Blair on Globalization

Tony Blair has written an excellent article on Globalization and Europe in Newsweek. At the beginning of this article, he states, “Complaining about globalization is as pointless as trying to turn back the tide. There are, I notice, no such debates in China. They are not worrying about potential threats but are busy seizing the opportunities in ways that are transforming their society and ours as well.” He is right for the tendency has been in Europe and in America to complain and to say as children do when they are faced with adversity, “that isn’t fair!” Competition is not always about fairness, even though I will argue that the point here is that the West is less willing to look inward for some of its problems than to look outward by point at China and at India. Globalization is an opportunity for the rich and the poor, the West and the rest of the world, what countries needs are the tools and the skills to take advantage of it. Blair is right to focus on Education as the key to competition for Europe and to argue that the UK and Europe should invest more on it. He talks about modernizing the old European model that over-relies on the state, curbs entrepreneurship, and that freezes dynamism. The only thing with which I disagree with Blair is the fact that he seems to be using the same TINA (there is no other alternative) that some many of technocrats at organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World bank use when they force neoliberal policies down the throat of underdeveloped countries. I think that there is more than one way for European countries to reform and that not all of them have to choose the Anglo-Saxon method to do it. They can choose the Norwegian method or even the Danish method, which focuses more on the community and less on the individual, and thus in fact modernize the welfare state while giving people and companies more flexibility and thus improving the quality of life. But I think Blair has it mostly right even though I fear that he isn’t the right person to carry this message to the rest of Europe, because  unfortunately with the war of Iraq, he lost all the chances that he had (and that he may not have really wanted) to be a  force in European Politics.