Rajan Menon writes in the LA Times about the end of regional alliances that played such a big part in the Cold War era:
New Order: the End of Alliances
NEW YORK — As we await “The End of History,” Francis Fukuyama’s vision of a world governed by capitalism and democracy, we can anticipate an earlier, if more mundane, transformation: the End of Alliances. It’s hard to imagine a world without NATOs and SEATOs, but it’s coming, and the change will bring both opportunities and vulnerabilities.
One of the functions these blocs served was to stimulate trade by removing barriers, and the other was to secure national defense through permanent alliances. Since we now have explicitly commercial blocs like the EU and NAFTA, the first function is obsolete, and with countries like France making mischief in alliances like NATO, the second function is less effective. We no longer have permanent allies, only permanent interests, right? Except that we do have permanent allies, with whom we share ties of culture and history, like the Anglosphere nations and the former Eastern Bloc nations of New Europe with whom we share values.
The alliance most in jeopardy right now has to be the UN, because it’s both too big and too unprincipled to do anything good, and has essentially degenerated into a Lilliputian Alliance of the Bitter and Irrelevant.
“bitter and irrelevant”? Wow, those words just slipped out, didn’t they?
UN irrelevant? Not for us baby. Tell me a more efficient way to co-opt these corrupt little thugs from all over the world? If the UN wasn’t a CIA plot, it should have been.