Tectonic Shift
The Geoeconomic Realignment of Globalizing Markets
- Jagdish N Sheth - Emory University, USA
- Rajendra S Sisodia - FW Olin Distinguished Professor of Global Business, Babson College, Massachusetts
- The EU will expand both eastward as well as to the south, right up to Southern Africa.
- The Asian block, initially led by Japan and then by China, will encompass a united Korea, ASEAN, Australia and New Zealand and create a vast free trade area by approximately 2015.
- The US and Latin American nations will revive the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and will be joined by the UK.
- South Asia will have its own free trade area, which will eventually ally with the FTAA.
Sheth and Sisodia argue that these evolving, strategic partnerships will involve free trade, monetary union, cross-border infrastructure investments, regional development agencies, and conflict resolution mechanisms. They also discuss the key steps that each region will have to take to be successful, and how it can overcome obstacles to change. Handled properly, the authors further argue, this evolution will result in faster and broader economic development coupled with diminished conflict among nations.
"There have been many writings on geopolitical forces—how nations interact in the pursuit of power. Less has been written on geoeconomics forces—how national economies interact in the pursuit of economic gain. . . . It is to Sheth and Sisodia's credit that they offer a penetrating analysis on where the future of different countries is going under the pressure of geoeconomic forces."
The book is a commendable treatise on the modern economic history of the world that explains most modern economic phenomena without too much jargon…The attention to the historic details is a strong point of the entire book…The chapters can also be considered a short crash course in modern economic history and even a layman can understand how the geoeconomic forces have realigned themselves over the period of the last few decades.