But in six years' time, if the agreement is honoured, the region's long-term destiny will be decided by the southerners, voting in a referendum on full independence.
And stock market investors are heartened to see companies in enough control of their short-term destiny that most of them are meeting or beating analysts' expectations of reported profits.
For what it's worth, this column's hunch (no stronger than that) is that the medium-term destiny of the gold price probably is higher, but that's just a view on relative long-term weakness of the dollar.
At a stroke, this result from Hampshire has reversed established opinion not only about Mr Kennedy but also about the longer-term destiny of Britain's third party.Before Romsey, the conventional wisdom held that Mr Kennedy was failing to fill his predecessor's big boots.
Our short-term destiny is not always in our control.
More trade also will be a stabilizing factor in a trouble-plagued relationship between the United States and China that many believe holds the key to Asia's long-term destiny.
If that is what she is doing now, it is because London's own inclination to put little local difficulties ahead of – to use a grand but in the circumstances justified term – national destiny.
And when he coined the term manifest destiny, John O'Sullivan was working as an editor in.
Over the years, O'Sullivan's role in creating the phrase was forgotten, and he died in obscurity some 50 years after having first used the term "manifest destiny".
It was he who is credited with having popularized the phrase "Go west, young man, go west". It was another newspaperman, John O'Sullivan, who coined the term "Manifest Destiny" in 1845.
