Dependency, instability and shifting global power

Trade relations, strategic military balances, the Eastern bloc and Russia, China, Europe, the Cold War and post-Cold War issues have long dominated global studies of foreign policy. In this environment Africa has been little more than an after-thought, or at best the passive object of other nations' foreign policies. One consequence of the ending of the Cold War and the subsequent, much discussed "uni-polar moment" has been a renewed interest in multilateral institutions as instruments to restrain unilateral state action. Although still not strong in any military sense or as decisive in action as a nation-state, the United Nations has attracted followers while in trade, economic policy, peacekeeping and crisis intervention, there has been a shift in influence of great consequence to foreign policy practitioners. This is the recognition that the United States and Europe remain highly influential but in power and normative terms can no longer take unilateral action. In today's more consensus-orientated world, unilateral coalitions of the willing still can and do act; but greater consideration is being given to the views and policies of nations formerly ignored by the great powers. In