I say NATO because the United States is the cornerstone of that. At first it was supposed to counter the Soviet threat (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) but it has expanded to what looks like world police. Working with the usual world cop, Uncle Sam. Maybe it was supposed to be good cop bad cop but that hasn´t really worked and it has turned uot all pretty bad cop.
Looks like nato exists because of the technological sophistication of third world powers:
https://chomsky.info/20090403/if you go back to 1989 and 1990, it’s extremely interesting to see how the United States reacted to the collapse of the Soviet Union. So, right after the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago, which signaled the end of the Soviet Union, clearly, the Bush administration, Bush I, immediately released a national security strategy, a military budget, and so on, which are very interesting reading. What they say, in effect, is everything is going to go on exactly as before, but with new pretexts. So now we have to have a huge military establishment and military budget, and not to protect ourselves from the Russians, who are collapsing, but because — literally, because of the technological sophistication of third world powers. Now, that was promulgated without ridicule. You know, if someone was watching from Mars, they’d collapse in laughter.
Nato was always a way for america to project its power. Without competition it can use its power on a wider scale.