TL;DR: We often ask, "Did globalization fail?" The harsh reality is that it was doomed from the start. It was built on a fundamental misunderstanding of national power and the inherent incompatibility of different civilizations. The last 30 years—from Clinton’s optimism to Obama’s hesitation—were not a new era of peace, but a strategic pause in a Cold War that never actually ended. As culture, religion, and divergent values tear the fabric of the "global village," we must accept that separation, not integration, is the inevitable correction.
James here, CEO of Mercury Technology Solutions.
If you look back at the optimism of the 1990s, the belief in a unified, globalized world seems almost naive today. Was globalization a failure of execution? No. It was a failure of system design.
The narrative that trade would supersede conflict was a dream that was too good to be true. The reality is that the post-Cold War era was misdiagnosed from day one.
The Original Sin: The Multipolar Trap
When the Soviet Union collapsed, the US faced a critical strategic choice: pursue a Unipolar Hegemony (expensive, active dominance) or a Multipolar Cooperation (economic integration).
Under Bill Clinton, the US aggressively pivoted to the Multipolar model. They became obsessed with the economic narrative of globalization, completely abandoning the Cold War logic of containment and geopolitics. Why? It was internal politics. It played to the American instinct for isolationism—the seductive idea that "we don't need to police the world; we just need to trade with it."
But this was a miscalculation of how sea power and global order actually work. By the end of Clinton's second term, the cracks were already visible. Economic growth didn't match the reality of domestic unemployment and failed industrial transitions. If globalization were truly working for everyone, Al Gore would have swept the 2000 election. He didn't.
The Historical Glitch: 9/11 and the Wrong Enemy
Then came George W. Bush, who faced a world where the "End of History" was clearly over. But history played a cruel joke on American strategy.
The Unipolar view identified three potential threats:
- Russia: The heir to the Soviet arsenal.
- China: The ideological and rising economic rival.
- Islam: The clash of civilizations.
In 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the Soviet Union (under Gorbachev) stood down, allowing the US to build a massive UN coalition. If Gorbachev had stuck to the old Cold War playbook, the US would have faced a proxy war in the Middle East much earlier.
Because that didn't happen then, the US was lulled into a false sense of security. When 9/11 happened in 2001, the American elite were forced to pick a lane. They chose Islam as the primary enemy. This was a bipartisan compromise that led to the quagmire of the Second Gulf War.
The Silent Alliance: The New "Cultural Vietnam"
While the US was distracted in the Middle East, trying to solve the "Clash of Civilizations" with military force, Russia and China quietly dismantled the Kissingerian "Triangle Diplomacy."
They realized they could not defeat the US militarily. So, starting around 2004, they adopted a "New Vietnam" strategy.
This wasn't about jungle warfare; it was about cultural and information warfare. By fueling anti-war sentiment and exploiting internal divisions within the West (the "Progressive" theories that exploded into the mainstream), they accelerated the shift in world order without firing a shot.
The US was fighting a physical war in Iraq, while its rivals were fighting a cognitive war on American soil.
The Awakening: The Cold War Never Ended
It wasn't until 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, that the Western elite woke up. They realized the Obama-era "reset" was a fantasy and the Clinton-era globalization roadmap was fundamentally flawed.
The current re-emergence of "Sea Power" doctrine in US strategy isn't a "New Cold War." It is simply the resumption of the discussion that was interrupted in 1991. The last 20 years were not a new peace; they were just a period where Russia and China developed new tools for an old conflict.
Why Separation is Inevitable
Globalization assumes that economic incentives can override cultural, religious, and value-based differences. This is the bug in the system.
You cannot integrate systems that have fundamentally opposing operating systems:
- Values: A society that prioritizes individual liberty cannot seamlessly integrate with one that prioritizes collective obedience.
- Religion: A civilization based on secular law cannot harmonize with one based on theocratic mandates.
- Culture: A high-trust society cannot open its borders to low-trust societies without breaking its own social contract.
The friction we see today—trade wars, the "Great Firewall," the decoupling of supply chains—is not a glitch. It is the system correcting itself.
The world is not flattening; it is fracturing. And for business leaders, the strategy must shift from "Global Integration" to "Regional Resilience."
We are not entering a new era of chaos. We are simply returning to the historical norm. The holiday from history is over.
