Thinking globally sets the stage to start acting locally

Gloria Martin campaigns for an EU referendum in London. In Europe, the euro-zone crisis threatens to break up the bold, some would say ludicrously over-ambitious, plan to create a United States of EurShow more

Everywhere, it seems, the forces of globalisation are on the retreat, and those of chauvinistic localism on the rampage.

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Some argue that globalisation as an effective dynamic in the world economy was overrated, largely confined to jet-setting executives, globe-trotting financiers and speakers at international economic forums.

But there is no doubt that the idea of an integrated, mutually dependent world, swapping cultures and commerce with ease, is waning. International organisations everywhere are under strain from local, national or regional forces.

In Europe, the euro-zone crisis threatens to break up the bold, some would say ludicrously over-ambitious, plan to create a United States of Europe.

Nothing better illustrated the impotence of the advocates of European unity than the farcical situation a couple of weeks ago when moves to deal with the euro-zone crisis were blocked by the minority party in the Slovakian parliament. Bratislava effectively vetoed Brussels and Berlin.

However the financial aspects of the EU crisis are resolved, that kind of structural imbalance makes the federalists look plain silly.

In Britain - never the most enthusiastic member of the great European project - there is now a considerable body of opinion that argues the UK should secede from the Treaty of Rome altogether. But even as London considers this, the forces of localism are acing against it too, with Scotland closer than ever to realising its independence plans.

In the US, the home of the globalisation concept and its vanguard in the great boom of the early years of this century, driven by armies of American investment bankers, the world view is becoming increasingly isolationist.

US politicians have responded to their own government's failure to deal with the legacy of the 2008 financial crisis by lashing out at its trading rivals, in particular China. Congress is considering a raft of protectionist measures against Beijing that run the serious risk of accelerating a downturn in world trade.

Throughout the western world, the Occupy movement is gaining in strength. Nobody is quite sure what these protesters want. Is it the abolition of capitalism or just a bigger slice of the capitalist cake?

What they definitely do not want are the symbols of globalisation, from Starbucks to General Motors to Goldman Sachs, or the increasingly impotent IMF and World Bank.

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In Asia too the mood is alarmingly regional. There are serious doubts about the sustainability of the Chinese economic model of export-led growth. Beijing is beginning to worry more about the hundreds of millions of Chinese in the western hinterland, who have not shared in the country's economic miracle to the same extent as the teeming metropolitan centres on the Pacific coast.

Japan, which was looking to take over the world in the 1980s via its dynamic export economy, continues its zombie existence; India still has to confront the domestic "infrastructure deficit" that makes doing business there so difficult. These Asian countries are likely to be looking inwards, rather than acting globally, in the future.

Which brings us to the Middle East and North Africa (Mena). There was already a feeling that, after the financial crisis of 2008, the western models of economic and financial "best practice" were no longer appropriate for the region. Those methods, advocated and implemented most enthusiastically by Dubai, had led to nothing but trouble.

The ongoing Arab Spring has only increased the pressure to look introspectively within the countries of the Mena region.

Vast sums have been promised in some states to deal with internal dissatisfaction. The pressure on expatriate workers has increased, with some GCC countries planning to drastically reduce their dependence of foreign workers.

At the same time, concerted international efforts to plan the region's future, for instance via a Middle East bank for reconstruction and development, have so far come to nothing.

Charity begins at home, many governments appear to have decided.

In the space of a generation, it seems, globalisation has come and gone as a guiding economic principle. What comes next?