The book illustrates the genesis, mechanisms and consequences of US geo-economic hegemony by questioning the myth of globalisation as inescapable destiny. And it tries to imagine what kind of world awaits us.
Globalisation is (was?) a geopolitical phenomenon, before and even more than an economic one. Immersed in the ’American century’, we did not realise this, taking for granted the world that arose from the ashes of the Second World War and consolidated after the collapse of the USSR. We thus ended up believing the characteristics of that historical phase to be immutable: the primacy of liberal societies, the unifying force of trade and industrial interdependencies, the unstoppability of neo-liberal capitalism, the cogency of international institutions. Now these assumptions, along with the primacy of Washington, are radically challenged outside and inside America.
A book that dismantles the canon of globalisation, analysing it from its historical beginnings to its current slow disintegration with its economic and socio-cultural fallout.