Globalisation will not stop

The September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. and the anti-globalisation movement might slow - but will not stop - the globalisation process, says John Naisbitt. No one, he adds, will be in charge of globalisation.

Certain elements and events might try to slow down the process of globalisation, but the man who writes about global trends, asserts that these are a temporary phenomenon.

"I think globalisation is very much on and it is going ahead," he said during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the recently held Dubai Strategy Forum summit. "The world is very much in the process of becoming a global village and it will continue. However, some events, like that of September 11 halt the process - at least for some time.

"So many people in the U.S. said everything has changed after September 11. That's just not true. It is not true. A lot of things have changed and our psyche has changed somewhat.

"Many people said, suddenly, it feels like the world is not a mere village, it is very big, too large. But it is a feeling. Due to the magnitude, one might feel like that. But it is not true. It still is a global village.

"September 11 changed a lot of things, but many more things remained constant. The big changes are in global geopolitics. But economic and social values have remained constant and unchanged and the important thing to do is to decide to sort it out. What's going to remain constant, and what's changing, and it is on the changes where the opportunities are.

"We may think back and see September as a last desperate strike against modernity. I do not see the conflict as a clash of civilisations." Naisbitt said, nobody would be in control of globalisation. "The good news is that nobody would be in charge of the globalisation process.

"The world economy is self-organised. It evolves, organises and moves forward on its own. "We are in a parenthesis. We are living in between two eras, the old and the new, the industrial and the information, the era of nation states is giving way to the global economy. The nation state has been receding for the past few decades with the individual becoming more significant in its place. This trend will go on despite September 11. We will go on.

"We are heading for the global economy and there will be no barrier between the different parts of the economy. For example, there is no way to measure the economies of the different states of the U.S. All the states which make up the U.S. do not have separate economies, and they are entirely linked."

Naisbitt said he didn't think that the world was heading to another round of polarisation due to the September 11 attack on the U.S.

"No, I don't think so. All my adult life I lived realising that any morning I could get up and the whole new world would be destroyed. Well, that's not the case now. None of us thinks that. War is unthinkable, absolutely, literally unthinkable. And certainly I've been talking about the time, where we are in between eras and we haven't left the old era, but are not yet speeding into the new.

We're caught in the middle. And in even how we do war, we're in the middle. I mean we're still in some of the old ways of doing war.

"We're certainly in between the industrial era and information era. All of this in between is a collection of nation state under one hand. We're moving towards one economy of the entire world. Just like Europe single market, it takes a long time. We're just beginning on that and eventually that would end war.

"I don't see the world in two camps, I see the world in working towards becoming one single world economy. And the paradox is, that the more we become economically interdependent, the more we hold on to our cultural roots, the more we hold on to our cultural identity.

"The more universal we become the more tribal we act. But when I said tribal we act, I held that in a positive way, I held that in a cultural identity kind of way. I think it is some kind of renaissance around the world, expressions and manifestation of cultural identity. That's the larger picture.

"People want to hold on to and celebrate their cultural history, celebrate cultural identities, and the more we get link economically in an interdependent economy, the more you want to celebrate who you are. Well that's pretty healthy it seems to me. But that's a kind of world that is pretty awkward at the moment. But that's the kind of world we're going to eventually."

Naisbitt said the integration of the nation is on, though with some interruption. "Well its just been revised a little bit. It has been receding against the celebration of individual, I call it triumph of individual. Celebration of the nation has been descending."