ABSTRACT
Globalisation is primarily understood to refer to economic, and secondarily to cultural relations. In global relations, the market rules: the marketisation of cultural relations, through global communication technologies, completes globalism. Both the globalisers and resisters have bought the myth of the market: market trends could transform the world and weaken states, even if they have not actually done so to the extent that the globalisers posit. The transition to a global world is complete only in a limited sense. The global transition is thus accompanied by a widespread collapse of local state forms, notably in Africa and the ex-communist States, which is unlikely to be overcome in the short term. The paradox of the current phase of the global transition is that while the necessity of such responses is increasingly seen as inevitable, there remains enormous uncertainty about them. The new form of war was the synthesis of state, nation and industrial society.
