Quotes from Jeffrey E. Garten

A vision without execution is an hallucination.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see," which I interpret to mean that looking way back into the past provides much better perspective into the enduring patterns of history. I'd

Indeed, it was the British Empire that, in tandem with the American democratic capitalist system, created the global economy as we know it, based as it is on consumer-driven markets, rule of law, and the ideal—at least in North America, Europe, and a growing number of emerging nations—of free and open societies. Especially

The purpose was not to destroy the alliances and organizations that were built after World War II but to spread the responsibilities among key nations for making those alliances and organizations work. The goal was not to destroy but to adjust and modernize (p. 324).

By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazis' "Final Solution," the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising put down at gunpoint.

Companies such as Intel, IBM, General Electric, Apple, and Microsoft have also expanded their research operations abroad to countries including India, China, Singapore, and Israel in order to be nearer customers and technological talent. In fact, PricewaterhouseCoopers has estimated that 94 percent of all global companies now do some research and development outside their home countries.

The telegraph not only linked the world in real time but became a bridge to subsequent international communications breakthroughs—the radio in the 1920s, the telephone in the 1950s, the Internet in the 1990s. Even the magic of the wireless Internet rests on a solid foundation of wire cables, just like the magic of the telegraph.

is a little-known fact that nearly 95 percent of communications traffic between continents—including e-mail, phone calls, videos, and financial transfers—travels not by air or through space but via underwater fiber-optic cable—close to one million miles of it. And the demand is growing.

The big advantage that the Mongols had over previous empire builders is that they themselves had nothing in the way of deeply ingrained ideas of politics, economics, or culture to spread abroad.

Indifferent to controlling matters of religion or culture, the Mongols focused on building commerce and the physical, administrative, and legal infrastructure to help it flow freely.

globalization is about connecting on multiple levels and breaking down many of the walls that separate populations of various origins, customs, and beliefs. Globalization also entails developing systems of government that centralize administration and enforce common standards of behavior.

Furthermore, the East India Company showed how government and commercial enterprises of the same nation can make common cause in expanding commerce and culture across borders. Indeed, it demonstrated that when it comes to globalization, the line between the state and its companies can be thin or invisible.

The closest modern equivalents to the Company, however, are the giant state-owned companies of China, such as the Sinopec Group, the petroleum behemoth. As Beijing extends its influence across East Asia and works to secure supplies of oil and other raw materials from Africa to Latin America, its large state firms are and will continue to be critical vehicles of this expansion.