Before Northwest purchased Republic, all those years ago, DTW didn't know where any of the international destinations served by Northwest were. Since Northwest got to DTW, KLM and Lufthansa as well as all the NW Int'l destinations are new. O'HARE has always been "A WORLD GATEWAY", Chicago has always been the number 1 midwest int'l destination for both foreign airlines serving the midwest and Hubs in the region. Just look at who serves O'HARE: KLM, Lufthansa, BA, AF, Swiss, Iberia, Alitalia, SAS, JAL, Singapore Airlines, All Nippon, Korean and too many others. Given Detroit is only a few hundred miles from Chicago most of these airlines will never fly to DTW. Then due to the car business DTW-Nagoya, Japan won't be copied at O'hare any time soon since Nagoya is the heart of the Japanesse car indusrty.