The new alliance

Tony Blair's electoral victory in Britain means that the Anglo Alliance continues unbroken. Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom remain in close alliance over how to proceed with world affairs. This alliance of the Periphery (in Mackinderian geopolitical terms) has started to consolidate, and will over the next thirty years more or less formally coalesce into the core of a true alliance.

As a side note from Chrenkoff, the biggest non-English speaking member of the alliance, Poland, is also the one with the longest history of constitutional republicanism, after the United States.

The other side of this alliance can be seen in the growing France - Germany - Russia entente under the auspices of a frenchified European Union to order Europe to their ends, a new Continental System. This entente currently defines it's interests in terms of three things: increasingly axiolatic opposition to the United States, legacy attachments to old colonies, and attachment to artifices of the international system that project their power and influence out of proportion to their actual relevance. They pursue China as well, but it pursues it's own interests and refuses to be constrained by any entanglements.

How this bifurcation is shaping up is shown in the debate over the future of NATO. The competing visions of world politics mean that neither alliance is really interested in using NATO as a forum for military action. The EU faction doesn't particularly want to engage in military ventures; they merely want to define the circumstances of the situation so the US will take action where they want it, and to define action that goes against their interests as wicked sin against socialist orthodoxy.

Marc Schulman is right when he notes that Germany is the lynch-pin of the pro-EU alliance. The real question is, will the Schroederist delusion take hold, or will sense return to Germany? Germany is right at home among the formerly-important powers next to France and Russia. That perception may fuel a realignment in the international order.

The second question is how the EU-central grouping of states will respond when action by mature adults is called for. For example, how will they react when rogue states with nukes disintegrate? (from: Chrenkoff)