Sometimes this took place without very much attention at all as to how this emphasis affected some groups in society better than others. The stress on maximizing the interests of American and other transnational business interests in the absence of many previous barriers has let American capitalism move forwards into parts of the world hitherto inaccessible and to expand involvement in various countries which had known American interests previously. .
The current situation is one which can sometimes seem to be a fast-growing American empire in that the past's limits to American trade and influence have been removed to allow industrial and financial interests to operate more freely. The related concept of a New World Order, in its implication of some control being exercised to remove pitfalls that had gone before, probably helps to draw public attention from the political and territorial upsets which have resulted from the decline of a bi-polar world order, the fall of the Communist bloc, and a turn to unfettered capitalism. While politicians and others speak of a new day when world conflicts will be reduced, mainly through international and collaborative pressures, developments since 1989 do not appear to bear this out. As Hobsbawm decided of the very end of the 20th century, a very eventful century had, "ended in a global disorder whose nature was unclear, and without an obvious mechanism for either ending it or keeping it under control". (1996, 562) It is known that systems producing extremes of wealth and poverty also happen to produce insurgencies or other expressions of political violence. Nevertheless, there is not much deviation from what seems a Western capitalist ideal in the expansion of markets and trade even when these create suffering among people in one part of the world or another. Unfortunately, many people tend not to question the economies affecting them and less often still, the economic conditions that affect their fellow citizens adversely.
