ABSTRACT
The Cold War is a segment of recent history, usually treated in traditional fashion by historians as an episode in international relations; I have suggested that the Cold War also deserves treatment as a context for the rise of globalization. The appearance in the course of present-day globalization of two major new actors, the multinational corporations (MNCs) and the non-governmental organizations (NGOs), requires a somewhat different treatment. They are actors in the process of globalization, rather more than, as with the Cold War, the complex context in which globalization made its appearance. Needless to say, they did not emerge full-blown from Clio’s forehead in the post-WW II period.1 Both had an existence before presentday globalization in various shapes and forms. Only after 1945, however, do they become preeminent players on the global scale.
