Student

Summary of Author’s Thesis and Main Arguments
Mr. Thomas Friedman’s National Strategies and Capabilities for a Changing World: Globalization and National Security main thesis is the Cold War transitioned to Globalization. The author argues that the Cold War was a struggle state based between balance of power, mainly the United States of America and the Soviet Union. With the collapse of the Soviet Union there still was a state based balance of power, but two new factors to consider.
The second factor is the super market and the availability of finance to a broader audience. Thanks to digitization globally anybody has the capability to invest without going through the excruciating banking process of the 80s. Because anybody in any country can log in to E-trade the market and its access has flattened.
The final factor is super empowered people. This is the most critical factor of Globalization. This means that anybody with an internet connection can connect and interact globally: giving opinions, impacting idea’s, governments can no longer control individual information. Individuals have the ability to influence entire national policy through social media. Individuals also have the ability to conduct their own research and fact check information and ideas presented by their government.
Access to information is important for international relations today. “The democratization of information thanks to satellites, cell phones, and fiber optics, and what happens when we all start to know how each other lives.”1 This is the very fiber of Globalization. It no longer matters where you live or are from, we all have access to the same information. 1 Friedman, Thomas “National Strategies and Capabilities for a Changing World: Globalization and National Security” (US ARMY COMMAND AND GENERAL STAFF COLLEGE, Reading D, 15 Nov 2000), 5.
Persuasion of the Theorist
Mr. Thomas Friedman presents a very persuasive argument. The author lays out a logical argument starting with the two main superpowers of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States of America. Around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union and with access to communication via, internet, satellite, cell phone, etc…Globalization was born. The author used the comparison of the walls falling from the Cold War as barriers opening up on a global scale.
“So basically we've gone from a world of division and walls to a world of integration and webs.”2 In the Cold War it was clear that someone was in charge of two opposing sides, like it or not. “In globalization, we reach for the Internet, which is a symbol that we're all connected and nobody's in charge.”3 This is a reality that is very familiar to anyone born after 1980 and has become accepted by the rest of us. Mr. Friedman breaks globalization down into three democratization components (finance, technology and information).
When the walls fell at the end of the Cold War the speed of innovation was increased. Access to what was proprietary because of the “high wall”4 of government was removed and now anyone could make or produce anything at different prices. With internet access innovation was increased again, now there were no physical barriers to slow down production and ideas.
Finance, technology and information are readily available through the internet and the governments of the world have a hard time regulating what people have access to. Mr. Friedman argues that some governments are having a hard time to assert identity, politics, and religion, bumped up against a new international system of globalization. Some governments have accepted this new environment and others have not. The ones that have not are still being

influenced by globalization and will have to find a way to make this system work for them.