Bring out the contradiction between Internationalism and Globalisation. (1997)
Internationalism is a political creed of cooperation among nations that keeps the nation as its unit: Immanuel Kant’s “federation of free states” (1795), Giuseppe Mazzini’s nationalism-for-humanity, Woodrow Wilson’s League, Karl Marx’s proletarian solidarity and Jawaharlal Nehru’s non-alignment. Globalisation is a process, which Jan Aart Scholte defines as the spread of supraterritorial connections between people. Scholte insists it is not mere internationalisation. The contradiction lies in that difference: one is inter-national, the other works across and above the nation.
| Criterion | Internationalism | Globalisation |
|---|---|---|
| Unit | Sovereign nation | Markets, firms, networks |
| Driver | Deliberate political choice | Technology and capital mobility |
| Ordering principle | Sovereign equality, one state one vote | Competitiveness, weighted power |
| Effect on the state | Strengthens and pools it | Disciplines and bypasses it |
Where the two collide
- The nation: built up or worn down. Internationalism needs strong nations to cooperate; Nehru’s non-alignment joined national autonomy to world cooperation. Globalisation, in Kenichi Ohmae’s The Borderless World (1990) and Susan Strange’s The Retreat of the State (1996), erodes the nation’s control over its economy.
- Politics versus markets. Internationalism is made through treaties, the UN and conferences. Globalisation is driven by markets without a centre. Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson (Globalization in Question, 1996) distinguish an inter-national economy, still governed by states, from a truly globalised one that escapes them.
- Equality versus hierarchy. The UN Charter’s sovereign equality and the Third World internationalism of Bandung, NAM, G-77 and the NIEO sought collective bargaining by the South. Globalisation’s institutions run on weighted votes and conditionality, and they turn Southern solidarity into competition for FDI (Philip G. Cerny’s competition state).
- Labour versus capital. The Communist Manifesto called on workers of all countries to unite, yet the same text foresaw capital’s drive to “nestle everywhere”. Capital became global while labour stayed national, so globalisation produced a race to the bottom instead of workers’ internationalism.
- Plurality versus uniformity. Internationalism respects distinct national cultures; Mahatma Gandhi wanted the cultures of all lands to blow freely about his house, but “I refuse to be blown off my feet by any” (Young India, 1921). Globalisation tends toward sameness, George Ritzer’s McDonaldization, though Roland Robertson’s glocalisation shows local adaptation.
Where they converge
The contradiction is not absolute. Rabindranath Tagore’s Nationalism (1917) already sought a humanist internationalism beyond the nation-state. Nineteenth-century liberal internationalism (Richard Cobden’s free trade) is an ancestor of economic globalisation. David Held’s cosmopolitan democracy seeks a political internationalism able to govern global flows. The alter-globalisation movement (Seattle 1999, World Social Forum 2001) is itself a new internationalism from below.
The present context
In 1997 globalisation was ascendant and internationalism looked old-fashioned. Today both are under attack: in January 2026 the United States announced withdrawal from 66 international bodies and kept its tariff walls, while the BRICS New Delhi Declaration (September 2026) criticised unilateral tariffs and sanctions. India’s G20 theme, “One Earth, One Family, One Future” (2023), and its Voice of the Global South summits try to revive internationalism as a way to humanise globalisation.
Conclusion
Internationalism is a political project of nations; globalisation is an economic process that bypasses them, and that is the contradiction. Yet the post-war “embedded liberalism” described by John Gerard Ruggie shows they can be reconciled when internationalist institutions govern global markets. Globalisation that lacks this political framework produces the backlash now visible.