  We suggest that the ultrarelativistic collisions of heavy ions provide the
simplest situation for the study of strong interactions which can be understood
from first principles and without any model assumptions about the microscopic
structure of the colliding nuclei. We argue that the boost-invariant geometry
of the collision, and the existence of hard partons in the final states, both
supported by the data, make a sufficient basis for the quantum theory of the
phenomenon. We conclude that the quantum nature of the entire process is
defined by its global geometry, which is enforced by a macroscopic finite size
of the colliding objects. In this paper, we study the qualitative aspects of
the theory and review its development in two subsequent papers. Our key result
is that the effective mass of the quark in the expanding system formed in the
collision of the two nuclei is gradually built up reaching its maximum by the
time the quark mode becomes sufficiently localized. The chromo-magneto-static
interaction of the color currents flowing in the rapidity direction is the main
mechanism which is responsible for the generation of the effective mass of the
soft quark mode and therefore, for the physical scale at the earliest stage of
the collision.
