As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman notes in his worthwhile though incomplete book celebrating globalization, between the mid-1800s and the late 1920s the world shrank a full size, from large to medium. The Industrial Revolution produced an outpouring of goods, colonies provided raw materials for industrial countries, and ships and the telegraph linked continents politically and economically. A series of laboriously worked-out agreements since World War II has been phasing in this new economic order, and current undertakings have a timetable for further reducing impediments to trade, with poorer countries given additional time to make the transitions. The full implications of globalization are rather extraordinary. As Friedman frequently points out, like it or not, the time for choosing whether to globalize has essentially passed.
Globalization is here, apparently to stay.
Countries that do not wish to participate simply get left behind economically. Under the new regimen, the market rules. Friedman does recognize that, with few exceptions, countries no longer have the freedom to set their domestic economic agendas without the threat of a run on their currencies or a collapse of their stock markets if their policies run contrary to what the international financial community considers prudent. But globalization takes this trend much further. If restraints of trade on grounds of health or the environment are permissible only if they are scientifically verifiable, for instance, then Europeans have to accept beef from our hormone-fed cattle, like it or not, unless they can authenticate a threat to public health with solid scientific evidence.