The same goes for Punjabis. If Afghans were Hindostan’s gatekeeper, Punjabis were surely its doormat.

Hey, this forum does ensure anonymity, doesn’t it? And where’s the 7 foot tall Scythian guy when you need him?

Exactimundo. One keeps hearing the baloney ad nauseam that afghans have never been conquered. Which is a big fat lie. They are among the most conquered people around. Greeks, Huns, Arabs, Turks, Mongols among others have managed to subdue them completely. The most common afghan name “Mohammad Khan” stands as proof of their subjugation at the hands of conquerors from the south-west (mohammad: arab) and from the north-east (khan: mongol).

But oddly, as Joseph Stromberg notes, the brave new Barnettian cosmos ends up looking more or less like a map of the bad old colonial one and more or less, also, like a map of global oil reserves.

But we digress. Here is Thomas intoning his creed:

Whether we realize it or not, America serves as the ideological wellspring for globalization. These united states still stand as its first concrete expression. We are the only country in the world purposely built around the ideals that animate globalization’s advance: freedom of choice, freedom of movement, freedom of expression. We are connectivity personified. Globalization is this county’s gift to history… More important, to abandon globalization’s future to those violent forces hell-bent on keeping the world divided between the connected and the disconnected is to admit that we no longer hold these truths to be self-evident: that all are created equal, and that all desire life, liberty, and a chance to pursue happiness… (p. 50)

In saecula saeculorum. Amen.

But, then follows Barnett’s 10 commandments of globalization based on “economic security workshops” conducted at Cantor Fitzgerald:

1. Look for resources, and ye shall find.
2. No stability, no markets.
3. No growth, no stability.
4. No resources, no growth.
5. No infrastructure, no growth.
6. No money, no infrastructure.
7. No rules, no money.
8. No security, no rules.
9. No Leviathan (US superpower), no security.
10. No will, no Leviathan. (pages 199-205)

Which of course boils down to — No McDonnell Douglas, no McDonalds, a la Friedman. “

Plugging the Gaps in the Global Map by Lila Rajiva http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov06/Rajiva07.htm

For example, if a tribe has been living on the same patch of land for millennia, they have the right to tell oil companies to take a hike when they come drilling, even if that means that the rest of the world has to adapt to having less oil. The “authoritarian” response would be to send paramilitary death squads after vocal critics in that community and force the tribe to abandon their ancestors and traditional way of life to be resettled in an inferior place. In the meantime, the oil extraction (or mining or logging or ranching, etc) will render their original plot uninhabitable. And the appetite for oil will still not be appeased. It’s pretty clear to me who is the bully in this example.

People do exist who, for a number of reasons, do not want to be appropriated into the dominant economic system. Are you saying that they should be forced to? They are not trying to force us to adopt their way of life–they just want to be left alone. That is hardly authoritarian. I’d say you have it backwards.

Harbeer: The authoritarianism comes from the tariff barriers imposed by populists not from the removal of them. I paint with a broad brush here but populist morality derives from proximate effects of sowing, and from a hatred of “powerful” reapers. Neither of these are conducive to the “reap what you sow” morality.

Ancient Chettiars who spread Indian goods (& Indic culture) to SE Asia were Christian Calvinists? Is it morality or the feeling that they can’t win with free trade in the modern world?

As someone who is just 1 generation removed from subsistence/small commercial farming, I applaud the obstinacy of the Indian & Brazilian WTO negotiators. But I just don’t buy the idea that globalization is a Euro-American/Protestant specific compulsion.

Authoritarians are anti-”free” trade? What is more authoritarian than institutions such as the WTO which are not democratically elected, meet behind closed doors, and whose authority supersedes national sovereignty?

Implicit in free trade and globalization is a Christian calvinist morality: you reap what you sow, and you should also be able to reap what you sow. This flies in the face of both “populist” traditionalists, as well as authoritarian/Islamic traditionalists.

Can you explain how “you reap what you sow” flies in the face of “populist traditionalists” please?

Vinod’s point was far less revolutionary, almost a tautology: greater integration and mutually beneficial free trade implies conflicts will be fewer. If I need the older sister’s help in my math hw, I’m probably not going to pull her hair as hard.

As regards my earlier comment: I thought your comment made the following interesting point: that moralities of traditionalists are threatened by globalization, and that this gives rise to conflicts. My point was merely that Christian traditionalists are at home with it, and that it is the morality of the populists (who are anything but traditionalists!) and authoritarians which is threatened by this “culture” of mutual trade and interconnectedness.