The Outlook: New 'One-Worlders' Are Conservatives
WASHINGTON -- The "one-worlders" are back.</br></br>Once upon a time, it was fashionable to label as "one-worlders" radical socialists who believed that national governments were an anachronism and that the peoples of the world would one day unite under a single workers' state. Those folks aren't very numerous anymore. Even in the Soviet Union, the concept is in disrepute.</br></br>But some new "one-worlders" have emerged-conservatives, this time.</br></br>They are the economists and academics who believe that in a global economy, with goods and especially capital surging across political borders, the economic fortunes of individual countries aren't important anymore. The U.S. trade deficit and other statistics, they argue, are only artificial figures in what has become a multinational corporate economy in which political distinctions matter little. It's all one big market, they contend, so why worry about it?</br></br>These experts see the world economy almost solely in financial terms and dispute the idea that relative economic flows can have real long-term effects on national security or geopolitical power. When it comes to whether the U.S. remains a world leader if its junior allies are its senior creditors, their motto is, "Don't worry, be happy."