Global trade has plummeted in recent months by rates not seen since the Great Depression. This year alone, the World Trade Organization predicts trade will tumble 10 percent, the biggest contraction since World War II. While countries so far have avoided the kind of disastrous trade wars that marked the 1930s, protectionist measures and nationalist sentiments are rising across the globe, reflected in the original "Buy American" provision of the U.S. government's economic stimulus package. Clearly, globalization, so recently hailed in books like Thomas Friedman's best-selling The World Is Flat, has stalled. Some economic historians even believe the world is entering an era of "deglobalization," with nations turning inward economically and culturally, which could lead to a dangerous increase in international tensions. Other analysts say the economic, technological and social ties that bind nations to each other have grown so strong that globalization is an irreversible phenomenon that will help the global economy recover.

Reed Karaim, a freelance writer living in Tuscon, Arizona, has written for The Washington Post, U.S. News and World Report, Smithsonian, American Scholar, USA Weekend and other publications. He is the author of the novel, If Men Were Angels, which was selected for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers series. He is also the winner of the Robin Goldstein Award for Outstanding Regional Reporting and other journalism awards. Karaim is a graduate of North Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota.