http://www.democracyuprising.com/book/ |
Right now a debate is taking place over what values should define our international order. For global elites, it is a debate about how to rule the world. Laying out a new and original framework for understanding globalization politics in the Obama years, Mark Engler describes the evolving conflict over America’s role in the world. Past visions include the Clinton-era model of an expanding, corporate-controlled global economy and a Bush-era “imperial globalization” based on U.S. military dominance. How to Rule the World explains how these visions overlap and also how, at critical moments, they clashed with one another. It is written, however, in the hopes that neither will prevail. Even as Wall Street CEOs and Washington militarists argue among themselves, citizens’ uprisings in the United States, in an increasingly progressive Latin America, and beyond are bringing to life a vibrant “democratic globalization” based on economic justice, human rights, and self-determination.
Engler, a journalist, activist, and policy expert, details the conditions at the root of the current global economic crisis and explains how the globalization debate has profoundly shifted since the days of the Seattle protests: Countries are rebelling against deregulated market fundamentalism. The roles of international institutions like the WTO, IMF, and World Bank are dramatically changing. U.S. unilateralism and the disastrous war in Iraq deepened international divisions. As a result, the stage is now set for a critical new debate about the global economy.