Where's Tom Friedman?

Anyone reading this is probably familiar with Thomas L. Friedman, foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, notable for his best-selling book The World Is Flat. The book, which I reviewed a couple of months ago, has stirred up a lot of controversy, mostly for its seeming pro-globalization attitude (enhanced by Friedman's gee-whiz appearances on talk shows and his prose, in which a frisson of excitement goes through him at seeing brilliant Indians arriving at work).

For those who believe they will profit from globalization, TWIF became a virtual primer on what to do and how to do it. I have to believe that it has been passed down corporate hierarchies as much as any other three books combined (with the possible exception of the execrable Who Moved My Cheese?).

However, for those who believe that globalization opens up some issues that the U.S. is ill-equipped to handle, Friedman's book is seen as Exhibit 1 in the "let's do it and see what happens" sweepstakes. It has been criticized for its unwillingness to engage sufficiently with the very real disruption globalization can create, and not just in the United States.

Whichever side of the fence you stand on (I tend toward the latter; while I am not as critical of TWIF as some, that the first 200 pages [and most business executives would be hard-pressed to get through even that much of the near-500 pages] is so incredibly rosy takes away a lot of my respect for Friedman's identification or some very real trends), there is no denying that the book was an important one, and that Tom Friedman has been associated indelibly with the issue of globalization and the changes it has wrought.

Friedman's been off finishing up his next book on how American needs to have a green revolution, and how it will "renew America." I admit to being a little skeptical about this (as I wrote last week, nothing has convinced me yet that going green will enhance the economic situation of the U.S. - not to say that we don't have to do it, regardless of cost), but I don't want to prejudge his arguments.

As you can tell, I have a decidedly mixed reaction to Tom Friedman. His puppy-dog naivete strikes me as inappropriate given the challenges he himself has outlined, but he has gone out and done some solid reporting (and for those who dislike his writing style, here and here, for example, I think of it as fairly good for a modern newspaper guy).

So imagine my surprise to read a column by Friedman that struck me as pretty much dead on. I certainly think this is right:

People want to do nation-building. They really do. But they want to do nation-building in America.

They are not only tired of nation-building in Iraq and in Afghanistan, with so little to show for it. They sense something deeper — that we’re just not that strong anymore. We’re borrowing money to shore up our banks from city-states called Dubai and Singapore. Our generals regularly tell us that Iran is subverting our efforts in Iraq, but they do nothing about it because we have no leverage — as long as our forces are pinned down in Baghdad and our economy is pinned to Middle East oil.

He contrasts Singapore's airport and Berlin's central train station with JFK Airport and Penn Station, and wonders how "a great power" could have allowed things to slip this far. He quotes the president of Harvard:

“China, India, Singapore ... have adopted biomedical research and the building of biotechnology clusters as national goals. Suddenly, those who train in America have significant options elsewhere.”

He sees America as a nation in trouble:

We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.

While none of this is exactly news, especially to those of us who have been writing about such things already, to see the happy huckster expressing this doom and gloom in the pages of the New York Times is pretty remarkable.

Of course, I have to mention before I finish that it would have been nice for Friedman to acknowledge his own contribution to this phenomenon. The World Is Flat, while certainly not the cause of globalization, did make it look pretty darned desirable. The connection between the corporate executives who decided to abandon the nation that helped build their companies in search of profits, and the increasing weakness of that nation, well, that seems clear to me. Not to Tom, I guess.