Globalism sucks but I'm still a globalist because the alternative sucks more

I remain a globalist because free trade, international alliances and co-operation all represent the best way to make British people healthier, wealthier and happier.

I’ve an admission to make. Whenever I see the word ‘globalist’ in some or other commentary on society, economics or politics I immediately assume the worst of the person writing that commentary. Not just because the pejorative use of ‘globalism’ tracks to conspiracy sites like Infowars or even because the term links to antisemitic, even Nazi, ideas of internationalism. My problem is that the people who point and shout ‘globalist’ at people do so in bad faith and, often, ignorance. This means that the term, somewhat like ‘neoliberal’, ‘Marxist’ and ‘fascist’, ceases to have any meaning beyond ‘you are a bad person and your ideas are evil’ (admittedly, actual Marxist ideas probably are evil but everything left wing isn’t Marxist just because you choose to slap that label on it).

Despite this, the ideas of internationalism, what became called ‘globalism’, deserve attention and those concerned about national identity and sovereignty are right to raise questions about the “...assumption from international law that sovereignty can be partially ceded through treaty to some kind of a supranational body that sits above and beyond the reach of the nation.” It isn’t that treaty is a bad way to relate to other nations - it is certainly better than most of the alternatives - but perhaps general treaties setting up international institutions really do water down the sovereignty of individual nations. ‘Globalists’ make two distinct arguments here, often but not always cynically: firstly that some important concerns like regulating trade, responding to climate change or pandemic require co-ordinated international action best achieved through international institutions, and secondly that pooled sovereignty doesn’t mean that individual national sovereignty is diluted.

At the same time there is, in the eyes of globalism’s critics, an international class of people - “anywheres”, “flat-earthers” - that have more in common with each other than with the wider population in the nation states from which those people originate. While this gap is often seen in economic terms since this international class is, on the whole, significantly richer than average, it is also social and cultural. The Oxford educated son of an African political leader has more connection with the MIT trained daughter of an Indian millionaire than with the subsistence farmers of his home country. And, while such people remain linked to the source of their elite status, they gravitate to a limited set of places; big world cities like London, Paris, New York, San Francisco and Singapore plus elite playgrounds such as Davos or private islands in the Caribbean.

As a result the principal criticism of globalism isn’t economic but cultural. Harm de Blij, the Dutch-American geographer, describes the world of this cultural elite (‘flat-earthers’ in his taxonomy) as like living in gilded domes with the rest of humanity clamouring for admission, bashing on the outside of those domes. For some of those outside their objective is economic, this is certainly true of masses of Indians, Africans and Latin Americans, but for other opponents of ‘globalism’ the objection to the international great and good is cultural. It is this criticism, characterised by talk of ‘the great replacement’, ‘invasion’ within inconsistent nationalisms such as MAGA or National Conservatism, that results in my kneejerk reaction to people who use ‘globalist’ as a pejorative.

The problem is, however, that this international global elite seems entirely wedded to a set of failed responses to international challenges and to an economic orthodoxy forged after the 2007/8 financial crisis that has failed. We only need to look at two genuine global issues - climate change and the response to the COVID pandemic - to see how the great institutions of international treaty aren’t working. In the case of climate change policy, a multi-billion dollar international enterprise, the consequences of preventing the exploitation of fossil fuels in Africa and the opposition to nuclear energy give the lie to international collaboration being the route to salvation. During COVID, the consensus, driven largely by China through the WHO, quickly became the draconian authoritarianism of strict lockdowns, masks and social controls. It becomes clearer by the day that the social and economic damage caused by these policies vastly outstrips any benefits gained at the time. Yet there is no sense in either of these policy areas that the institutions responsible have learned any lessons or that they believe policy should change.

A weakness of this internationalist policy-making is that the bodies themselves, compared to large national governments, are not especially big. The total budget of the World Health Organisation (WHO) is a little short of $7 billion which is a lot of money until you realise that this is about 3% of the UK National Health Service’s budget. The problem here is that international bodies choose to supplement the money granted them by national governments with the generosity of billionaire philanthropists. This has meant that, in the case of the WHO, the entirety of tobacco control policy has been, in effect, sub-contracted to Bloomberg Philanthropies and, through that, to the prejudices of Mike Bloomberg who provides the money. We start with the comforting feeling that billionaires giving millions to international health or climate change institutions is a good thing and, in short order, come to realise that the spending of this money (constrained as it is by the conditions of grant) is accountable only to the preferences of the donor. As a result the principal objective of the WHO tobacco control policy is now the banning of vaping rather than the ending of smoking.

Were globalism merely as I have described above then those calling for (or simply predicting) its demise are right. The world would be better without international organisations strong-arming small and poor places into bad policy and a better place without grand juries and courts filled with the elite of authoritarian countries advised by the greedier sort of left-wing lawyer. But the anti-globalists don’t stop at this point. In their urge to describe secretive international cabals and the machinations of an unaccountable elite, the anti-globalists would throw out the baby of a richer world with the bathwater of corrupted global institutions.

The valid criticisms of globalism and ‘neoliberalism’ choose, almost every time, to ignore the real truth that the period they condemn (depending on who you ask the period either begins in 1979 with Margaret Thatcher’s election or with the dawning of the new millennium) witnessed the fastest reduction of poverty in humanity’s history. This is, I’d argue, no small matter and also that the anti-globalists have no answer to the criticisms of ‘neoliberals’ and de Blij’s ‘flat-earthers’ that their rejection of internationalism will not make people healthier, wealthier and happier and may, for many, actually make them poorer. Moreover, blaming open trade - even with a bad faith polity such as China - misses the more substantive reasons for economic sclerosis in many developed world countries: their own regulations and policies. Planning constraints, climate change policies, supposed workers rights (usually rights only for unionised workers), and a preference for welfare over investment are all far more significant reasons for that sclerosis. Anti-globalists talk of ‘deindustrialisation’ (often little more than a weird nostalgia for a time when men worked in their thousands bashing metal and ‘making things’) and blame China or India rather than energy policy, planning laws and environmental regulations. We’re told that trade in food undermines farmers but never talk about how regulation and protectionism did more damage to farming than any international trade.

Back in the 1970s Tony Benn, the now sainted British socialist, argued for a sort of autarky where Britain - outside the EEC as it then was - would sit behind tariffs and regulatory barriers while the government, in the name of the people, took strategic stakes in industries like steel, coal, oil and food. In government Benn had created the great successes of British Leyland, the Meriden Motorcycle Co-operative, and the national technology champion, ICL. Yet the idea persists that the state can develop an ‘industrial strategy’ based on strategic investments, tariffs and protective regulation. And worse, that this is the route to economic success according to many urging Nigel Farage and Reform to adopt this policy.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the idea of internationalism, of free trade and international co-operation remains a good one primarily because it makes the world healthier, wealthier and happier. Internationalism should not, however, be naive or to argue for the sort of bloc politics beloved of Xi, Putin and Trump. Nor should we believe that just because we trade with some other nation, that nation suddenly becomes our friend and ally. Rather than anti-globalism, we should continue to welcome more open trade and to recognise that this gives British consumers the benefit of more choice and cheaper food while presenting British business with the opportunity to grow. The changes needed in economic policy aren’t about who owns British business let alone the state taking “strategic” stakes but about us having cheap, abundant energy, the ability to make use of land without expensive and uncertain planning processes, and a regulatory system that defaults to ‘yes we like business’ rather than ‘no you can’t do that’.

The ‘international rules-based order’ is not responsible for Britain’s social and economic problems. These things can be traced directly back to specific decisions made by successive governments since the 1990s, from civil service reform and local government restructures through net zero and environmental regulation to a planning system focusing every effort of regulatory agencies to the prevention of development. Pretending it will, through a sort of 21st century Peronism, be fine if we just keep Johnny Foreigner and his money out of Britain is, without question, the very worst form of economic delusion.

I remain a globalist because free trade, international alliances and co-operation all represent the best way to make British people healthier, wealthier and happier. We need to reframe the way we engage, to move away from multi-national treaties and the obsession with ‘human rights’, perhaps be a bit more cynical, but putting up the shutters and closing the front door is a recipe for more decline and less growth. We need more open trade, less industrial regulation and the idea that we will work across the world to promote the interests of British people getting richer especially if, as happens with trade, this helps people in other places get richer too.