ABSTRACT
Introduction Since its inception, the international system has been characterised by the struggle for power and influence among states. While all political entities seek security, some may pursue a more extensive agenda and aspire to regional or even global dominance. Power shifts are therefore natural phenomena that are only to be expected. Fundamental change in the structure of the international system, however, occurs after major wars, revolutionary processes, or dramatic events, when states grapple with questions of order, when power is turned into order, and when efforts are made to secure the international system from further disturbance and destruction. The end of the Second World War eventually resulted in the bipolar order, while the end of the Cold War saw the advent of the globalised world, with an increasingly interdependent world economy and the intensification of American power leading to conditions of unipolarity. To the surprise of some,1 the dramatic shift in world politics after the East-West conflict did not usher in the predicted return of Great Power balancing, the rise of competing power blocs, or the decay of multilateralism. On the contrary, the Atlantic order, which had emerged in the 1940s as a distinctive element of the bipolar order and taken shape during the first decade of the Cold War, not only persisted, but was considerably extended beyond its original geographical reach. Cooperative, stable, interdependent, and highly institutionalised, the Atlantic order was a ‘constructed political order, built around U.S. hegemony, mutual interests, political bargains, and agreed-upon rules and norms’.2
