ABSTRACT
When new configurations of power and new techniques of war brought this role to an end the need for a new international system became acute. The power alliance that is most frequently envisaged would comprise the United States, Great Britain, and Russia. The power-alliance theorists build on certain assumptions. In the first place they assume that it is easier to construct and maintain a partial union of States, limited to defensive ends, than a total or global union. This chapter discusses the contrast between power alliance and world organization in order to clarify consideration of the principles on which an international order must be based. The opponents of international order will immediately raise the question of national sovereignty. Under some international system international law would come into being for the first time in the history of the modern world, strictly speaking for the first time in human history.
