imperial power. The right wants to assert U.S. sovereignty in protection of traditional American virtues; the left wants to protect the American blue-collar worker from the consequences of a world labor market created by U.S. corporate, diplomatic, and financial power. The result is that there is little or no coherent debate either about the particulars of globalization or about the risks, both domestically and globally, in the way the international economy is being run.

The model of capitalism that the United States is exporting to the rest of the world is very particular. It works in an American context—although many on the American left would dispute even that—because of the unique set of U.S. political, economic, and social institutions. If it is a hard, entrepreneurial, dynamic capitalism, it alsoboasts tough regulation and a degree of transparency that springs from America's unique democratic traditions and Constitution. More than that, the sometimes savage inequalities and relentless individualism that it throws up are compensated by a degree of social and geographic mobility within the United States that are also unique. It has a market-based financial system in which financial short-termism and financial engineering are endemic, in which all is sacrificed before the totem of "shareholder value," but which again is compensated for by a readiness to take risks. All capitalisms have a different way of reconciling private property, profit, and markets to the different concerns and value systems of the wider civil society. The United States represents a particular solution to these dilemmas. But it is this model that