An Alliance with an Organization

Such shifting alliances in the balance of power was eventually replaced by NATO and the Warsaw Pact, which subsequently formed two seperate blocs around the two super-powers following World War II. They had statutes, competent organs, secretariats, standing armies and strategic doctrines. The allies wanted their values, as well as their political and economic systems, to dominate the world.

We know the end of the story, NATO won and the Soviet Union collapsed with a large number of the former Soviet satellite countries becoming members of NATO. However, most importantly, the United States was left as the sole super-power. While the terminology to describe the status of the United States is yet to be determined, the use of "empire" and "hegemony" are becoming more common every day.

The United States behaved in accordance with its former status for around a decade before the terrible blow it received on Sept. 11, 2001, forced it to comprehend a new state of affairs. The United States now had a new and different enemy and formulated a new doctrine in order to combat this new foe. The international community blessed the intervention in Afghanistan, but when it came to Iraq, the United States chose to proceed unilaterally, believing it did not need a United Nations Security Council resolution or an internal consensus from NATO. It chose to behave in accordance with its new status in the belief that its power would be sufficient to combat anything.

The story is not yet over. It subjugated Iraq within three weeks, but it failed to control it in the intervening one-and-a-half-years. It understood the limitations of its power. It has become obvious that an Iraqi democracy; its government chosen in free elections, with human rights abuses eventually becoming public and its judiciary not afraid to apply legal norms that do not exceed the national interest, aims to expand its high values instead of applying crude dominance as well as respecting the rule of law, even in wartime.

Despite the division in the European Union, France and to a certain extend Germany took the responsibility of reminding this new democracy that it would have to act within these constraints. They based their argument on rules formulated by international organizations over the last fifty years. They linked it to U.N. Security Council resolution 1546, which legitimizes the state of affairs in Iraq, with the acceptance of a timetable that would transfer the power to Iraqis. At the Istanbul summit, they restricted NATO assistance to Iraq in order to gain assures that the United States would leave Iraq without gaining any special privileges.

Countries neighboring Iraq like Turkey, and those countries that have been assessing U.S. attitude since the beginning, thought the priority was for U.S. forces to withdraw without causing chaos. For the United States, what’s done is done and they have been taught a lesson. If Afghanistan, which is on the brink of chaos, and Iraq are not stabilized one way or another, the consequences will be dire for all concerned. NATO must to do something.

If an alliance such as NATO had not existed, it would have been much harder to make the United States accept certain rules and regulations for its unrivalled power. This is a fact for those who object to NATO for ideological reasons, or who do so in the name of the unity of Islam.

On the other hand, no one can argue against the fact that there are serious problems within the Middle East and the Islamic world. The regional countries seem unable to democratize, accelerate economic growth in accordance with their social needs, stem cultural stagnation or quantify the negative effects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Desperate communities chose to perpetrate terrorism as the only way to fight the United States, which supports Israel, and their own ossified authoritarian regimes. The region owns the natural resources that are vital for the world economy. In other words, they can’t be left to their own devices like Black Africa.

Against these global problems, it is imperative to overcome the "realpolitik," — the result of egotism and violence, which are the residues of human evolution, and formulate foreign policies that are in accordance with democratic norms.