President Clinton embraced free trade because he believed that Globalization of the world economy produced greater ties between countries & cultures, that make it harder to severe in conflict...
"Not everyone who's angry is angry at the civilized world and wants to destroy it," Clinton said. "A lot are angry because they can't be a part of it."
..."We need to reduce the pool of potential terrorists by increasing the number of potential partners in the 21st century world," he said.
One example of this is the
McDonalds Theory. Proposed by NY Times columnist
Tom Friedman in the mid 90's, it holds that no 2 countries with a McDonalds restauraut have ever went to war with another...
Friedman's thesis proposes that: "When a country reaches a certain level of economic development, when it has a middle class big enough to support a McDonald's, it becomes a McDonald's country. And people in McDonald's countries don't like to fight wars. They like to wait in line for burgers."
...The
flip side of this argument is the reason that war becomes rare between these coutries is because of corporate power. War is bad for business between developed countries. Globalization creates massive corporate & business entities that are answerable to no one but stockholders, and the bottom line.
...But the McDonalds theory does point to something else. It's that even in far away lands, Humanity has a shared "pop culture" through consumerism. Now you can argue over the worth of that culture & whether it's a good thing, but there are things that no matter where you go people understand. The famous "Hilltop Ad" by Coca-Cola, in which they wanted to teach the world to sing & buy Coke is an example of that. The ad was devised when the makers noticed that in every airport you can find people who are sitting down discussing things over a Coke.
It makes you wonder whether the stuff we think of as "crap" & junk food will unite us in the end?