Is Tourism the Most Destructive Enterprise? Tourism explodes with globalization, enriching lives but destroying nature and culture.

By Elizabeth Becker

The world has serious concerns over fiscal crises, security crises and environmental crises including climate change. 

And then there are vacations. Yes, vacations – the getaways when we can put aside lofty concerns and remember what living is all about: seeing friends, hosting family reunions, discovering a new artist at a provincial festival and running barefoot on the beach with salt air stinging our cheeks.

At least that was the definition of a vacation before globalization took off. 

Now vacations have joined the ranks of the biggest global industrial complexes. While few noticed, travel and tourism grew into a giant business sector and the world’s largest employer – beating out health care, education and retail. At least one out of every 11 people works in the industry, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.

Tourism contributes at least $6.5 trillion to the world economy every year. Since the 2008 recession, its growth rate has rebounded faster than manufacturing and financial services. And if frequent-flyer miles were a currency, they would be the most valuable in the world, even with all those blackout dates.

It turns out that tourism is the poster child for how to benefit from the global marketplace, for obvious reasons. Wholesale travel and tourism depends on open borders. With political developments and technology – new long-distance airliners that cross half of the globe in a single flight and the internet revolution – countries off the beaten path in South America, Africa and the Middle East are more accessible.

A chart of the rise of international tourist trips is a thumbnail history of globalization.

The modern era of “Europe on five dollars a day” began in 1960. That year 25 million trips were taken across foreign borders.

Ten years later the figure rose to 250 million, a significant increase but not earth-shattering.

Then came globalization and the opening of borders. The end of the Cold War in the early 1990s accomplished just that – opening long closed borders in Eastern Europe and Asia, a wide swath of nations behind what used to be called the Iron Curtain and the Bamboo Curtain. This newly opened territory represented nearly one third of the planet, and by 1995, when most had opened up to tourism, there were 536 million trips.

Last year, the 1 billion mark was broken with the UN World Tourism Organization celebrating the event at its Madrid headquarters.

I dissect and explore this explosion of the tourism industry in Overbooked. The elusive octopus-like industry is everywhere and nowhere. Everyone takes vacations, but few see the industry behind them. Nowadays, any endeavor can be transformed into a travel package. Read more…

Elizabeth Becker is a former New York Times correspondent and senior foreign editor at National Public Radio.

As published by YaleGlobal Online on April 23, 2013.

China and the U.S. both want a rules-based cyberspace, but do not see eye to eye. A potentially dangerous Cyber Cold War awaits if they cannot agree on some rules of engagement.

By Trefor Moss

Cyberspace matters. We know this because governments and militaries around the world are scrambling to control the digital space even as they slash defense spending in other areas, rapidly building up cyber forces with which to defend their own virtual territories and attack those of their rivals.

But we do not yet know how much cyberspace matters, at least in security terms. Is it merely warfare’s new periphery, the theatre for a 21^st century Cold War that will be waged unseen, and with practically no real-world consequences? Or is it emerging as the most important battle-space of the information age, the critical domain in which future wars will be won and lost?

For the time being, some states appear quite content to err on the side of boldness when it comes to cyber. This brazen approach to cyber operations – repeated attacks followed by often flimsy denials – almost suggests a view of cyberspace as a parallel universe in which actions do not carry real-world consequences. This would be a risky assumption. The victims of cyber attacks are becoming increasingly sensitive about what they perceive as acts of aggression, and are growing more inclined to retaliate, either legally, virtually, or perhaps even kinetically.

The United States, in particular, appears to have run out of patience with the stream of cyber attacks targeting it from China – Google and The New York Times being just two of the most high-profile victims – and which President Obama has now insisted are at least partly state-sponsored. Read more…

As published by The Diplomat on April 19, 2013.

By Robert Kaplan

Everyone loves equality: equality of races, of ethnic groups, of sexual orientations, and so on. The problem is, however, that in geopolitics equality usually does not work very well. For centuries Europe had a rough equality between major states that is often referred to as the balance-of-power system. And that led to frequent wars. East Asia, by contrast, from the 14th to the early 19th centuries, had its relations ordered by a tribute system in which China was roughly dominant. The result, according to political scientist David C. Kang of the University of Southern California, was a generally more peaceful climate in Asia than in Europe.

The fact is that domination of one sort or another, tyrannical or not, has a better chance of preventing the outbreak of war than a system in which no one is really in charge; where no one is the top dog, so to speak. That is why Columbia University’s Kenneth Waltz, arguably America’s pre-eminent realist, says that the opposite of “anarchy” is not stability, but “hierarchy.”

Hierarchy eviscerates equality; hierarchy implies that some are frankly “more equal” than others, and it is this formal inequality — where someone, or some state or group, has more authority and power than others — that prevents chaos. For it is inequality itself that often creates the conditions for peace.

Government is the most common form of hierarchy. It is a government that monopolizes the use of violence in a given geographical space, thereby preventing anarchy. To quote Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century English philosopher, only where it is possible to punish the wicked can right and wrong have any practical meaning, and that requires “some coercive power.”

The best sort of inequality is hegemony. Whereas primacy, as Kang explains, is about preponderance purely through military or economic power, hegemony “involves legitimation and consensus.” That is to say, hegemony is some form of agreed-upon inequality, where the dominant power is expected by others to lead. When a hegemon does not lead, it is acting irresponsibly.

Of course, hegemony has a bad reputation in media discourse. But that is only because journalists are confused about the terminology, even as they sanctimoniously judge previous historical eras by the strict standards of their own. In fact, for most of human history, periods of relative peace have been the product of hegemony of one sort or another. And for many periods, the reigning hegemonic or imperial power was the most liberal, according to the standards of the age. Rome, Venice and Britain were usually more liberal than the forces arranged against them. The empire of the Austrian Hapsburgs in Central and Eastern Europe often protected the rights of minorities and prevented ethnic wars to a much greater degree than did the modern states that succeeded it. The Ottoman Empire in the Balkans and the Middle East frequently did likewise. There are exceptions, of course, like Hapsburg Spain, with its combination of inquisition and conquest. But the point is that hegemony does not require tyrannical or absolutist rule. Read more…

Robert D. Kaplan is Chief Geopolitical Analyst at Stratfor, a geopolitical analysis firm, and author of the bestselling new book The Revenge of Geography.

As published in www.realclearworld.com on April 18, 2013.

By Diego Sánchez de la Cruz, IE Master in International Relations Alumnus

 Since the beginning of the Great Recession, uncertainty and volatility has spiked interest in safe haven assets. This “flight to quality” does not respond to short-term concerns, but rather to serious doubts about our economy’s fundamentals. Currencies are at the center of this crisis of confidence, as paper money shows its inability to maintain its value over time.

 If we measure the evolution of the euro throughout the last decade, we can see that the European currency has lost almost 80% of its original value. Similarly, while the price of oil in dollars and euros has skyrocketed over the last decade, the pricing in gold has remained constant. Hence, instead of obsessing about the euro/dollar relationship, we take a broader approach and acknowledge the fact that paper monies keep losing value year after year.

What safe haven assets can help investors avoid such destruction of wealth? Of course gold and commodities are the first examples that come to mind, but other creative alternatives are also available. For instance, the wine marketplace has seen yearly gains of 15% since 2000, and its strength has grown larger through the on-going crisis. Global demand for wine keeps growing at a faster pace than the industry’s supply capabilities, which assures rising prices. Specialized investment boutiques are certainly taking advantage of the wine boom: Spain’s March Vini Catena has accumulated a profitability of 36% since 2009.

Artwork has also become a serious alternative for nervous investors. Yes, it is illiquid, it carries large transaction costs… but picking the right art works can yield very large returns that stand the test of inflation. The industry certainly has had its share of ups and downs throughout history: leading art auction firm Sotheby’s suffered the DotCom crash but, since 2009, it has multiplied its traded value – by eight times!

Besides wine and fine art, other sectors and products have also experienced large gains in spite of the financial crisis. Guns and ammunition, farm land, watches, timber, stamps, diamonds… are some examples. In the end, it is all about safeguarding wealth in a context of monetary and financial instability.