A few years ago international politics experienced the functional equivalent of World War III, only without the bloodshed. In a remarkably short time, virtually all the major problems that haunted international affairs for a half century were solved. The Cold War evaporated, the attendant arms race was reversed, intense disagreement over Eastern Europe and the division of Germany was resolved, and the threat of expansionist international communism simply withered away. In the wake of this quiet cataclysm, we have entered an extraordinary new era: If we apply conventional standards, the leading countries are today presented at the international level with minor, immediate problems and major long-range ones--but no major immediate problems or threats.
Some international relations scholars and writers have been trying, at times a trifle desperately, to refashion constructs and theories originally designed for an era with compelling threats to fit one that lacks them. Despite their efforts, however, a policy consensus seems to be emerging among those who actually carry out international affairs in the leading countries. It stresses as a primary goal economic enrichment through open markets and freer trade (rather than through empire or triumph in war as in days of old); it allows for the inclusion into the club of those less developed countries that are able to get their acts together; and it seeks cooperatively to alleviate troubles in other parts of the world if this can be done at low cost (particularly in lives), and to isolate and contain those troubles that cannot be so alleviated.
