A 1978 French proposal to provide the UN secretary general with the capacity to observe military movements by satellite could turn out to be practical politics in the 1990s. People who disagree on almost everything else can agree, for example, that smallpox is a threat to all, more accurate weather forecasts would be useful, civil aircraft should not collide, and somebody should help refugees. No one loses. Each success story turned out to be a win-win game. For instance, we did not begin to see real progress on disarmament until both the Soviet Union and NATO concluded that their security would actually be enhanced by eliminating dangerous but unusable weapons.
Sovereignty is pooled.
Cooperation does not mean giving up independence of action but pooling it - that is, using sovereign rights together to avoid losing them separately. Combined, reality-based fear and hope seem to provide the motivation to cooperate. Individuals make things happen. In the early stages of each success story, a few key individuals acted internationally to lead, insist, inspire, share knowledge, and generate a climate of trust that brushed past the prevailing distrust. Modern information technologies are of the essence.