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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 Jan. - 2 Feb. 2000 Issue No. 466 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 Jan. - 2 Feb. 2000 Issue No. 466
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Globalisation, Americanisation and hype
By Azadeh MoaveniIn Cairo, the globalisation mantra of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman invoked initial scepticism: the journalist-cum-author's pronouncements were a bit too sweeping, his forecasting a shade too triumphal, the jargon a touch too folksy. But no matter. At predictable points -- the inclusiveness of the "international system" or Wall Street's forcing Israel into peace -- Friedman lost his audience; but when talk turned to information technology, economic growth, and the globalisation-induced convergence of the two, Friedman found himself surrounded by ready listeners.
The fèting of Friedman that began on 17 January had many whispering and perplexed. Why was a columnist, albeit from the pages of what may be the most prestigious English-language newspaper in the world, being received like a head-of-state? Chatting with ministers, greeting guests in a US embassy reception receiving line and listening with a politician's rapt sincerity at appearances all over town, Friedman's visit underscored the very novelty of the moment in history he attempts to define. Thirty years ago, his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree would not have had its own website, nor would it have been sold over the Internet. Friedman himself would not rub shoulders with power, nor would his journalist's reflections be construed with the same weight as the insights of career scholars.
These are, of course, different days. Citizens, media and NGOs now participate in, rather than just observe, foreign affairs. From Beirut to Jerusalem, Friedman's first book, chronicled his years as the Times' man in those two cities. It earned him disfavour with American Zionists for its pro-Arab sentiments, but Arab-American scholars say only the rampant pro-Israelism of the American media allows his politics to be read as anything but soft-core Labourite.
Friedman took his blend of punditry and perspective first to a round table at the American Chamber of Commerce. "In the post-Cold War system, there are just different kinds of vanilla (liberal capitalism)," he explained to a roomful of Egyptian businessmen, "No more chocolate or strawberry (communism or socialism)." Drawing on his latest book, something akin to a "Let's Go Globalisation," Friedman believes that electronic and information technology has created a new world system fundamentally different from the last. The Electronic Herd (international capital markets) are forcing countries to don a Golden Straitjacket (liberal democracy), leading to a new, unsupervised global interdependence. To compete successfully, he argues, countries have no choice but to jump on board. "Egypt is on the right track, but it's not going as fast as it has been and needs to," he said.
To these enthusiastic visions, some Egyptians reacted with a shrug. "It sounds to me that this is a system for a small group of countries that excludes the Third World and progressive states," responded Al-Ahram's Abdel-Ati Mohamed. "How can we call something that attempts to keep us out a system?" Mohamed may have been right. While Friedman's smooth analysis of globalisation convinces followers keen to practice privatisation for their own benefit, his insistence on pace makes alternative modernising instincts seem deviant. His "ten habits of highly effective countries", in the words of Al-Ahram's Centre for Political and Strategic Studies' director Abdel-Moneim Said, began to sound more like the Ten Commandments.
Ann Radwan, director of the bi-national US-Egyptian Fulbright Commission, took issue with Friedman's deterministic reading of contemporary history. "He praises the US [for globalisation] as though one country has the best hook into all of this," she said. "His critique comes from the American wave, not from the beach." Indeed, Friedman's interchangeable use of "globalisation" with "Americanisation" is what has irritated his critics the most.
The American face of globalisation is an inextricable part of this stage of the system, he believes, but not an inevitable one. "Of course now [people find it obnoxious] to have 'American' shoved in their face," he told Al-Ahram Weekly. "But this has got to change and it will when 1.4 billion Chinese come on-line."
