Globalization

            "Globalization is not just some economic fad, and it is not just a passing trend. It is an international system - the dominant international system that replaced the Cold War system after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We need to understand it as such," as Thomas L. Friedman explains it in the first chapter of his renowned book. By this he only means that "globalization" is the spreading of free-market capitalism in virtually every country in the world with its own set of economic rules. It is the new world order following the end of the Cold War. Furthermore, it accomplishes its mobilization not only in the global market trade level but also in the collection of trend in innovations and new technologies, like the world-wide web, satellite communication systems, miniaturization, digitization and the like. .
             Before the great fall of the Berlin Wall, the entire world was divided according to the Cold War's perspective. The western camp (US and its western allies), and the communist camp (former Soviet Union and its allies). The power structure was balanced between these two colliding superpowers. Economic and political threat were viewed to be catapulted from the other side of the wall. It also has its own defining technologies : nuclear weapons and the second industrial revolution. With this also comes its ultimate defining anxiety of arms race and nuclear annihilation. .
             Globalization replaced this system with its own unique attributes. The world that we know now does not have the arching feature of division - symbolized by the word Wall - The Berlin Wall. According to Friedman, the main idea of globalization is the promotion of free-market capitalism. In the pinnacle of the Cold War in 1975, he stated that only a mere 8 percent of the world operated in a free-market capital regimes with foreign direct investments. But by 1997, liberal economic regimes cisntituted 28 percent.
             With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dawn of new technologies, the speed of communication between countries and international businesses have dramatically increased.