Chinese shoppers buy all sorts of fruits at a massive, morning food market in Beijing on April 20, 2008. The cost of food has increased by around 40 percent since mid-2007 worldwide, and the strain has caused riots and protests in countries like China, Thailand, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Haiti and Egypt. (UPI Photo/Stephen Shaver)

WASHINGTON, May 5 (UPI) -- Globalization was supposed to lift all boats, some faster than others. And the proliferation of democracies around the world would put the seal of good government on this peaceful process. But globalization has also spawned multiple uncertainties. Players improvise the rules as they go along. Hedge funds and derivatives have left government regulators in the dust. And the middle classes see their standard of living heading south.

A plethora of books by geopolitical heavyweights is now ringing alarm bells. In "The Return of History and the End of Dreams," Robert Kagan says we are now back in a world of clashing national ambitions and interests, closer to the 19th century than to the 1990s.

Rapacious capitalist greed in the United States triggered the subprime mortgage fiasco, beginning almost a year ago, which rapidly hit most Western countries and shredded the real estate value of millions. In Palm Beach, Fla., homes worth $10 million or more have not lost value and go on selling.

Greed is also behind the unfolding global food crisis and its devastating impact on human security. Crop land displaced for fuel crops shrunk bountiful U.S. agricultural surpluses for the world's hungry. One tank of ethanol for the average sport utility vehicle requires enough grain to feed a person for a year.

Over the past nine months global food prices (through March 2008) are up 40 percent, leaving reserves at a 30-year low. The U.S. Agency for International Development is scaling back food aid to some of the world's poorest countries. Food riots in widely scattered parts of the developing world are just a harbinger of worse things to come.