"First came the booming economies," reports Bloomberg. "Then came the rush of investors. Now the so-called BRIC nations -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- are talking about forming a political alliance. The four largest emerging economies are sending their foreign ministers to Yekaterinburg, Russia, to meet on May 16 for the first time outside the venue of the United Nations. On the agenda are such non-economic issues as weapons proliferation, counter-terrorism, energy and climate change." 

In "Cracks in the Foundation: NATO's New Troubles," Cato research fellow Stanley Kober writes:

"Alliances lead to counteralliances... [A]s NATO has expanded, Russia's relations with China, in particular, have grown apace, leading initially to the formation of the Shanghai Five and then to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. ... In short, the world is in danger of dividing just as Europe divided a century ago -- a process that should have been foreseen by those who naively thought other countries would not respond to NATO expansion by taking their own corresponding measures."

Reprinted with permission from the Cato Institute http://www.cato.org/
Laura Osio, editor, mailto:losio@cato.org