Editor: Though this article was filed before Russia’s pressure on Ukraine erupted into hot war, its analysis of the intensifying global struggle remains valid and deeply concerning. Read and heed!
When Kate Losse went to work for Facebook in its early days (2005), it was in her words a “fun social network for university students,” and she vividly recalls how a smiling Mark Zuckerberg would close out weekly all-hands meetings by raising his fist and intoning a single word: “Domination!”
Rising rapidly, Losse became Zuckerberg’s speechwriter, responsible for helping articulate his goals and vision to wider audiences. She relates the experience in a Vox article (4/16/18) entitled “I was Zuckerberg’s speech writer. ‘Companies over countries’ was his early motto.”
There she tells the genesis in one company of a motto that, while it did not originate with Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook, can be accurately described as a foundational value for globalization worldwide—a dominating force that has transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people and altered the shape of societies almost everywhere.
The concept of “companies over countries” flourished amidst the welter of illusions and naïve ideas that surfaced following the dramatic conclusion of the Cold War, such as Francis Fukuyama’s vaunted “End of History” and the concomitant triumph of liberal democracy, or the Left’s devotion to globalization and its corollaries of the fading away of borders and a diminished pursuit of national interest.
This last notion deserves particular scrutiny, because it is the connecting link to profound challenges facing today’s world, and in particular the dangerous social and political cleavages afflicting nearly every Western country.
To understand this, it is necessary to grasp the inherent conflicts between nationalism and capitalism, which have been exacerbated by an increasingly smaller world in which commerce has evolved from local enterprise clearly under the authority of nation-states into globe-spanning empires that have come to regard countries as little more than irritating constraints on the growth of their power and profits.
Over time national governments have in myriad ways been challenged by supra-national entities ranging from the United Nations and the World Bank to the World Trade Organization, and multi-national compacts such as the European Union that have certain structural biases that favor globalization.
The enduring strength of the nation-states is their traditional powers of taxation, regulation, investigation, and election of officials by the people—which, with increasing assertiveness, they have used as tools to combat what they see as the excesses of globalization and its tendency to pit elites against working-class and middle-class citizens.
To comprehend how national sovereignty has been critically weakened by the evolving processes of globalization, it is useful to examine how these developments have affected both foreign and domestic policies of one country—the United States of America.
As America reacts to the increasingly evident hostility of the other two superpowers—China and Russia—it is most revealing how starkly different is our response to the actions of these two countries.
China, by virtue of its immense and surging military, economic, and technological power, horrific human rights abuses, and increasingly brazen challenges not only to the U.S., but also our historic allies Australia, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines, is far more dangerous to American interests than Russia, which while carrying out highly threatening and malignant designs close to its borders, has a struggling economy no larger than that of Italy and is in no way comparable in strength, to its superpower rivals.
Yet it is toward Russia that America directs its most persistent, public, energetic, and costly military and rhetorical responses.
The reason for this startling disparity is clear: the stark differences between how the American economy is affected by China and Russia. While the U.S. has significant economic interactions with Russia, they are absolutely dwarfed by the huge influence and inter-connectivity that characterizes the economic relationship between China and the U.S., which has been powered by the ever-growing impact of globalization.
The fact that the U.S. and China are joined at the hip economically places powerful constraints upon U.S. foreign policy options. If, for instance, we retaliate against China through sanctions we are in effect sanctioning ourselves.
That is because American trade, supply chains, jobs, and profits are greatly dependent on China, so that any such move places enormous pressure on American companies, particularly multi-national corporations—whose conflicts of interest are vast and growing, as is their tendency to favor the well-being of their company over that of their country.
It’s exactly what Zuckerberg was proclaiming years ago. And the long-term tensions flowing from such dual loyalties can only undermine American sovereignty and tilt the playing field in favor of China, where economic interest and national interest are ultimately identical.
Bill Moloney is a Fellow in Conservative Thought at Colorado Christian University’s Centennial institute who studied at Oxford and the University of London and received his doctorate from Harvard University. He is a former Colorado Commissioner of Education.