World on Fire - Brownstein, Michael [5]
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There was also the time that the U.S. government hired New York–based Burson-Marsteller, the world’s largest public relations firm, to help sell free market capitalism to the people of Kazakhstan. Among other ideas, Burson-Marsteller developed a television soap opera miniseries glorifying privatization. In one episode, two hapless families desperately want a new house but don’t know how to build it. Suddenly a hot-air balloon descends from the sky, bearing the name “Soros Foundation” in huge letters. Americans spring out, erect the house, and soar away, leaving the awe-struck Kazakhstanis cheering wildly.
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In the end, however, stories about American naïveté and incompetence are just a sideshow. The fact is that in the last two decades, the American-led global spread of markets and democracy has radically transformed the world. Both directly and through powerful international institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization (WTO), the United States government has helped bring capitalism and democratic elections to literally billions of people. At the same time, American multinationals, foundations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have swept the world, bringing with them ballot boxes and Burger Kings, hip-hop and Hollywood, banking codes and American-drafted constitutions.
The prevailing view among globalization’s supporters is that markets and democracy are a kind of universal prescription for the multiple ills of underdevelopment. Market capitalism is the most efficient economic system the world has ever known. Democracy is the fairest political system the world has ever known and the one most respectful of individual liberty. Working hand in hand, markets and democracy will gradually transform the world into a community of prosperous, war-shunning nations, and individuals into liberal, civic-minded citizens and consumers. In the process, ethnic hatred, religious zealotry, and other “backward” aspects of underdevelopment will be swept away.
Thomas Friedman has been a brilliant proponent of this dominant view. In his best-selling book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, he reproduced a Merrill Lynch ad that said “The spread of free markets and democracy around the world is permitting more people everywhere to turn their aspirations into achievements,” erasing “not just geographical borders but also human ones.” Globalization, Friedman elaborated, “tends to turn all friends and enemies into ‘competitors.’” Friedman also proposed his “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention” which claims that “no two countries that both have McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other. . . .”
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For globalization’s enthusiasts, the cure for group hatred and ethnic violence around the world is straightforward: more markets and more democracy. Thus after the September 11 attacks, Friedman published an op-ed piece pointing to India and Bangladesh as good “role models” for the Middle East and arguing that the solution to terrorism and militant Islam is: “Hello? Hello? There’s a message here. It’s democracy, stupid!”—“[m]ulti-ethnic, pluralistic, free-market democracy.”
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By contrast, the sobering thesis of this book is that the global spread of markets and democracy is a principal, aggravating cause of group hatred and ethnic violence throughout the non-Western world. In the numerous societies around the world that have a market-dominant