ON SEPT 13, 1989, a few weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall, then US deputy secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger, addressing an audience at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, cautioned his listeners that while they were celebrating the end of the Cold War, they should also recognise that "we are moving into, or I should say, back into - for such has been the nature of international affairs since time immemorial - a world in which power and influence is diffused among a multiplicity of states".

Yes, suggested the veteran Cold Warrior, Americans may (and perhaps should) be feeling victorious that the Soviet bloc was in the process of disintegration and breathing a sigh of relief that they would not be living anymore under the threat of annihilation as a result of a possible nuclear confrontation between the two superpowers.

But the evolving post-Cold War multipolar world, Mr Eagleburger suggested, was not "necessarily going to be a safer place than the Cold War era from which we are emerging". Indeed, "for all its risks and uncertainties, the Cold War was characterised by a remarkably stable and predictable set of relations among the great powers", he noted, adding: "A brief look at the history books will tell us that we cannot say that much about the period leading from the birth of the European nation states up through the outbreak of the Second World War."