ABSTRACT
Up until the late 1980s the political structure of the world appeared to be well defined. There were essentially two centres or foci of military and economic power: the so called Capitalist West (grouped around USA which had taken dominance after World War II) and the Communist East (grouped around the Soviet Union and China with a vague association with India). These centres appeared to be strongly opposed to each other and were doing everything possible to neutralise or damage the international influence of the other side. Cooperation between the two groups was fairly limited. Defence attention was concentrated on this perceived binary divide.
