Will Globalization ever happen?
Sunday, March 12, 2006
The recent acquisition of Dubai Ports World of Britain based ports giant P&O, inturn getting control of six main US ports, the subsequent opposition from the US congressmen and a final "give up" by DP-World, was an important episode that should not be missed to understand the larger picture. This should also be seen in the context of Spanish government's opposition to German based E.ON energy, the energy giant, taking over Endesa, citing Energy security and French government's opposition as a stake holder of Mittal Steel attempt's to take over Arcelor, a fellow steel giant citing job losses.
What does this mean to globalization? How would these developments help develop a conceptual understanding of what could future have in store for globalization. Globalization, as I understand, is any time any access to any market. But in a true sense could this ever be a reality, as long as there are geo-political obligations and aspirations. America, would never give up its super power status and all its strategies, be it the Nuclear deal with India floating NPT or its unilateral action on Iraq citing WMD, shows America's vision to control the world. No other country is going to give up any of its strategic infrastructure that could seriously alter the geo-political leverage the country has. So globalization will only be possible to the extent , exempting the Nation's security based infrastructure and businesses like Energy, power, transportation, Telecommunications to a certain extent the stock market. So there will never be an uncontrolled globalization happening and there will always be concerns expressed, if any other Nation's company attempt's to take over the above said strategic infrastructure. So, this explains why the US opposes the ports deal and why Spain opposes the Energy deal. But, this still leaves us into oblivion, why France opposes the steel deal, which does not directly come under the purview of any strategic need of the countries concerned. Its business ! so, why does France and Luxembourg happens to be opposing the deal and what are the reasons cited, its job losses as I said !
Hmm, sure it is. Western companies want access to the ever expanding Asian markets, want to take a slice of the pie of the growing Asian middle class and want to satisfy its ever hungry share holders. But why is that not one single Asian company truly leveraging the benefits of globaliation and getting access to Western markets. If am not wrong, Mittal steel, although not an Asian company, is the only private (forget about Chinese government owned giants) Asian owned company that is scaling up such huge heights. Asian giants like Samsung, LG have its own sphere of influence but none has scaled up to become the World giant, as Mittal steel's acquistion of Arcelor will make it.
Clearly it shows the double standars of Western nations, which always "encourages" developing nations to open up its market, as they themselves are increasingly, closing their markets. So this means "Globalization" is nothing but a strategic weapon to make the developing countries open its market but increasingly making the developed countries closing up their markets.
Will this be the future of globalization ? leave your comments !!!
Posted byPraveen J at 10:50 AM
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