World on fire : how exporting free market democracy breeds ethnic hatred and global instability

Summary: Examining the actual impact of economic globalization in every region of the world, from Africa and Asia to Russia and Latin America, Chua exposes an unexpected reality. In every one of these regions, free markets have concentrated disproportionate, often spectacular wealth in the hands of a resented ethnic minority. Adding democracy to this volatile mix unleashes suppressed ethnic hatreds and brings to power ethno nationalist governments that pursue aggressive policies of confiscation and revenge. Chua also shows how individual countries may be viewed as market-dominant minorities at the regional or global level, a fact that may help to explain the Arab-Israeli conflict and the rising tide of anti-American sentiment around the world. America today has become the world's leading market-dominant minority, enjoying wealth and economic power wildly disproportionate to our numbers. This, perhaps more than anything else, accounts for the visceral hatred of Americans that we have seen expressed in recent acts of terrorism. Chua warns that, far from making the world a better and safer place, democracy and capitalism - at least in the raw, unrestrained form in which they are currently being exported - are intensifying ethnic resentment and global violence, with potentially catastrophic results.