Actually I listened to an interesting talk yesterday by Peter Zeihan, just discovered he has some interesting ideas. One of his theories is that the reason we have globalization isn't economic but it was rather America's attempt to win and keep allies during the cold war. You could participate in a global world trade network and economy (kept safe and maintained by American military might) as long as you were willing to work within the US framework. After the end of the Cold War the original purpose for globalization has disappeared and now we have to figure out what is next.

It was an interesting argument that globalization was an American security development not an international economic development.