Consequences

Abstract

Globalization has become the key concept for understanding life in the twenty-first century. But what is popularly known as globalization is really just the latest stage in the development of the global economy that emerged as a result of Western imperialism and mercantilism over five centuries ago. Since then, though war and threats of war have provoked the most vigorous bouts of diplomacy and shifts in international power, other issues have become ever more vital in shaping global politics. War today is unthinkable as an option for nearly all states in nearly all conflicts among them. But that reality is the natural outcome of half a millennia of deepening and broadening global interdependence.

The biggest challenge to statesmen is to resolve the discordance between the international economy and the political system based on the nation-state.

Henry Kissinger