The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

Friedman admits that not all the world is flat. Vast areas have been left behind, and it is not certain if they will eventually become flat. Likewise, it is possible that flattened areas will relapse and become “unflat.” This chapter discusses the factors that might cause things to go wrong.

First, some people are too sick to participate in a flat world. While India and China are often touted as exemplars of the flat world, their poor areas do not benefit from the flat world. These areas are mostly rural, and the people in them are ravaged by disease, poverty, and despair. No one who is weakened by AIDS or malaria can create a start-up or aspire to join the middle class.

Another critical issue is how quickly debilitating problems can multiply in a flat world. Without the “walls” of the past, a pandemic could spread worldwide at breakneck speed, producing both public health and economic ramifications. The SARS virus that emerged in 2003 is prime example.

Bill Gates, who with his wife, Melinda, has started a foundation to address some of the problems that prevent flattening around the world, tells Friedman that he fears some people “may never get into the virtuous cycle of more education, more health, more capitalism, more rule of law, more wealth . . . I am worried that it could just be half the world that is flat and it stays that way” (541).

Friedman admires the Gates’ approach because, rather than just throw money at a problem, their foundation works horizontally with individuals and groups to find solutions. They also try to take advantage of flat-world tools in their work. Since governments and health care systems are often unreliable in poor areas, the foundation looks for ways that drugs and equipment can be self-administered and then tries to put those tools directly into the hands of the people who need them.

There is another group of people who are too disempowered to take advantage of the flat world: the “half flat.” These individuals may live in a country with flattened characteristics, but they don’t have the skills or infrastructure to access them. For instance, the high-tech sector in India constitutes only 0.2 percent of employment in the country. The vast majority of the population sees the advantages of a flat world but receives little or no benefit from it. For this reason, India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost the 2004 election despite a strong economy. Voters sent a message that they want more opportunities to participate in the economy’s success and that corruption and mismanagement at the local level are denying them the tools they need to do so.

Friedman faults populists and critics of globalization for misunderstanding the fact that the disempowered simply want to participate in, not halt, the growth of a flat world. The best way to help this group is to “improve local government, infrastructure, and education in places like rural India and China” so that more people can gain access to the middle class (548).

A third disadvantaged group comprises people who are too frustrated to participate in a flat world. In a flat world, everyone can see everyone else; those left in the dark can see the progress made by others, inciting bitterness.

Friedman cites the world’s Muslim population, though he acknowledges the fact that generalizations about such a huge and varied population of people is dangerous. Nonetheless, he argues that the openness and progress of the West, coupled with the authoritarian and closed nature of the governments of most Muslim nations, leave many feeling frustrated. He writes that Muslim extremists like the leaders of al-Qaeda are not really religious fundamentalists—they don’t solely focus on religious agendas; instead, he calls them “Islamo-Leninists” to reflect their political nature and to “convey the utopian-totalitarian vision” they have (558). He compares the Islamo-Leninists, who envision a religious utopia of their own making, to both Marxist-Leninists (who envisioned a workers’ utopia) and Hitler’s Third Reich (which sought a racial utopia). All three of these extremist groups, he argues, are rooted in a similar origin: Facing great societal change, “young men in particular lost a sense of identity, rootedness, and personal dignity that had been provided by traditional social structures” (558). The state of “half-flatness” described above can cause this kind loss. Friedman stresses that poverty alone does not make people violent, but poverty paired with humiliation does.

The final barrier to worldwide flattening is what Friedman calls “too many Toyotas”— the idea that environmental problems will increase if too many impoverished people seek the living standards that Western nations now have. For example, in 2004, 30,000 new cars appeared in Beijing every month. This kind of consumption and resource use will clearly lead to environmental degradation if it continues. He writes that China is on a worldwide hunt for oil imports, a tactic that has geopolitical ramifications because China has done business with regimes like those in Sudan and Iran and has blocked United Nations resolutions pertaining to those countries. The best thing that the United States can do, Friedman argues, is provide a model for China to follow by changing its own consumption habits and creating green technology at a scale that China can afford. America, he writes, is ready for a “Green New Deal.” 

Friedman begins this chapter with a detailed, multi-page list of everything involved in manufacturing his Dell computer, which he used to write this book. He begins with ordering the computer over the phone and ends with signing for it when it is delivered by UPS. In between, he lists all the places in the supply chain that were involved in his order during the 17 days it took for him to receive his computer. He devotes more than one full page to details of where all the computer’s parts came from (by country of manufacture and company origin). This is what Friedman calls a “supply chain symphony” (583). His describes the process of his computer order to show how interconnected the world has become and to highlight a looming threat to the flat world—war.

Friedman examines the extent to which the elements of a flat world might moderate a geopolitical threat like war. He starts by revisiting a theory he devised in a previous book, which he called the “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention.” According to that theory, countries that developed a network of McDonald’s restaurants never fought a war with each other. Describing this theory was a semi-serious way of pointing out that countries that reach a certain level of interconnection and standard of living avoid war because its cost is too high. He updates this idea in a new theory that he calls the “Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention,” which postulates that “[n]o two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell’s, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain” (587). These countries know that war would not only cause a huge disruption in the present, but it would also scare away investors and companies for the foreseeable future.

Friedman believes that the biggest proof of his theory is China and Taiwan. In 2004, the people of Taiwan voted into office the political party that advocated for closer ties to China instead of the party that wanted to officially declare the island’s independence. To Friedman, this showed that Taiwan wanted the status quo of close interconnection rather than the risk of armed conflict. While war is certainly not impossible in a flat world, aspects of the flat world, like supply chains, can influence world leaders who consider declaring war. For example, India and Pakistan appeared to be headed for war in 2002. While the countries did not belong to the same supply chain (per the Dell Theory), India’s vast supply chain alone influenced the situation. American companies with operations in India became quite concerned about the potential war, and they put a lot of pressure on their Indian counterparts. In turn, Indian businesses put pressure on their government to ratchet down the rhetoric, which it did. While many factors were involved, Friedman thinks that supply chains had a strong impact on the negotiations between the two countries.

Conversely, terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda also use supply chains as a threat to peace. Flat-world tools can create supply chains of terror—or as the United States military terms them, the “Virtual Caliphate”—by recruiting, funding, and then deploying suicide bombers.

Finally, Friedman talks about the ultimate threat to a flat world: nuclear terrorism. The countries of the world must intensify their efforts to secure all existing nuclear weapons, prevent nations from starting nuclear programs, and insist that no new countries acquire nuclear weapons.