Globalization and its Discontents

Trump, Brexit, and the worldwide populist revolution are not causes, but symptoms. Symptoms of a wider systemic plague of fear of change, anxiety, and a feeling by people of being part of a world they no longer can control or even understand.

Technology today, rather than being a cause, is merely the host that carries the fear. Not unlike the Industrial Revolution a century ago, disruptive change takes its toll. The difference now is that it all happens at hyper speed, and in full view 24/7. How we deal with it, whether we put those that have been left behind in Hillary Clinton’s basket of deplorables, or find leadership that will lift up entire countries may very well determine the fate of the world.

Ian Bremmer, the president and founder of Eurasia Group is more on point than most in understanding all this is going on. He explains a big part of it in Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism.

My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Ian Bremmer:

Is anybody in charge here?

When we think of a globalization, we tend to think of a world more connected, more unified and more equal in terms its power politics. It’s one of the ironies of globalization that it has really made the world more fragmented, more regional and more dangerous. In many ways it’s a kind of creative destruction in global politics. Just as creative destruction and entrepreneurialism has changed almost every aspect of the business and personal landscape, we would be foolish to think it wouldn't happen in global politics as well. The institutions, infrastructure, and architecture of the world America made in the post War years, is now under review and up for grabs.

Few understand this dynamic better than Ian Bremmer. He is the president of Eurasia Group, one of the world's leading global political risk research and consulting firms, and the author of his eighth book about the state of the world's geopolitics Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World .

My conversation with Ian Bremmer:

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