The Difference between Globalization and Americanization

Too many people in the world see globalization and Americanization as the same thing. Their idea is that America wants everyone to be just like them and adopt their way of doing business, but it is not America that is trying to get everyone to change, it is the new globalizied world. Before the Berlin wall fell there were two superpowers: the Soviet Union and America. Countries could get by on the resources provided by either one of these superpowers without having to be democratic or capitalist, but instead by just choosing a side and receive funding from them. When the wall came down only one superpower was left: the power to tap into the global stock and bond markets, by seeking out multinationals to invest in your country and by selling into the global trading system that your factories could provide for. And this global marketplace is made up of anonymous stock, bond, and currency traders and multinational investors connected by screens and networks. Not America. Nobody is in control of it and it doesn’t play favorites like the old superpowers used to. It only follows the rules. America doesn’t force anyone to be capitalistic, democratic and global; globalization does. America can’t stop it either-except at a huge cost to their society. And America didn’t set the rules; they are just the best at following them.
These rules that globalization asks for are those that will attract this group of anonymous stock, bond, and currency traders to invest. And to make them want to invest, your country needs to show stability, predictability, transparency, and the ability to transfer and protect its private property from arbitrary or criminal confiscation. And they don’t cut anyone any slack. America is at the mercy of this new superpower just as much as everyone else. Countries cannon thrive today without plugging into the global system and leaning how to make the most out of this new superpower.
America doesn’t choose who is rich and who isn’t; every country chooses its level of prosperity. It really is a choice that can be consciously made by putting the right policies in place. And more and more people want to do it because they more fully understand how other people, particularly successful nations, live by watching them on satellite TV and surfing the internet. Too many people see globalization as a threat to their way of life when in reality that isn’t the threat at all; the threat is their own lack of not applying themselves to the new rules of the system to increase their freedoms. Countries that have fallen behind say that it is America’s fault. But really it is because they failed to put in place even the minimum political, economic, and legal infrastructure to take advantage of globalization. Prosperity didn’t run away from them, they failed to make choices that would encourage it to say.
People have a hard time making the distinction between Americanization and Globalization because America is the country that best fits the new globalization role and is having the most success with it. The American model is the one that the rest of the world is being pressured by globalization to emulate. For many people this Americanization globalization is an attractive way to raise their living standards. But to others it feels like America is whipping everyone else to speed up, web up, downsize, standardize and march to America’s cultural tunes in the fast world. And they will have to if they want to compete in a globalized world. America insists that the rest of the world be like them for their own good.
America is a democratic country which is the kind of government that best applies to globalization. The new superpower of global investors is driven to get inside certain countries not because it values democracy per se. It doesn’t. It values stability, predictability, transparency, and the ability to transfer and protect its private property from arbitrary or criminal confiscation. But to secure these things, the global investors need developing countries to put in place better software, operating systems and governance-which are the building blocks to democracy. Globalization creates a much higher cost for any country that tolerates corruption.
Many people fear that they will be left behind trying to chase after Globalization or they will lose their identity trying to catch it. People detest the way globalization homogenizes people, brings strangers into their homes with strange ways, and erases distinctiveness of cultures that locate and anchor you in the world. These are legitimate concerns but instead of throwing all the blame on George Bush and those blood sucking Americans, its time to start pointing the blame at globalization itself, where it rightly belongs.
(Source: The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas L. Friedman)