st system, a system led by Hong Kong once it is part of China; and a Middle-Eastern region with shared interests and shifting alliances that still have not coalesced into a strong center producing the stability and potential of an EC. Latin America and Africa remain unified and driven by independent nation-states seeking their own development, more often in the case of the African states, at the expense of their neighbors. A similar scenario is likely for the former states of the Soviet Union.
Consider the present trend and how it will develop in the future. The European Community is in the process of reshaping itself, redefining itself as a community in a way that has never been true before. Tensions among the various nations of Europe have been endemic for centuries, but after World War II the perception that curtailing these tensions was more important than ever became the accepted wisdom and spurred the formation of the European Community (EC), which is now changing its form and structure to be a Europe-without-borders, a Europe with free trade among the twelve member states of the EC. Since World War II, the primary defense concern for Europe has been the Soviet bloc, including the Soviet Union and the Eastern European nations of the Warsaw Pact. With a speed that seems quite remarkable, the Soviet Union and the Warsaw pact have dissolved as military threats, though they may pose a form of economic threat because of their great need and because of the problems they are facing as they try to become capitalist democracies. Yet the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its satellite Eastern bloc has seemed to offer a rare opportunity for curtailing certain defense policies and expenditures on the basis of there no longer being an immediate need. The disintegration of the Soviet Union into a series of smaller independent states has in effect ended European Communism as an international threat. The nations of Europe are resha...