The world economy has grown over the past few decades. We could owe this to the emergence of globalization which has indisputably been one of the most important contributors to the economic affluence. But what exactly is globalization? Globalization is the international interaction and integration driven by global trade and investment and aided by Information Technology. The genesis of globalization has extremely changed the structure of the world economy through an integrated world-wide market, interchange of world views and other cultural aspects. It was said to be an irreversible and inexorable trend of the world market development.
However, during the 2008 economic crisis, the credence of economic globalization was invalidated. Some inevitable problems and conflicts in regards to the process of globalization were criticized constantly. This criticism led to countries that were somewhat developed begin to blow off trade liberalization and protectionism. This led to a new term-deglobalization which simply means diminishing interdependence and integration between certain units globally. Some countries started embracing the reversed ideology quietly. To ascertain the effect of globalization and deglobalization, we would have to take examples of countries that have embraced or rejected either of these two ideologies and assess their effectualness.
Many countries have had a share in the benefits of globalization. Breaking it down to a few, one such country is Israel. Israel has felt the impact of globalization following the Israel/Palestine dispute, which is an extreme case of ethno-territorial nationalisms, fuelled by visions of the nation-its history and its destiny. This made Israelis and Palestinians natural candidates for the US-sponsored negotiations that took place in the 1990s. Recently, the US relocated its embassy.
Onto countries that have embraced deglobalization now. An example is the UK, through Brexit- a portmanteau of ‘British’ and ‘exit’. It is an impending withdrawal of the UK from the European Union following the referendum of 23 June 2016 when 51.9% of voters chose to leave the EU. Some of the reasons that led to Brexit include dysfunctional economic trend, sovereignty, and political elitism. The UK is scheduled to leave the EU at 11 pm UK time on Friday, 29 March 2019 but so many MPs are against it. They fear that they would have no ability to strike trade deals with other countries and this would lead to an economic crisis. This is evidently a disadvantage of deglobalization.
Another country that has for a long time embraced deglobalization is Cuba. However, as a result of economic necessity, Cuba is slowly accepting globalization. One of Cuba’s more peculiar idiosyncrasies is its two currencies-The Cuban peso (CUP) and the Cuban convertible peso (CUC) which are both legal tender on the island though neither is exchangeable in foreign markets. The CUC is worth about 25 times as much as CUP. Those who use CUP are forced to make long queues to get whatever they want while those using CUC can get anything they want in the parallel market. This has led to the formation of social classes in a society where everyone was supposed to be equal. Cuba has lagged behind technologically, economically and politically partly because of isolating themselves.
In my opinion, globalization is a better cake to taste than deglobalization. It has less negativity and more positivity to it. No man is an island. Equally, no country can thrive all on its own. We need each other in order for each of us to make a step forward.
