Skip to main content
Book Forum

The Global Village Myth: Distance, War, and the Limits of Power

(Georgetown University Press, 2015)

Watch the Event

Join the conversation on X using #CatoEvents. Follow @CatoInstitute on X to get future event updates, live streams, and videos from the Cato Institute.

Date and Time
-
Location
Hayek Auditorium
Share This Event
Featuring
Featuring the author Patrick Porter, Academic Director, Strategy and Security Institute, University of Exeter; with comments by Zack Beauchamp, World Correspondent, Vox​.com; and Austin Long, Assistant Professor, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University; moderated by Justin Logan, Director of Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute.

According to Washington elites, revolutions in information, transport, and weapons technologies have shrunk the world, leaving the United States and its allies more vulnerable than ever to violent threats like terrorism or cyberwar. As a result, they practice responses driven by fear: theories of falling dominoes, hysteria in place of sober debate, and an embrace of preemptive war to tame a chaotic world. Patrick Porter pushes back against the decades-old globalist fad, arguing that technology has not overcome distance, and that the world has changed less than threat inflators suggest. He concludes by noting the disastrous policies the globalists have produced and by pointing the way toward a more sensible and restrained strategy. Please join us for a discussion of this timely and iconoclastic book.