The nature of international relations has been fundamentally changed with the rise of the global economy. This research discusses the importance of the global economy for international relations in the 1990s and beyond.
Global economic growth is important to the world in general and the United States in specific for more than economic reasons. Economic stagnation overseas also breeds instability that can threaten world security and U.S. security. One of the biggest challenges the world will face in the coming decades is how best to deal with the consequences of economic problems throughout the globe. Unstable and economically stagnant nations suffer from civil unrest, military conflict, famine, pestilence, and mass emigration. These ills affect the access countries have to foreign markets and create instability in regions vital to U.S. interests. For these reasons, the global economy has a dramatic impact on shaping international relations and ensuring the security of American interests.
Development of the global economy is dependent on global economic freedom (Moore, 1998, p. 193). Economic freedom is the ability of people to engage in free enterprise with minimal government interference or coercion. For a country fully to enjoy economic freedom, it must have low taxes, free and open borders, minimal government regulation, the rule of law, and little government corruption. Armed with such tools, individuals and companies are free to work and create wealth across national boundaries. Thus, those countries with the highest levels of economic freedom tend to be the wealthiest, and those countries with the lowest levels of economic freedom tend to be the poorest.
This connection also can be seen by examining countries that have used economic freedom as a tool to create wealth and economic growth. Economic prosperity and sharing within the emerging global economy has not been forthcoming in many of the lesser-developed countrie...