“globalization.” That term certainly caught on for a while. But for those who want to be truly accurate, a better word is “Americanization,” Westad says.7 For better or worse, almost all of us now live in the global economic system that Indonesia and Brazil entered in the mid-1960s, a worldwide capitalist order with the United States as its leading military power and center of cultural production. That may change soon—who knows. But we’re still here.
