Thomas L. Friedman

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Thomas L. Friedman (2005)

Thomas Loren Friedman (born July 20 1953 in St. Louis Park , Minnesota ) is a US -American journalist . He is the New York Times correspondent and commentator specializing in foreign affairs. In recent years Friedman has mainly published articles on the topics of globalization and the social impact of information and telecommunications technologies , environmental protection and Middle East politics.

Positions

globalization

Friedman during the 2013 WEF

Friedman became known to a wider public through his books on globalization . His work The Lexus and the Olive Tree from 1999 is regarded as one of the - content-controversial - standard works on globalization, not least due to its less academic, very clear writing style. In 2004 The World is Flat (Eng. "The world is flat") appeared - according to Friedman the logical continuation of Lexus , in which he goes into the importance of new technological developments (see preface The World is Flat ).

At the center of Friedman's globalization analysis is the thesis that the framework conditions for the state, the economy and the individual have changed fundamentally with the end of the Cold War and due to groundbreaking technological developments in the information and telecommunications sector. In Die Welt ist Flach Friedman argues that globalization has entered a new phase in the past few years: No longer states and also no longer primarily companies, but individuals, empowered by tools of global cooperation such as high-speed Internet connections and workflow software or search engines are the actors of globalization today. Increasingly, individuals would have to insist on a global job market , right up to the level of tutors who have to face competition from online tutors. Friedman covers a wide variety of phenomena and topics - from offshoring to global value chains, from the educational misery in Western countries to theories of free trade, from Wikipedia to the use of the Internet by al-Qaida - in order to create a comprehensive picture of the globalized world.

The changes described would become particularly clear in the role of the state: On the one hand, the importance of nation-state borders as structure-determining factors in politics and economics has decreased significantly - globalized economic flows are subject to any attempts at geographical restriction. This applies to both financial and goods markets. On the other hand, the actor "state" is less and less able to find solutions to complex political problems.

At the same time, other actors outside the state are becoming increasingly important: in addition to NGOs , networks and other social groups, individual individuals are also becoming increasingly important. New information and communication technologies and the freedoms of global markets made it possible for an individual to build up great potentials of power and thus to become a prominent actor in world politics. Examples of such "super-empowered individuals" include Osama bin Laden , Bill Gates and Warren Buffett : they have neither a state foundation nor direct means of power at their disposal, yet they have a major impact on world politics.

In his analysis Friedman agrees with other globalization analysts such as Robert D. Kaplan . However, his conclusions are less pessimistic than the chaplains in his book The Coming Anarchy . Friedman emphasizes above all the positive aspects of globalization and the global exchange of goods: this is the only way to combat poverty worldwide. In this respect, globalization is a great opportunity for developing countries to improve the standard of living and fight poverty.

In order to benefit from globalization, however, certain "golden rules" for government action must be strictly adhered to: States that open up to global flows of finance and goods must submit to strict economic policy rules (restrictive government spending policies, deregulation of the import and export of goods ) and have strong, market-friendly institutional frameworks (especially a transparent financial market). In the last point Friedman argues similar to the institutional economics approach of Hernando de Soto ("The Mystery of Capital") and takes up Joseph Stiglitz 's criticism of the failure of the institutional framework during the Asian crisis . Friedman chose the term "golden straightjacket" for these rules to illustrate the opportunities and limitations of state trade in a globalized world.

In this context, Friedman expressly emphasizes the great importance of state action - this contradicts the thesis, which is often assumed by him, that the state becomes "unimportant" in times of globalization. The solution to social problems, according to his fundamental argument, can only lie in a policy that is open to world trade - but never in national protectionism .

Friedman's globalization theory goes beyond pure economic policy: Since globalization is structurally defining for the interplay of states, it has great effects on international politics. Friedman takes up the paradigm of "peace through trade", which is in the tradition of liberal theories of international politics and which was developed by Richard Cobden , among others : Armed conflicts between states that maintain strong trade relations and are intertwined are unlikely. Friedman intensifies this argument in his McDonald’s theory : two states in which the American fast food chain McDonald’s restaurants have never waged war against each other (the 2008 Caucasus conflict is a counterexample, however ).

Friedman does not see the conflicts of the future so much between individual states, but rather within many societies: Many people stand in a field of tension in view of the rapid social development. Friedman describes this with the image of the "Lexus and the Olive Tree": While the Toyota Lexus would stand for the need to share in the advantages of globalization, the olive tree would stand for the need to preserve traditional identities and roots, which ultimately result from globalization are threatened. For Friedman, the current terrorism and the Middle East conflict, but also fundamentalist currents in the OECD world, are shaped by this contradiction.

In an interview published on May 1, 2015, he took the view that there is currently no longer any division of the world into east and west, north and south or, in contrast to capitalism and communism, it is about “world order and world disorder”. "Weak states", for Friedman those with straight borders, he named Libya , Syria , Iraq and Eritrea , are "artificial structures" and would currently "implode or explode". The current refugee crisis represents one of the greatest upheavals since the Second World War : “Millions of people want from their world of chaos to that of order.” In the Islamic world, Iran has a key position: “All roads no longer lead to Rome, but rather to Tehran ”. President Obama recognized this and wanted to try to come to an arrangement with the Iranian regime. Obama believes “that with the big also the small turn for the positive”, this is his philosophy. When asked about the nature of the world today, Friedman replied that technology is not the only answer, the future is not fate, it is a decision: “We have to choose the right values.” His golden rule is: “Do only this to others what you also want from them regarding you. "

International politics

In addition to globalization, Friedman mainly dealt with the political situation in the Middle East. As Middle East correspondent for United Press International and the New York Times , Friedman spent the 1980s in Lebanon and Israel. In his book From Beirut to Jerusalem he describes his experiences; his reports on the Sabra and Shatila massacres won the Pulitzer Prize . In his publications Friedman repeatedly advocates a negotiated solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and repeatedly expressed harsh criticism of Israel's settlement and water policy.

His clear support for a hard line after the 9/11 attacks and his determined support for the Iraq war attracted even more attention . In an appearance on a television talk show in September 2003, he said the US had to go first

"... go to the heart of the [Arab] world and smash its skulls [and then] be its partner [to] build a decent and different Iraq."

"... go into the heart of [the arab] world and beat their brains out [and then] partner with them [to] build a decent and different Iraq."

Friedman's critics refer to him as "the Dean of liberal imperialism" - the dean of liberal imperialism . It was only in the face of the now undeniable failure of the American Iraq policy that he began to change his line. In columns for the New York Times in May 2006, he declared that he was deeply dissatisfied with US foreign policy in the Iraq war and that he would rather experience a nuclear-armed Iran than go through a new war in the Middle East with those currently in charge of American foreign policy have to.

In his book Longitudes and Attitudes. Exploring the World After September 11 of 2002 shows an atypical emotionalization of his analysis for Friedman - one reason for what many critics consider to be an unbalanced analysis of the Iraq war.

Trump administration

In his column in the New York Times called Friedman in May 2017, the United States of America with regard to the policy of US President Trump United American Emirates : The name of the Emir was Donald , the crown prince hot Jared , the Crown Princess Ivanka , and the council would wave through all the wishes of the emir. He accused Trump's longest-serving cabinet member of Pompeo having no integrity or ethics.

Environmental policy

Following his analysis of developments in the Middle East, Friedman became an advocate of a green revolution . In numerous statements and in his book The World is Flat Friedman calls for a new paradigm for Western societies. Friedman recorded the connection between the chances of peace and the dependence of Western societies on oil in an article for the journal Foreign Policy 2006 and formulated the Laws of Petropolitics : the conflict in the Middle East can only be resolved if the societies concerned become democratized. The prerequisite for this, however, is that the western industrial nations make themselves independent of oil. Critics refer to this position as resource determinism . With the article in the New York Times "A Warning from the Garden" Friedman coined the term Green New Deal on January 19, 2007 , based on the New Deal of the 1930s, which brought the USA out of the Great Depression. Such a redistribution of the maps is now also needed in the energy sector in order to meet the challenges of climate change and the finiteness of fossil fuels.

Awards

Friedman received the Pulitzer Prize three times:

Friedman received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Overseas Press Club in 2004 and was accepted into the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. In 2009 he was a finalist of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize . He has also been an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1995 . In 2003 he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society .

Books

  • From Beirut to Jerusalem. 1989
  • The Lexus and the Olive Tree. 1999, revised in 2000
  • Longitudes and Attitudes. Exploring the World After September 11th, 2002
  • The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. 2005, revised 2007
  • Hot, Flat, and Crowded. 2008, revised in 2009
  • with Michael Mandelbaum: That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back . Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011, ISBN 978-1-250-01372-9 .

Web links

Commons : Thomas Friedman  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

swell

  1. ↑ Thomas L. Friedman: "The Arab world will be a disaster" - DIE WELT . Website welt.de. Retrieved May 1, 2015.
  2. ^ New York Times article by Thomas Friedman on Beirut massacre
  3. ↑ Tim Russert Show , CNBC , September 13, 2003, quoted in after Greg Grandin: "Your Americanism and Mine: Americanism and Anti-Americanism in the Americas", in: American Historical Review , Vol. 111, No. 4 (October 2006), p. 1066; Text online ( Memento from May 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ Thomas L. Friedman: Trump's United American Emirates. In: The New York Times . May 31, 2017, accessed May 31, 2017 .
  5. ↑ "while Pompeo was CIA director, the first foreign-planned terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11 was being organized here and abroad, and while he was secretary of state it was carried out."
  6. ^ Laws of Petropolitics
  7. ^ Member History: Thomas L. Friedman. American Philosophical Society, accessed August 13, 2018 (annotated).
personal data
SURNAME Friedman, Thomas L.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Friedman, Thomas Lauren
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American journalist
DATE OF BIRTH July 20, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Louis Park