Alan Blinder's NYT op ed today urges the next President to use the bully pulpit to "explain why globalization is both (a) inevitable and (b) more an opportunity than a threat." The inevitability argument is out there a lot. It's in the NYT editorials. It's in Tom Friedman's The Earth is Flat. We will hear it a great deal in the Presidential election campaign. This begs the question, if it's inevitable, why talk about it?
I suggest the answer is that, even assuming globalization in some form is inevitable, many of those who make this argument are acutely aware that the specific ways in which globalization proceeds are very much subject to negotiation and power politics. Having so far successfully controlled the implementation and realized the "opportunity," they very much don't want to lose or share control of that process with those who have realized the "threat."