Is the era of global integration giving way to fragmentation?
The International Monetary Fund has been saying that the world has been going into geoeconomic fragmentation.
In a observe earlier this 12 months, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva stated that at a time after we want extra worldwide cooperation on a number of fronts, we face the spectre of a brand new Cold War that might see the world fragment into rival financial blocs. “This would be a collective policy mistake that would leave everyone poorer and less secure.”
She makes use of some highly effective phrases as warning – calling it a “stunning reversal of fortune”. After all, she argues, financial integration has helped billions of folks grow to be wealthier, more healthy, and higher educated.
Since the finish of the Cold War, the dimension of the global economic system roughly tripled, and virtually 1.5 billion folks had been lifted out of excessive poverty. Her concern is that these hard-won advantages shouldn’t be squandered away.
In a paper in January this 12 months, IMF staffer Shekhar Aiyar and others outlined geoeconomic fragmentation as policy-driven reversal of integration, usually guided by strategic issues.
What is driving this pattern?
In the paper, the authors level out that insurance policies driving fragmentation come from nationwide strategic pursuits, reminiscent of safety issues or enhancing self-sufficiency. Economic rivalry, reminiscent of between the US and China, could possibly be one more reason for this.
An instance of a nation pursuing nationwide strategic pursuits is India shopping for increasingly more oil from Russia.
How is fragmentation affecting nations? Is globalisation giving way to ‘slow’balisation?
Script and presentation: Ok. Bharat Kumar
Videography: Johan Sathyadas
Production: Shibu Narayan
