1.6 to 1.8

The Cold War played an essential role in the change, fracturing the new international order before it had taken root. At the same time, the Cold War also had the effect of keeping the Atlantic alliance intact for many decades by suppressing divisions that would show themselves in full force only after 1989. When, in the 1990s, the United States emerged as the last superpower standing, it became much easier for the forces of European union to move ahead and for the buried divisions between America and its European allies to be made apparent. The most fundamental of those divisions had been the most invisible: From the start, the postwar boom in international and constitutional law had had different meanings in America and Europe—because the war itself meant different things in America and Europe. Whether out of hubris or principle, or both, the United States has not understood its support for international law and institutions to imply a surrender of its own commitment to self-government. As the international system became more powerful, and international law diverged from U. S. law, the United States inevitably began to show unilateralist tendencies—not simply out of self-interest but because the United States is committed to democratic self-government. The continental European democracies, with their monarchical histories, their lingering aristocratic cultures, and their tendency to favor centralized, bureaucratic governance, have always been considerably less democratic than the American democracy. It's not surprising, then, that in forging the European Union they should be so tolerant of what Europeans casually refer to as the Union's "democratic deficit." Three specific developments over the past decade helped press the United States toward unilateralism: the 1999 military intervention in Kosovo; a growing skepticism about international law, including the concern that international law might be used as a vehicle for anti-Americanism; and the events of September 11, 2001.