During the cold war, global security depended on a nuclear stand-off between two broad alliances, NATO and the Warsaw Pact. It was based on the rather morbid doctrine of mutually assured destruction. As alliance leaders, the Soviet Union and the US protected and managed their respective spheres of influence and were able to minimise the number of nations acquiring nuclear weapons. In the past 15 years, the international security landscape has changed. The cold war rivalry disappeared. But rather than the much vaunted "new world order", this has resulted in a sort of "new world instability". Ethnic and religious tensions have erupted, while many regional conflicts such as that in the Middle East have continued to fester.
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