Stop The World - I Want To Get Off was an "amusing" play but an unrealistic governing principle for the 21st Century, according to former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron. He should know, since it was his decision to hold a vote on Brexit five years ago that may yet prove to be the anti-globalization shot heard around the world. Reverting to a pre-World War II world of assertive nationalism would be a dangerous mistake, in his view.
Speaking at the TD Ameritrade Institutional conference in San Diego Thursday morning, Cameron acknowledged that too many people have been left behind as the global economy has become increasingly interconnected. "The pace of change has been too fast for many people," he said. "A rising tide hasn't lifted all boats."
But he also noted that since World War II, the number of democracies has surged from 12 to 120. In the last 50 years, the proportion of the world's population living in poverty has fallen from 50 percent to under 10 percent.
Yet these huge gains remain at risk if the public in developed nations isn't persuaded that they have something to lose. And if a series of elections this year in Europe go the nationalist way of Brexit and the U.S. presidential election, the EU and the entire post-World War II global system could cease to exist.
Big businesses and other advocates of globalization have failed to demonstrate that globalization delivers more benefits than many think, partly because those benefits have been distributed so unevenly. "We need firm borders and sensible immigration controls, but one doesn't guarantee the other," Cameron warned.
At present, globalization is being challenged economically on the extreme left and culturally on the extreme right. Were it to fail, the consequences could be severe.
"Protectionism failed in the U.S. in the 1890s" and it failed both America and Europe in a worse way in the 1930s," he observed. "Free trade hasn't made us poor; it's made us rich." That doesn't mean trade deals can't be more equitable.
Cameron joked that he flew into San Diego from Texas because he wanted to see the "wall in its entirety." He also quipped that after the U.K. voted to leave the European Union, America felt compelled to outdo the British by electing Donald Trump as president.
Cameron is obviously an imminently decent person, one who put a compassionate face on Britain's Conservative Party, but his flippant joke about the wall may reveal something about the gap between elites and the rest of the public. Most Republicans in Congress probably share his attitude that the wall is a joke and yet they are searching for funds to pay for it. After all, that's what gave them control of the White House and both branches of Congress.
Though he approved of the President Trump's ideas for cutting the U.S. corporate tax rate and investing in infrastructure, Cameron clearly was concerned about his antagonistic stance on global trade, saying China should be encouraged to "participate in the G-20" and other global initiatives or we will slip into a "very chaotic world."
The end of the EU is unlikely, in his view, because Britain's unease with the institution isn't shared to the same degree on the continent. His argument for staying in the EU was one of utility, and there was a widespread feeling in Britain that the nation had given up too much. People in the EU might disagree, since they made English the official language of Europe and London its financial capital.
The rise of China as an economic superpower is a challenge, but it's also "a massive opportunity," he said. In November, he pointed out, General Motors sold "more cars in China than in America."
It seems odd that "we have to be making these arguments for globalization all over again," Cameron said. But we won't "make America great again by making Eastern Europe weak again."
While there may be opportunities to work with Russia in defeating ISIS, no one should be under any illusions about the goals of Vladimir Putin. In Cameron's view, the collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the great events of the 20th century. Putin has described it as one of the most tragic events of the previous century.
Regarding Islamic terrorism, Cameron declared it was a disastrous error to think the West is at war with Islam. "We are fighting extreme Islamic terrorism," he said, making a distinction between the two.
Marine Le Pen and her National Front party, which Cameron called a "borderline" racist party, may receive the most votes in France's general election, but he voiced confidence she would lose in the final run-off. But he conceded that making predictions these days is a "dangerous" execise these days.
The French people may be very frustrated, but they "aren't racist," he said, adding that the consequences of a France under National Front leadership would be "very bad."
"The EU could not survive Marine LePen," Cameron predicted. Were the EU to dissolve, it would probably spell the death of the euro, creating a global financial crisis unless the unwinding of the continental currency were synchronized to perfection.