"FOR MOST COUNTRIES, accommodating the emerging global rule set of democracy, transparency, and free trade is no mean feat, which is something most Americans find hard to understand. We tend to forget just how hard it has been to keep the United States together all these years, harmonizing our own, competing internal rule sets along the way—through a Civil War, a Great Depression, and the long struggles for racial and sexual equality that continue to this day. As far as most states are concerned, we are quite unrealistic in our expectation that they should adapt themselves quickly to globalization's very American-looking rule set."

I got this far with the article.... America has only had free trade a couple of times in our history and the rest of the time we've been crippled by tarrifs, duties, taxes, etc. America isn't spreading freedom and self-governance. Maybe the guy clears up his mis-statement later on, but 'globalization's rule set' is strong-man, dictatorial rule. It's only being marketed as 'American-looking' because of the fallacy that America is the 'Land of the Free'. What crap.