Now for an even newer world order

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.newstatesman.com/Economy/200505090021

A new power configuration across the world is being silently fashioned to counter, or at least limit, American supremacy. The newly elected British government will need to refashion its approach to the US to take account of this highly significant shift in international power relations.

A doctrine for US power was shaped at the outset of this Bush presidency by the Project for the New American Century. The plan called for unprecedented hikes in military spending, the spreading of American bases in central Asia and the Middle East, the toppling of recalcitrant regimes, the militarisation of outer space, the abrogation of international treaties, a willingness to use nuclear weapons, and control of the world's energy resources.

The goal, it was made quite clear, was "full-spectrum domi-nance". The think-tank's document was explicit: Iran was "perhaps a far greater threat" to US oil hegemony than Iraq, and other nations, including Russia and China, had to be brought to heel - by military means or economic dominance, by conquest, alliance, or silent acquiescence - and forcibly prevented from "challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role". The Bush administration has never deviated from this blueprint. Now it faces a concerted challenge.

In the struggle for global dominance, oil is the central currency. Its indispensability for industry, agriculture, transport and military capability, along with the near-certainty that oil production will peak around 2010-2015, is refashioning conventional power rivalries. A new regional and superpower coalition of China, Russia, India and Brazil is emerging, and attracting the close interest of major oil producers, such as Iran and Venezuela, as a counterweight to American power. The coalition already covers 75 per cent of the world's population and 80 per cent of its natural resources. Iran also looks poised to join, after its recent $200bn (£106bn) energy deal with China, while Venezuela under Hugo Chavez may turn out, even more than Iran, to be the next centre of confrontation for oil supremacy. Venezuela, the biggest Opec producer outside the Gulf, and a major supplier to the US in the past, is offering to help China build a strategic oil reserve.

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[salib]

1. We are behaving like the subjects of an empire.

Are we going to continue to do so?

[mopaul]

2. might as well live under a monarchy

like grazing herbivores, no one notices the lions.