Long piece on the Chimera of Globalism

Australian Financial Review - The end of globalism:

Conclusion, to every thing turn turn turn ...

Consider it as Non-Barnett View (Tom Barnett : Pentagon's New Map)
Tom's Blog

"The return of the idea of national power has also meant the return of the idea of choice - choice for citizens and choice for countries. But with choice comes uncertainty, which provokes fear. The moment we entered the post-Globalisation vacuum, you could feel that fear begin to rise. And curiously enough, the greater a nation's power, the more intense the fear becomes. Perhaps power produces an expectation of certainty. Perhaps smaller countries find a certain freedom in uncertainty - the freedom to choose without being bullied. Necessity, Pitt the Younger said, is the excuse of every tyranny. For most smaller countries, Globalisation has felt like an inevitability and, so, like a tyranny.

History will eventually give all of these contradictory signals a shape. But history is neither for nor against.

It just is. And there is no such thing as a prolonged vacuum in geopolitics.

It is always filled. This is what happens every few decades. The world turns, shifts, takes a new tack, or retries an old one. Civilisation rushes around one of those blind corners filled with uncertainties.

Then, abruptly, the opportunities present themselves to those who move with skill and commitment.

John Ralston Saul is the author of Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, Unconscious Civilisation and, most recently, On Equilibrium: The Six Qualities of the New Humanism. ©2004 Harper's Magazine. Distributed by Tribune Media Services International.