ABSTRACT
The breakup of the Soviet Union and collapse of the ideological and strategic rivalry between the superpowers in the early 1990s uncovered many weaknesses in the patchwork design of the international system's organizational infrastructure. Many international governmental organizations had become ossified as their machinery, reflecting the organizational design circa 1945, atrophied due to neglect or lack of use during the forty years of the Cold War. According to Jessica Mathews, the end of the Cold War caused a "power shift" within the international system that has had profound implications for the international order. The new post-Cold War world order as proclaimed by President George H. W. Bush at the United Nations in 1990 was envisioned to be "a new partnership of nations that transcends the Cold War. Certainly, advances in technology and the information/communication revolution have had the greatest impact on the international system.
