World on Fire, by Amy Chua, published by Doubleday, 2002

If Amy Chua and Thomas Friedman were in a metaphorical car trying to steer the world toward a brighter more peaceful future, they would easily agree on which way to head. Both believe deeply that our best hope ultimately lies in the direction of more political and economic freedom for all.

But while Friedman, author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, would be pressing on the car's gas, Chua would be slowing the vehicle down and using caution as her guide.

Chua's best-selling book, World On Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, was released in 2003, and the paperback edition with new material has just gone on sale. In it, she makes a compelling argument that pushing unbridled capitalism and open elections can make things worse in many nations of the world.

Chua notes that in several countries, there are market-dominant minorities - small ethnic groups which control the wealth and the economy. These include the Chinese in the Philippines, the Indians in east Africa, or whites in South Africa. Too often, free market "reforms" in these countries simply allow the market-dominant minorities to accumulate even more wealth, widening the poverty gap and spurring greater resentment. Violence typically follows.

Likewise, forcing elections where there are deeply divided ethnic groups results in the ascension of alleged war criminals like Slobodan Milosevic.

Too often, free market "reforms" in many countries allow market-dominant minorities to accumulate ever more wealth, widening the poverty gap and spurring greater resentment. Violence typically follows.

Chua goes into this analysis knowing full well that the world is a rough place where simply wishing and hoping won't make things better. Her aunt, part of the market-dominant Chinese minority in the Philippines, was murdered by a Filipino servant. A crime the local police shrugged off as revenge.

That kind of resentment troubles Chua who worries that the United States, home to just 4% of the world's people but controller of vast amounts of worldwide wealth, might be increasingly seen as the global market-dominant minority, the one group everyone around the world fears and secretly plots against.

World On Fire can be seen as a companion to The Lexus and the Olive Tree, but the books are quite different. Friedman approaches the world as a journalist making observations around the world and weaving them together with whatever statistics and analysis fit his thesis. Despite his Pulitzer Prizes, Friedman writes a breezy book which doesn't require a lot of heavy lifting by the reader.

Chua on the other hand is an academic, a tenured professor of law at Yale. While her writing is not the impenetrable wall of words academics can sometimes generate like a machine, she certainly wants the reader to know that her work is backed up by rigorous research and historical analysis. The body of the book can sometimes get bogged down in this defense, and the book wraps up with 38 pages of endnotes. Friedman has none.

In the end, Chua's "go slowly" prescription relies on words like "foster," "nurture," and "generosity." And this seems like a reasonable alternative to promoting the "greed is good" mentality around the world.

About the Author
Amy Chua is a Professor of Law at Yale University. She received her J.D. from Harvard, where she was Executive Editor of the Harvard Law Review. She has taught at many prestigious universities, including Duke, Columbia and Stanford. Previous publications include El Mundo en Llamas.


Contributed by Keith Porter. Reprinted with permission from About.com.

To read a Global Envision book review about Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree, see True Stories of Globalization, Complemented with Theory.

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