The unwitting victims include cashmere sweater knitters in Scotland and Italian cheese makers. These interconnected facets of our common future constitute radical change from just a decade ago. In the Cold War, the White House and the Kremlin were in charge. In globalization, nobody is. Political considerations are being supplanted by economic ones.
Politicians still wield tremendous power.
For instance, the agonizing violence and dislocation in Kosovo may appear a tribalistic throwback to the old style of national competition - a halting slap in the face of those who believe the planet is coming together. There's nothing synthetic about this - there probably hasn't been this much energy and feeling that Europe is going somewhere since the Age of Exploration five centuries ago. Companies are starting to operate more without regard to national boundaries. World in the Palm of a Hand A symbol of the new multinational world is the hand-held, global satellite phone system. Truly promising technology of the future - a number for the person, not the place, anywhere on the planet.