In six pages this paper presents an overview of international alliances as they affect Singapore in a consideration of the EU, MERCUR, NATO, and NAFTA.  Three sources are cited in the bibliography.
                                    
  
                                    
                                     Name of Research Paper File: CC6_KSintlAlly.rtf
                                    
                                    
                                        
                                            
                                                    Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper: 
                                                    
                                                
                                                    War meant more than an end to US-Russian one-upsmanship.  Former Eastern bloc nations were able to be self-determining again, at least to the extent that their dismal economies would   
                                                
                                                    allow.  Centuries-old tensions that could have split nations much earlier were able to surface without being put down immediately by a larger power (i.e., the USSR), and citizens in   
                                                
                                                    these nations were freer to express their own views and sentiments than they had been in decades.         Settling Out   
                                                
                                                    Communist control since the end of World War II represented only a chapter of control by outside powers.  Several of the former Eastern bloc nations   
                                                
                                                    came into being at the end of World War I and represented only political groups rather than those formed on the basis of ethnicity or ideology (Miller, Agovino and Krosnar,   
                                                
                                                    2000).        People bound by some common feature and living in the same general geographical area have been seeking to collect together for years.   
                                                
                                                    We see trade alliances comprised of Southeast Asian nations and South American countries, yet the people of the countries involved in these trade alliances seek to remain separate and   
                                                
                                                    distinct from each other.        An example can be found between members of ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.  Consisting of members   
                                                
                                                    such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea and others, each nation remains self-determining and fully sovereign, but each also seeks to promote international trade in several directions.  These countries   
                                                
                                                    trade with each other, and the alliance assists member states in trading with nations in other regions of the world (Asias bounce-back, 1999).