The Economist sees so much gained, so much to lose, with the fall of the Berlin Wall:
Western capitalism’s victory over its rotten communist rival does not ensure it an enduring franchise from voters. As Karl Marx pointed out during globalisation’s last great surge forward in the 19th century, the magic of comparative advantage can be wearing—and cruel. It leaves behind losers in concentrated clumps (a closed tyre factory, for instance), whereas the more numerous winners (everybody driving cheaper cars) are disparate. It makes the wealthy very wealthy: in a global market, you will hit a bigger jackpot than in a local one. And capitalism has always been prone to spectacular booms and busts.Above all politics remains stubbornly local. All that economic integration has not been matched politically. And to the extent that there is a global guarantor of the current system, it is America, a country which as globalisation works will continue to lose relative power. Thanks to its generosity in exporting the secrets of success, it now has China closer to its shoulder and other emerging giants are catching up. Public support for protectionism has surged in the United States.
In the affairs of man, wounded pride and xenophobia often trump economic reason. Why else would Russia terrorise its gas customers? Or Britons demonise the EU? In a rational world China would not stir up Japanophobia and rich Saudis would not help Islamic extremists abroad. Many businesspeople, too busy on their BlackBerrys to worry about nationalism or fundamentalism, might ponder Keynes’s description of a prosperous Londoner before August 1914: sipping his morning tea in bed, ordering goods from around the world over the telephone, regarding that age of globalisation as “normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement” and dismissing “the politics of militarism” and “racial and cultural rivalries” as mere “amusements in his daily newspaper”.
August 1914 should ring a bell.
(Hat tip to Younghusband.)