"For the last 10 years we've been talking about "the post-cold-war world." We've described the world by what it isn't -- it's not the cold war -- because we don't know what it is. Well, what it is is a new international system called globalization. Globalization is not just a trend, not just a phenomenon, not just an economic fad. It is the international system that has replaced the cold-war system. And like the cold-war system, globalization has its own rules, logic, structures and characteristics."

-Thomas L. Friedman