About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

17 U. St. Thomas L.J. 641 (2020-2022)
Globalization Dies and Gives Way to a Mulitpolar World Order

handle is hein.journals/usthomlj17 and id is 647 raw text is: ARTICLE GLOBALIZATION DIES AND GIVES WAY TO A MULTIPOLAR WORLD ORDER MICHAEL O'SULLIVAN* In a 1992 speech in Fulton, Missouri, Mikhail Gorbachev stated, On today's agenda is not just a union of democratic states, but also a democrat- ically organized world community. Thus, we live today in a watershed era. One epoch has ended, and another is commencing. No one yet knows what it will be like.1 Gorbachev was right then, and if the speech were given today, these words would also ring true. The fall of communism was the key event in catalyzing globalization. It was the bookend that opened up new trends that saw the flow of people, money, commerce, and, importantly, ideas and cultures. In particular, the fall of communism led to a sharp rise in the creation of new countries (some thirty-four have been created since 1990), and in the spread of democracy (between 1988 and 2005, the proportion of countries classified as Free rose from 36 to 46 percent globally, according to Freedom House's Freedom in the World Report 2019). In that respect, the fall of communism was a vital moment in opening up the question of sovereignty and linking it to the rise of globalization. Since the fall of communism, the ripple of globalization through the world has lifted billions out of poverty according to World Bank data and spawned new technologies. This great period in world history is now at an end, decisively crashed by the coronavirus crisis, having already atrophied in the face of rising indebtedness, trade wars, and the vandalization of inter- national institutions like the World Health Organisation and World Trade Organisation by populist leaders such as Donald Trump. Now, with deadly and decisive timing, the bookend that closes the period of globalization is the subsuming of Hong Kong in the sense that its two systems of govern- ment have now been replaced by a single, Chinese approach. This process, * Michael O'Sullivan is the author of The Levelling-What's Next After Globalization (Public Affairs), @levellingbook. 1. Mikhail Gorbachev, River of Time and the Imperative ofAction, AM. NAT'L CHURCHILL MUSEUM (May 6, 1992), https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/the-river-of-time-and-the- imperative.html. 641

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most