Has the process customarily termed "globalization" rendered national
borders meaningless and fatally weakened the power of the state? Globalists
certainly hope so, given their view of national specificity as a dark, atavistic residue
of the past, and their aspirations to a sort of vast transnational homogenization.
Students of geopolitics are quite conscious of the effects of advanced
communication technologies, real-time global markets and such. At the same time,
however, they still see political processes playing out within geographical
boundaries, and reflecting the specific identities - ethnic, religious, historical etc. -
of the people within those spaces
