10 years. We did not know this, that he is involved in Middle Eastern politics so deeply. Now when Saudi Arabia refuses to speak to Biden, pick up the phone calls, there is a certain backing with which they have this confidence. So you have this kind of a system where you have a hidden player and you have an outspoken player. But both are superpowers. Two superpowers are driving this globalization and two extremely different ideological backgrounds of both. And both work in interest of each other. Now you have, we are at such a phase in international politics where they're not blinking. So nobody, you know, we have a point where we can go blind. So, and both have, you know, Russia has 6,600 nuclear weapons. America has 5,600 nuclear weapons. The world can go a couple of times, you know, we don't know, we have to be careful about what they decide, what they do. The confrontation cannot go beyond the point. It can just be to a point of saying, hey, do this, but you can't go and, you can't provoke the other person in such a way that it existential, you know, they have reactions to that. So it is such a delicate game that America has to play right now. It's such a delicate game because we have, like you rightly pointed out, hidden elements which are against the very, a tenet of democracy or very tenet of globalization. So these hidden termites are going to keep on troubling us till we have, it's going to be now, what do you say? You have to have a more alert game in this. Yeah, well, you know, that's problematic. I think, you know, again, as in the case of the Middle East, people don't realize it and I don't think they realize what you're talking about right now. The silo that Putin has painted around himself is very dangerous because first of all, he gives up any notion of altruism, of enlightenment, of trying to make the world a better place. That's the last thing on his mind. He's only interested in power, and by the way, Trump was the same way. Only interested in power and not really interested in helping people, making the world a better place, you know, making humanity a happier lot. So that's really problematic because he does have the weapons and he has the ability, through his propaganda, to control the public population in his country. So what we have is they're all, I shouldn't say all, but most of them are behind him right now, so far. And you're right, he's not blinking. In fact, the United States is blinking. Western Europe is blinking. Right, Western Europe is blinking. I'm not blinking hot. You know what, it comes to, let me throw a possibility at you and see what you think. If you pose a Western democracy, Western-style democracy, because as you and I have discussed, not all democracies are the same. They don't always reach the same conclusions, but there are certain fundamental, you know, common denominators. So in the case of a Western democracy, trying to do the blink game, okay, and then Putin, who is slightly psychopathic, he doesn't do the blink game. It seems to me that when you pose them together in a kind of contention, a deterrence process, if you will, who blinks process, if you will, Putin will win that. Because often pathological people win this kind of game and democracies have trouble making their minds up. They're democracies. They're tumultuous. They don't necessarily agree on things. And so I really think that Putin has the advantage and he also has the ability to deconstruct globalism virtually, as you said, virtually overnight. Yes. See, Jay, they have, even Trump, he has the jingoism of nationalism behind him. So you have people who will go all out for him. They will think they're doing for the country. So when they talk, they talk of country, Russia, America, making America, they raise the sentiments. And you can't deny the fact that Putin has been the czar of Russia for as long as Biden has been in the Congress. So his experience at international relations is far ahead of Biden. He has more friends for longer time than Biden. Biden has to understand his limitations and then work towards this. I mean, you have a friend who was with you for two, three decades, and somebody will come into your group and say, let's beat up this guy. You will not. There is some affiliation. There is some camaraderie that happens which this allows you to do that. Putin has been working on his relation of building Russia up. For so many years, so he has that outlook. He has that, he has a personality with which he has built his own personal rapport with all these international players. Biden has to work on it. He has to be smarter on his approach. And playing with Ukraine in such a way that Ukraine will wait till the war is over. No, we have to understand that we are facing an equal enemy. You know, we can't say that. And the domestic front. An adversary. Yeah, so that we have to be a little bit careful in how we deal with it. It can be a one hammer and out of Libya, Saudi Arabia, sorry, so down where we can just change and come out or we can have absolute change. It's a person who's been on the throne for a long time. His experience at international relations is undoubtedly more than Biden's is. Yeah, and he's been courting countries in Africa, courting Latin America, courting China on an on and off basis and courting India. And they feel a certain obligation to him. They want more of that. They want to be courted. And so he has a certain leverage. And as you say, he's been working on that for a long time for decades and decade. The United States is not as sophisticated in terms of foreign policy. United States is Biden. Personally, he doesn't have the personality to take on Putin in the international arena. He's using the same words. He's using the same. His approach has to be absolutely different. Oh, you target him in another way. You can't go sanction, sanction, sanction and say that because he's a spy. He's a spy who started to president. He's going to be better at the game than we are. So we have to be more, the approach has to be absolutely different. He's not some Monak who's just by birth. He's worked his way up the ranks. He's gone up to the point of being Zahar of Russia. So we have to understand he is smarter here. And his support comes from these economies, these which depend on him. Now, you see one thing, Europe. It's the Western world. It's the first world, everything. They are still dependent on Putin. And what about when winter comes? Can they say sanctions on Russia? No, there will be a difficulty in saying sanctions on Russia when your house is heated up because of Russian oil and gas. So you have to understand that these people have a personal approach to international relations in this game because the oil and fuel which comes to the house comes from Russia. Germany will never leave dependent because heavy industries of Germany depend on Russia. How can you close down the industrial country of Europe? I wanted to ask you about that. So Putin creates the problem and the US reacts by saying, well, we need sanctions and the sanctions are economic sanctions. They don't work immediately. They may not work in the long run either because Biden doesn't realize that Putin has ways around the sanctions. And he's doing that. But the bottom line, though, is that the sanctions on Russia, closing down the border with Russia, not trading with Russia, and the oil and gas is really important to the global economy, is damaging the global economy right now. And the notion in Western Europe, we are not only gonna isolate them now, but it's going on for a while. I mean, this is something we're gonna do for a while and we're gonna isolate them and punish them for a long time because look at all the damage they've done. But what I'm getting at, though, is I think the damage here, which was created by Putin, for sure, and is being perpetuated by Putin, is going to last for a while. It is a significant element in the reverse globalization process, don't you think? See, Jay, that is absolutely point on. Now you see, there was a couple of days back when Ellen Musk uses the Star Group of Satellites to bring in Ukraine maps. You have the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia. The Russian Prime Minister is saying, I'm going to blast you in space, so space, which was a common entity in globalization, where you had such cooperation between Russia and America, now becomes a ground of thrashing. So now you have something which is one more common ground being eaten up. Now, what about climate change? You have these bombs being, operated everywhere. You know, the environment is gone for a toss. Fossil fuels are still going to be burned. So when common grounds are being eroded, globalization is also on the decline. And it is here, and not as there's a peak, this is the trove of globalization. And we have to see countries through it. So seeing Putin through this phase is what is in the best interest of the international system at this point. Well, let me ask you the hardest question in town. Ready for a hard question? Absolutely. What can be done to reverse the process that Putin has accelerated? What can be done to return to globalization? I mean, he's a really angry pathological person, but he's making everybody else angry too. And the curtains are coming down everywhere. How do you reverse that? Especially given the fact that he's not going to change his style. Yes. See, this is a repeated story in Ukraine we have from Georgia. When he sees somebody entering NATO, the Warsaw in him gets angry. So you have Mario Polpoly and you have him gloating, correct? Now we have to save lives in Ukraine. He has to, somebody has to say, okay, you know, I mean, Zelsinski has to open the map and say, now I have to stop. I will say maybe for the timing, I will not join NATO. Just stop this bombardment, bring it to a standstill and then proceed from then on. You know, you have to give space, time to rejuvenate in war zones. Even the ancient wars had closing down at sunset. But these people don't relent. They're going on 24 hours for two months, almost the bombing is going on. Has there been any respite for anybody? Just lives are being taken away. Well, but there's one aggressor and the rest of them are on the defensive. I mean, would you agree with me that this war will widen because he's doubling down every day. And he's taking all these steps to be sure that he can claim he won this war before their national holiday on May 9th in Russia. I mean, he's not about to back off. And is that the way you deal with a pathological leader? Do you give them a break? You tell them, okay, you won. Or do you fight with him and beat him? This is a real big human nature question here. Jay, on the seventh day they were in Kiev. They could have taken the presidential palace and changed the government and it would have been over. But he wants it to stretch to a point where the rubble comes up, where Russia comes up, where there is a reinforcement of his position. So this war is being stretched by him and he will stretch it to such a point that he will conquer because they don't have it when you're a soldier. You don't give up. You don't give up in your mind whether you're on the losing side, whether you're on the winning side, you will never give up. And as a statesman, I think even Biden would not give up. So we have to see that it's a long drawn effort that is going to take place this time. And alliances are going to be formed. Hidden alliances are going to be formed. Countries are going to continue supporting Russia. On the front, they will come and say, hey, we don't like this, but the oil will be taken, the petrol will still be bought. Vatican deposited money on the second day, one day before it reflects the second day. But you see how damaging that is. That's very damaging that you give up globalism, that you give up the rule of law, that you give up the liberal order of society, of the world, just to satisfy a monster. What you're saying, the messaging is so clear. You're saying, okay, you win. It's all right that you did genocide. It's all right that you did it. You invaded and did atrocities. We're going to give you a pass. And furthermore, we're going to withdraw the sanctions. So the messaging is really scary because you know that he and others will do it again. And so we have- It's a bully mentality that they have and they needed to please their ego, you know that? They have a mentality where, hey, you cannot do what I say you can't do. So unless you listen to that and it's such a big country, it's a superpower, we cannot call it a rogue state and get away with it. You know, globalization itself made Russia such an integral part of the economic system. Putting it out is bringing the adverse effects which we would not have wanted. A small state being out of the system and a superpower being out of the system, there's a difference in the adversity of effects. So economic sanctions can continue. They should continue because to teach a lesson, but how far will they learn is the value of the lesson. If they're not willing to sit in the class, how can we give the lesson? They have gone to the rubble. So what about to deal with my hard question, okay? What do we do to stop him? You know, the natural answer, if you think back, the natural answer is the United Nations. It's not just the criminal court of justice, although that hasn't been very effective and it's not the soldiers with the blue helmets because they haven't been effective. It's the United Nations. And if you say, just being Aristotelian about this, if you say, okay, here's somebody breaking all the rules and here's the organization that's supposed to enforce the rules and they are not enforcing the rules for whatever reason, they are not doing what it takes to push back, you have a failed organization. And I have to say that, I think who said, oh yeah, I was Zelensky said it, that the United Nations is a failed organization. He said dissolved. Theoretically though, theoretically, the United Nations should be able to say to Putin, no. You know, you're a naughty child and you have to stop that right now, they can't say no. My first book was about the reform of the United Nations in which I said, I spoke about the veto power being used. And so you have the naughty child having the veto power. So everybody will say no, no, no, no, no. And in the end he will say yes, he has got the veto power. So the entire United Nations is at his mercy too. So a single power and he's got two of them, they were China. So the United Nations is ineffective in this conflict as is in, you know, when you have this veto power at the helm of the United Nations, it doesn't work. So reforming the United Nations is still on after so many years. Well, you know, that's an interesting question. It could, it should be reformed, but could it be reformed? And some people say the United Nations as the League of Nations was a, you know, a child of a war. You have to have a war and you have to see people, millions of people die. And then you say, gee, that wasn't a good idea. We probably don't want to do that again. So let's make a deal. And so you get the United Nations. So my question to you, and this is my last question because we're out of time, is all this considered everything we've talked about today, Roopmati. Okay. Is war inevitable? Yes, war is inevitable in international relations because war is an expression of your power. It's an expression of your presence in the international system. So even if a small conflict, even if it's an armed rebellion, even if it's a nuclear attack, it's going to be inevitable in the international relations to stamp authority on the international system to show who's the boss. And I'm still relevant is also one of the crux of the reasons that countries are going to war. And now war has become, you know, China is waiting to strike Taiwan if it was given in a little bit of a free hand. You know, you have these military exercises which are happening and confrontational military exercises taking place within the conflict zone. So you have this confrontational attitude right now in international relations, which is a volatility in the international system has increased to such a point that we are on the verge of seeing an attack anywhere, anytime, any moment. It's like that. It's about the domestic problems of each and every country. That's about as far away from the globalism as you can possibly get. War is reality or realism, isn't it? Yeah. Okay, everybody. I feel a lot better about everything now. Me too. Thank you very much for discussing this with me. Thank you so much. And I want to check back with you on the progress in your book and see how you wrap your thinking around the events that will now follow every day. Yes. Thank you for participating in this discussion. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Jay. Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. Thank you, everybody. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.