The World Is Flat!!!

Well, that's the title of Tom Friedman's new book. I haven't yet read the book or read a review about it, but I heard what the book was all about from Mr Friedman himself during his conversation with Charlie Rose on PBS last night. I believe Mr Friedman loves his metaphors and it looks like this book too has plenty of them. But after you sift through all the metaphor and expose the real idea behind it,it is always something insightful and gives much food for thought.

The gist seems to be that the wave of globalization sweeping the world will make countries highly inter-dependent on each other. This inter-dependence is mostly as a result of nations having their supply chains in so many other countries. One result of this would be that it will be extremely costly for nations to wage war on other nations in which they have supply chains.

This scenario throws up some very important and interesting questions...Will symmetric warfare (i.e one army against another) be a thing of the past? Since, nations and communities will continue to have conflicts, will these conflicts be resolved through asymmetric warfare or more through dialogue?

I was always convinced, that the only way to effectively deal with the Kashmir problem in particular and Pakistan in general was through war directed at eliminating Pakistan's military, it's war making capability and every other structure that props up their military. However, the scenario laid out by Mr Friedman, makes it look like that would be highly improbable or even impossible!

Read the Washington Post review of the book.