Post-globalization

German dependence on Russian natural gas in the middle of the biggest crisis in the European security order since 1989, vaccine nationalism in the Covid pandemic, discussions about installing Huawei components in the German 5G infrastructure - these are just three current examples of a critical reassessment of interdependence. Today, the interconnectedness between nations is no longer just seen as a source of prosperity and cooperation, but increasingly also as a cause of vulnerability. This trend is older than the hastily announced “turning point” of 2022. Corresponding criticism was gradually formulated during the 2010s, most prominently by the political right around figures such as Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Viktor Orbán. Today it culminates in discussions about decoupling, which Chancellor Olaf Scholz regularly warns about. There is also talk of a coming “deglobalization” in political rhetoric and newspaper columns. It is high time to correct some of these interpretations. On the one hand, we are not dealing with deglobalization, but with what we understand by post-globalization. On the other hand, it is especially important now to avoid overreactions - interdependencies continue to have their value, but must be recognized more clearly and managed pragmatically. 

Key points:

In the age of post-globalization, Germany needs clever risk management for more resilience. German politics should defend the advantages of globalization and advocate for failed reforms. The government should pragmatically assess existing interrelationships and design them strategically based on values. The pitfalls of post-globalization:

Proponents of the idea of globalization assumed that the world was in an irreversible process of dissolution of borders. In the best case scenario, globalization can be shaped - but there is nothing to shake its foundations. But this idea has lost its ideological appeal for a while now. Empirical indicators show that the global
Interdependence is by no means declining, it has simply been stagnating for about a decade, but talk about the advantages of globalization no longer goes unchallenged.

Globalization has always been based on a few bets: networking brings prosperity and cooperation, the economy becomes a de-nationalized, global force, globalization
brings technological and democratic progress, common problems are solved through global governance. Today, these credos are countered by critical responses that emphasize the risks and disadvantages of interdependence, reject the progress narrative of globalization and assess the potential for global cooperation to be lower. This should not be equated with a rejection of Globalization, even if today's criticism of globalization is partly is very fundamental. Rather, many of the criticisms should be understood as expressions of ambivalence. The criticism of economic dependencies is powerfully articulated by globalization skeptics, but no serious actor is calling for a complete decoupling of national economies from world markets. For this reason, the terms decoupling or deglobalization are misleading. Let us rather speak of post-globalization, because globalization has not been completed,
but is further developed. The addition “post-” here is not to be understood in a temporal sense as after globalization. Rather, it is about the world moving into a new phase beyond globalization. Post-globalization does not mean that globalization is over, but that it is being renegotiated in this transition phase. Last but not least, the term post-globalization also points out that the phase we are currently going through is open and not very clear in many respects - while globalization should inevitably lead to the dissolution of social and economic boundaries, post-globalization is no clear goal written in. Source: www.fourninesecurity.de