The Monroe doctrine was the first major challenge

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To the Euro-centric order of international law and witnessed the emergence of the first power bloc (Grossraum). President Wilson set aside the Monroe Doctrine in favour of an internationalism which at the same time recognised the rights of small nations to self-determination. But the modern empires, notably Russia and the United States, claimed the legitimacy for their national strength by referring to an international code.

The project, nearing completion (as one wit observed, the phone number list arguments of Euro-sceptics and pro-Europeans over sovereignty resembles that of drunks over an empty bottle) of the United States of Europe is thwart with the ambiguity of internationalism versus empire-building. According to Alan Millward in The European Rescue of the Nation State, the drive towards European unity lies firstly in the possibility of greater wealth which it offered, just as the origin of the European colonies can be explained to a great extent by the desire to extend wealth.

Economic growth was stimulated by a series of arrangements which involved the sacrifice of sovereignty on the part of the nations involved. Paradoxically, it was the rise in the eighties of a self-confident free- market right (Mrs. Thatcher in Britain, Ronald Reagan in the United States, the emergence of a strong Spanish New Right, powerful pro- liberal capitalist elements in South America, President Mitterand's abandonment of nationalization in 1983.