At some point, silk was seen as a new trade good. As tastes change and consumers become more affluent, the things they want to buy change. So is anything really different, or is it all just accelerated? Well, some historians argue that an economically interdependent world is much less likely to go to war. And that may be true, but increasing global, cultural, and economic integration hasn't led to an end to violence. I mean, we've seen large-scale ethnic and nationalistic violence from Rwanda to the former Yugoslavia to the Democratic Republic of Congo to Afghanistan. Globalization has not rid the world of violence.