CIAO DATE: 09/02

Creating a Global Economy

Abstract

Headlines in recent weeks have been filled with news of earthquakes. From Turkey to Taiwan, tectonic plates have been shifting leaving toppled buildings, trapped victims, and homeless survivors in their wake. In the last decade of the twentieth century, other less visible but equally powerful seismic shifts have also taken place. The tectonic plates of the world's political, security and economic systems have shifted dramatically. The end of the Cold War, the creation of a global, capitalist economy, and the emergence of the United States as the world's only superpower–these and other seismic shifts have toppled the dangerous but stable bipolar international system that had endured for nearly fifty years. Power structures, relations among states, international institutions, and international norms have changed in fundamental ways. The new international system offers great promise. The end of the Cold War has made possible a more stable and less dangerous political/military system. The global, capitalist economic system has brought the possibility and in many cases the reality of unprecedented prosperity. But the shift in tectonic plates has also led to new dangers and deprivations. From the Balkans to southern Africa to Indonesia, the last decade has been a time of civil war, regional conflict, and genocide. Terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear weapons threaten global peace. Global prosperity has been paralleled by rapid and disruptive economic change and economic crisis in Asia and Latin America.

Will the world of the twenty-first century be one of stability, prosperity and equity or will it be a time of chaos, conflict, and deprivation? The answer to that question depends to a great extent on the United States. As the sole superpower, the United States has a unique opportunity to create a more stable, prosperous, and equitable international order for the twenty-first century. Today, I would like to examine the role the United States can and should play in one arena: the international economic system. Let me begin by examining the seismic changes in the global economy.

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