Having officiated at the birth of NATO and being one of its recognized godfathers, the Americans too looked askance at this decision of the EU. When the European Union had taken the decision to set up the EU Rapid Reaction Force, it had raised several eyebrows among the International Affairs buffs. Then it came to pass that all of a sudden the Cold War came to an end.While the Warsaw Pact died a natural death, NATO was left in a wilderness of sorts. The era of the Cold War, when the Warsaw Pact and NATO arrogated unto themselves the powers that should best have been vested in the United Nations, is a case in point. What to talk of the United Nations (Nobel Peace Prize and all!), several piddling outfits have taken it upon themselves the task of the establishment of World Peace that the founding fathers had envisaged as the exclusive preserve of the United Nations Organization. Six decades and more down the road we are today left with the contemplation of whether or not the United Nations has actually lived up to the high ideals it was set up for. THE Charter of the United Nations begins with the words “We, the peoples of the United Nations…’.

A look over the shoulder