The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas L. FriedmanReview by: G. John IkenberryForeign Affairs, Vol. 84, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 2005), p. 167Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20031715 .

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Recent Books

on International Relations

Political and Legal G. JOHN IKENBERRY

The World Is Flat: A BriefHistory of the Twenty-first Century. BY THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN. Farrar, Straus &Giroux, 2005, 496 pp. $27.50.

Lively and provocative as always, Friedman returns with an updated thesis on global ization. In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman argued that technological innovation, foreign investment, capital

flows, and trade were transforming the world-breaking down national borders, constraining governments, and triggering grand struggles between nationalism and the forces of economic integration. Here he argues-in a swirl of anecdotes about software designers, intrepid entrepreneurs, globetrotting investors, and the famous telephone call centers in Bangalore, India that globalization has reached a new stage.

Now individuals, rather than governments or corporations, are the agents of change, empowered by e-mail, computers, tele conferencing, and production networks, all of which are drawing more and more people around the world into competition and cooperation on an equal footing. In this sense, Friedman argues, the world is becoming flat, and his book is organized

as a sort of travel guide to globalization, a kinetic portrait of the wired global village. The rest of the book examines how coun tries, companies, and workers will need to adapt to flatness. For the United States, this entails, above all, investing in educa tion, technology, and training.

But Friedman's image of a flat earth is profoundly misleading-a view of the

world from a seat in business class. Flat ness is another way of describing the transnational search by companies for cheap labor, an image that misses the pervasiveness of global inequality and the fact that much of the developing

world remains mired in poverty and misery. It also misses the importance of the global geopolitical hierarchy, which guarantees the provision of stability, property rights, and other international public goods. The rise of China and India is less about flat ness than it is about dramatic upheavals in the mountains and valleys of the global geopolitical map.

The Opportunity:America' Moment toAlter History's Course. BY RICHARD N. HAASS.

PublicAffairs, 2005, 256 pp. $25.00. Coming at a time when terrorism and the troubled Iraqi adventure have forced foreign policy thinkers to reexamine their positions, this book is a helpful guide in

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