The Cold War ended at the beginning of the 1990s, but the Cold War security structures have largely persisted. Across the Atlantic, mutual U.S.–European Union interests have drastically declined since the collapse of the Soviet Union. European behavior, particularly that of France and Germany, toward the United States has drastically changed, but NATO remains the core security structure. This creates tensions between the expectations, interests, and institutions of the old order and the realities of behavior in the new era. As James Thomson has said about the U.S.-European strategic partnership, “Strategic partnerships, alliances and international security institutions have their roots in shared perceptions of both interests and the threats to them.… When the perceptions diverge, as they now have, the institutions themselves are undermined.” Specifically, he argues, the U.S.-European partnership was rooted in a half-century of mutual struggle against Germany and a half-century of mutual struggle against the Soviet Union, and those overriding common interests have vanished.

In Asia, one sees the same thing. A structure built to defend Asia against the Soviet Union, and for a while against the Sino-Soviet alliance, still persists four and a half decades after the Sino-Soviet alliance collapsed and one and a half decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union.