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GLOBALISATION

This series of articles is the result of a presentation I made on the subject and a later
lecture by the Barbadian economist/natural scientist, Leroy McClean, dealing atypically
with the governance aspect of globalisation. Someone in the audience felt that the topic
was important enough to be shared with everyone in the CARICOM Region. Write it
down, she advised. I am undertaking that responsibility.

The first point that I wish to make is that globalisation is not merely a matter of
economics or business. It is also about acculturation, about governance, about global
health and pretty much any aspect of human life that one can imagine. So no one is in a
cocoon. It will affect you. The second point is that globalisation is not new. The high-
risk, high-yield daring that Keniche Ohmae speaks of in his book The Invisible
Continent is not new. It was the stuff of which the earliest capitalist economist, Adam
Smith spoke in his book, The Wealth of Nations. Coca-cola, the hamburger and
chewing gum have long been icons of cultural globalisation. What is new is the rate at
which the process has spread. This has largely been the result of the cyber revolution,
travel everywhere and the consequent immediacy of all communication from anywhere in
the world to anywhere else in the world. What is also relatively new (1990) is the
removal of the USSR from the scene. The USSR was a clear inhibitor to the global march
of the multinational corporations, who are the prime actors in globalisation. In political
terms, globalisation is about the emergent supremacy of global capitalism as a political
force.

It is fashionable to use Ohmaes terminology when one speaks about globalisation in
phrases like the fully borderless economy. Some of us have taken this to mean that we
will all participate in the global economy. This dream is no more easily realisable than it
has been to date. The ability to source materials in any part of the world and produce
them in any part of the world for any other part of the world hardly means that our poor
countries (accustomed to mono-crop economies and the continued haggling with our
trading partners over the price of rice, sugar, cotton and bananas) will suddenly become
part of the global power play. What it does mean is that unless we shape up and change
our attitudes and habits, we will be, euphemistically put, marginalised. The fully
borderless economy will be helpful to those who master, and preferably, own the new
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technologies and who have, in place, the capital, the management and the labour skills to
mobilize production at the global level.

One other element of globalisation is the North Atlantic States insistence that democracy
is a sine qua non in the march towards global harmony. It is sometimes referred to as
good governance. Here it deals not only with the transparent process of properly held
elections, but also to the non-corrupt and transparent running of countries. As an aside, it
should be noted that corruption is not peculiar to Third World countries like our own, and
the absence of transparency is a fairly common factor in most so-called democratic
governments. It is also clear that for strategic economic reasons, the principle of good
governance is not universally enforced among client states.

What it also deals with is a sort of global governance, once only forced on us by the
World Bank and the IMF, but now also by the WTO, and the OECD in areas where they
fear that we are competing (as was the case with low taxation in what they call offshore
havens) with their economies. Whatever may be said for globalisation in the business
sphere, there is a great deal to be suspicious about in the area of global governance.

Let us be a little more specific with respect to the forms of globalisation that are creeping
in upon us. The economic side to globalisation has been pretty well articulated by the
WTO. It is assumed that there is a universal world of knowledge (by definition freely
available to all), trade and financial flows covering the entire world, worldwide operation
of multinationals and a globally attentive mass media (CNN?BBC?Fox?). According to
this view, governments, societies and businesses become interdependent. Science and
technology will drive the new world forward.

The fundamental flaw in this vision is that the world is not all developed and ready for
this new nirvana. Somalia or Afghanistan is no more ready for the neo-liberal economic
philosophy that drives this process than the USA is prepared to concede an inch of its
political sovereignty to small countries anywhere. In this new world, the only countries
that will be able to buck the trend established by the neo-liberalists will be Brazil, China,
India and, if that country can continue its present upward slide, Russia. The rest of us can
only try to beat down the process by negotiation, where this remains a possibility or by
allying with those who can collectively make an impact on the system that still allows for
some of our values to persist.
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In brief, globalisation is a combination of political and economic ideologies, which date
back at least to Adam Smith. It must not be forgotten that Smith was very clear on the
politics of it all. For him, Government had three essential functions: these were protection
from external intrusion, the avoidance of the internal violence of one member against
another and the erection of certain institutions that it would benefit no individual to erect
in the absence of any profit- presumably roads and schools, for instance. By the time this
had filtered down to Milton Friedman, the guru of the Chicago School of economists, it
was believed that even schools should be private institutions that parents should pay for,
and that Government should be involved in as little as possible. It should be understood
that the European concept of the supremacy of the individual over the group, a view alien
to those of us of African, Asian or Amerindian origins, is the basis of both their
conceptualisation of democracy and economic theory. Clearly both their view of society
as a simple collection of individuals and the primacy of private investment, work for a
small group of individuals in any society, but those individuals in our societies who
believe that they fall into this category may well find themselves out of place in the larger
global society. Even George Soros, who by his own confession made more money (on
currency speculation etc) than he needed, admits that societies derive their cohesion from
shared values. He therefore asks how a society can find shared values in a borderless
world.




GLOBALISATION 2


What is the fundamental idea behind globalisation? It is that there will be a globally open
market in goods, production and in distribution. This means that the national market will,
in principle at least, give way to the communal, global market. As one is aware, e-
business can be conducted between any member of one of our societies and a company in
any other part of the world. In the WTO, we have negotiated away most of the barriers
from the establishment of any business anywhere in any country, whether the business be
a retail operation or a manufacturing one. This is why Kmart can establish in Barbados,
while in pre-WTO Barbados McDonalds had a hard time.
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This means that there will be a great deal of buying up of human capital by those already
in the global business and the jostling for space wherever there is business to be done.
The entire world will be open for inventors and innovators. Those who have amassed the
capital, the human capital in areas like research, innovation and management, will drive
business. In the new world, one must invent, innovate or die. The process, though not yet
at its most rapid, is upon us. What concerns me most is the apparent casual absence of
any real preparation for it. We have already signed the various WTO documents that put
us in the fold. We did this perhaps because we saw that it was impossible to be left out.
We therefore went ahead even where we were not ready.

The WTO was a signal step in the process of globalisation. It came conveniently after the
Soviet Union had fallen. The perhaps greatest impediment was removed in a few months
into 1990, and the North Atlantic was ready once again for global conquest. The old
GATT had been too obviously a rich mans club with decisions being handed down
essentially among the worlds greatest traders. The interference of the Cairns group,
consisting of Australia, New Zealand etc was sometimes heard and attended to. The USA
maintained several of its internal rules and tended to view the GATT as useful only
where it suited that country.

However, the WTO brought a common set of rules to international trade. Its avowed
function was to break down barriers. One of the fundamental problems was that it still
left the powerful with all their might in place. Thus in the Brussels negotiations, what
happened was that a struggle developed between US and the EU on agriculture mainly
tropical agriculture, while the rest of us hung around in corridors. In an interview, I
suggested that what was happening was that the elephants were fighting. However, in the
African rendering of this battle, when the elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. In
this context, we were clearly the grass. What became clear on agriculture was that for the
powerful, food security was of paramount importance. Thus Japan converted, in keeping
with the new WTO rules, its former barrier on the importation of rice into an enormous
tariff, about ten times the conventional 40% considered reasonable on agricultural
products. Haiti, by contrast, was forced by the familiar institutions to lower its tariffs on
most agricultural products to as little as 5% or 0%. Haiti is now bound by such
concessions.

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Our lack of preparedness and our failure to grab on to detail a normal weakness in most
small ex-colonies led us into negotiations where our greatest advantage was that we
were on the inside, not that membership brought us new strengths. Even when the
document the WTO Bible was out, we did not study its contents to the point that we
could make use of its provisions for safeguards and protection of the national entity. We,
in CARICOM, only nominally went into this together. With three countries of the group
being normally present in Geneva, and with no provision to allow the CARICOM
Secretariat to propose and run a joint Mission there, we were poorly served. Interestingly,
simultaneously, we all had sumptuous representation in London, and in the case of
Suriname, Amsterdam. We are evidently still tied to the colonial apron strings, typically
children of the shadows.

Globalisation in its economic form is therefore likely to find us wanting. Without a total
and committed CARICOM union, we lack what is called the critical mass either in
Trinidad and Tobago or Barbados or Jamaica to go it alone. We desperately lack the
infrastructure in most of the Region to proceed easily from here. Most of our vaunted
education levels are inappropriate with subjects like Religious Knowledge superseding
Economics and English Literature being considerably more important that contemporary
studies, which would include factors like globalisation. Additionally, our preparation, in
areas like computer skills, falls woefully behind countries like India and the Ukraine; and
our science and marketing skills lag behind, within our own league, those of Nigeria and
Mauritius. This leaves us with a great gap to bridge and a long road to travel very
quickly. We need immediately to brainstorm particularly on the business aspect of
globalisation to determine where we need to concentrate. Is it not perhaps niche markets?
How do we innovate when we are so resistant to change even within the body of our
bureaucracies?









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GLOBALISATION 3

One of the most worrying aspects of globalisation is the matter of global health. In this
field, globalisation was with us long before the advent of HIV/AIDS, perhaps the worst
and most insidious of global diseases, starting, I believe with the case of a young Kansas
youth, whose doctor could not analyse the disease but preserved the telling tissues. It was
with us in the various forms of the flu called by myriad names, normally Asian, even if
we were sure that our strain came from the North Atlantic, the worst strains of which
killed millions in the period 1918-1919. It started with the greater global travel that was
already occurring several decades ago. It is indeed because of this travel and mans
headlong plunge deeper into the forests of Africa, Asia and South America that we have
now begun to encounter new diseases unheard of two decades ago.

The anthrax attacks in the USA as well as the drift of the Nile virus gradually southward
from New York remind us of the fragility of all health systems in a global environment.
The so-called Nile virus appeared in New York among both human beings and birds,
with its consequent migration. Health, too, as we have seen in the anthrax case can be
used as a means of global terror from without or within.

Globalisation has also meant following eating habits fostered by television advertising
and by constant efforts to increase productivity in the savage area of animal breeding for
human consumption. Thus feeding animals back to other animals evidently resulted in the
conversion possibly of scrapies into BSE, the so-called mad cow disease. What should
we call the human form, which seems to be in existence, but is carefully hidden to protect
the purveyors of the meat trade? The trade in canned meats means a possible global
spread of some diseases. It also means of course the copying of life forms that result in
our abandoning our old habits of eating what we grew and substituting such food with
canned food. It is perhaps for this reason that our cancer levels have risen in countries
like Barbados to among the top 5 within the hemisphere.

We have also abandoned walking and will even park directly outside anywhere we
happen to be visiting, even if this blocks all other traffic. We have in this respect been
adopting the individualistic approach that we hear so much of from the North, while
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neglecting the care for the community that distinguished us some forty or fifty years ago.
This too is globalisation, as well as the other fads like contemporary clothing as well as
acts of violence committed by our young folk. These fads are simply the result of global
television and our own belief that what comes from out there is better than anything we
can invent.

In health and habit terms therefore, globalisation can be seen to be enslaving us in the
peculiar sense that without the wherewithal of the North Americans- we simply are not as
productive- we imitate what they call their life styles and consequently lose touch with
the more sanitary aspects of our own culture. Do your own thing is not part of our
cultural remit, but it has become very much so, from the grabbing and venal bureaucrat to
the ordinary man in the street. No longer is the village, which was needed to raise a child,
part of our reality. Send him or her to the best schools if we can afford it, or simply leave
him or her on the corner or elsewhere in the hood to learn the ways of this new world.

There is, however, something very positive as well in global television and global health.
We need perhaps to establish priorities and make good choices, where possible.
Discovery Channel has added to the stock of knowledge of some of our better-guided
children. Occasionally they even embarrass their parents by wanting to talk about animals
or things with which their parents have no familiarity. Additionally, the global use of the
Internet now means that one can access the knowledge and experience of the best
anywhere in the world in terms of medical diagnosis and even on the best manner to
operate on a patient with a particular problem. At some not too distant point in the future,
it will be possible for any operation anywhere in the world to be conducted by proxy
using the knowledge of the best known experts in surgery. Will we be able to afford such
developments? Most of the Third World will be left out of this global process.

It also means that we ourselves can access information on areas like cancer in terms of
alternative cures or palliatives, on better eating habits, on prevention of cancer, or even
statistics on all sorts of cases important to our health. It has meant that we can access
information through distance learning when we do not have the resource persons to run
classes in the flesh. Thus, while the risk of disease has grown largely as a result of
increased global travel, the possibility of global cure is also a reality.

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All of this is out there, both the good and the bad. There is precious little effort among us
to try and separate them. If we recognized health as an area of global merging, we might
be better able globally to combat disease, infection and the suffering that these bring with
them. This, however, would be to assume an element of global generosity, which is far
from evident at the moment. If globalisation will mean seamless economies, it will not
necessarily mean the existence of all the new techniques and technologies that will
undoubtedly affect positively the lives of those who live in the developed world,
throughout the world. Global health may therefore mean establishing our own
preventative systems and jointly owning technologies, which would not be sufficiently
used to be economical in any single CARICOM society. It may mean jointly using the
facilities of the better-equipped hospitals in the Region for the care and cure of wider
populations than the national population. It may mean, even in the health field, searching
for economies of scale.






GLOBALISATION 4

What therefore should we be doing about globalisation? We need the Region in order to
attain some element of size even to survive within the hemisphere. I wish therefore to
look at the state of CARICOM. It will perhaps help us to focus more clearly on what
needs to change for us to meet the challenges ahead. In several ways, we are far too small
as national units to go it alone. We also share a litany of shortcomings as well as
potential, which in my view, should be dealt with simultaneously and communally. The
concept of the borderless economy, often repeated as an element of globalization, does
not entail the abandonment of all responsibility for national life. What then is the
challenge facing us? What are the characteristics of our societies in the CARICOM
region?

The outlook is not all that bright if we continue along the lines that we have had so much
difficulty in changing. We have arrived at the idea of a Single Market. I say the idea of,
because although we have the Protocols in place, we still have Heads of Government
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pledging one thing at Summits and either knowingly avoiding the reality of what they
have agreed to, or being sidetracked by their colleagues and bureaucrats back home. We
constitute a small group of small countries, which virtually submit their sovereignty to
the IMF in the context of structural adjustment programmes. Yet we have difficulty in
sharing that sovereignty to make it more meaningful, which is what CARICOM ought
really to be about. It would seem that since we failed to achieve a regional federation
back in the 1960s we have tried desperately to get as close to the idea as possible
without actually doing so, since a federation would possibly destroy the omnipotence of a
series of Presidents and Prime Ministers.

Additionally, there exist within our countries divisions of race, ethnicity and class (in so
far as it is possible to make a clear distinction between these three categories) that
separate us at a time when we should be thinking regional first and as one family. A
quick look at Singapore with its main mix of Malay, Chinese and Southern Indian reveals
that these ethnic groups operate very well together there, even if traditionally, they would
have been at each others throats. They have recognized a higher national imperative.
When will we recognize such an imperative?

Our differences must become meaningless. In terms of the regional effort, the limited
movement of persons achieved is ultimately ineffective. It is hemmed in by conditions
like the acceptability of the degree obtained by the individual. The laws allowing free
entry even to the few categories specified usually have some restriction like a reference to
the Minister responsible for Immigration. In this area, our artists and young people are
way ahead of both politician and bureaucrat. The remainder of society needs quickly to
catch up. We can only effectively use the resources available to us if these resources are
not bound by legislation intended to make them unavailable.

The most vital area here is the availability of human capital. Is a plumber perhaps not
more vital to our economy than a history teacher? There are several times when the
answer is yes. One has freedom of movement, assuming he or she has read History at
UWI, while the other has none. When do we propose therefore to make the movement of
persons, as it is so delicately called, more all encompassing and more meaningful? When
will we, as Bajans or Trinidadians, stop harassing other CARICOM nationals at our
airports, while we let in foreigners with their drivers license as an identity piece?

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To make any headway in a new global world, we in CARICOM will have first of all to
get our act right with respect to each other. We will then have to start to think seriously
about the world out there, ready to enslave us once again. Globalisation is not a Sunday
afternoon picnic and it is not a joke or even something that will go away. The various
international agreements and the new communication technologies do really mean that
we have little alternative but to try to compete. This involves efficiencies that we have
always refused to consider. It also requires discipline and a work ethic more akin to that
of the Asian and less that of the beach bum. We are otherwise seriously in danger of
becoming beach bums or worse.

We need to think global at the level of the public as well as the private sectors. The fine
differences of privilege between the two must be blurred in a society that works towards
the ultimate in competitiveness. We need to identify areas where we can compete either
because of natural advantage and control such areas as niche markets. The world will be
competing for clean water and fish in another ten years. We still have oceans of
unpolluted water in the Guyana Shield that straddles Guyana and Suriname. We ought in
these same countries and in Belize be concentrating on technologies that involve fish
production ashore as well as fish processing for export.

We also need, even at this late hour to return to the drawing board as far as our education
systems are concerned, and devise strategies for increasing our technical skills at all
levels. The vaunted social partnership should also involve itself in the retraining of
persons now working in jobs likely to disappear in the near future. But even more
fundamentally, we all need to change our attitudes not only to one another, but also to the
threat posed by an unrelenting movement towards global control not only of trade, but
also of total societies. Until we recognize our deficiencies and set completely new goals
for ourselves, we are doomed to become colonised once again in what will be for some a
global heaven.