ABSTRACT
Economic security has preoccupied national governments, in Asia and elsewhere, when economic shocks have been so unexpected and severe that existing social and political arrangements appear threatened. Contemporary globalization – economic integration at the global level that is no longer limited to the industrialized countries – accelerated during the 1980s, as programs of economic liberalization spread throughout the developing world. A sharp increase in capital flows to developing countries in the early 1990s reinforced positive views of globalization. That sunny perspective did not last the decade, however, as successive financial crises affected first Mexico, then East and Southeast Asia, Russia, and Argentina. Financial crises were succeeded in the new century by the international effects of an end to the US high-technology boom and its accompanying stock market bubble, the shock of 9/11 and the insecurity that followed (culminating in the Iraq war), and a US administration that appeared little interested in collaboration to mitigate the effects of globalization on smaller, more open economies.
