Asia Times Special

Asia Times:
Hu's purge for both power and purity

By John Ng
Nov 15, 2006

HONG KONG - An intensified campaign to crack down on official corruption is sweeping across China, with public attention focused on which big fish will be netted next after the Communist Party's announcement last month of the dismissal of Chen Liangyu as its Shanghai chief.

Chen, who was also one of the 24 members of the politburo - the power core of China - is alleged to have been involved in the embezzlement of social-security funds in Shanghai worth millions of US dollars.

The anti-corruption drive has won the wholehearted support of the general public, with the growing expectation that President Hu Jintao will restore some social justice by fighting corrupt officials.

Official corruption is so rampant that there is a saying in China that if all officials were lined up and shot, some innocent ones might be killed. But if every other one was shot, many who were corrupt would be spared.

In this situation, it is easy and convenient for Chinese leaders to use anti-graft campaigns as a weapon to purge political rivals. This is not a new ploy - Chinese emperors often used crackdowns on corruption to get rid of officials they did not like.

For this reason, foreign China-watchers tend to see Hu's anti-corruption efforts in a political light as part of an ongoing power struggle against the legacy of former president Jiang Zemin and his Shanghai Gang, of which the fallen Chen was a member. On the other hand, ordinary people in China see Hu's housecleaning simply as an effort to make China a better country with the restoration of social justice. In reality, viewing the campaign from both sides provides a more complete picture.

From the power-struggle point of view, it can be concluded that by sacking Chen, Hu has gained the upper hand over the Shanghai Gang backed by Jiang.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced Chen's dismissal on the eve of the convention of a plenum of its policymaking Central Committee early last month.
This paved the way for Hu's idea of building a "harmonious society" to be endorsed as the new party line at the plenum and, furthermore, laid the foundations for him to call the shots with a reshuffle at the CCP's 17th National Congress next year. In this sense, this congress will mark the coming of the "Hu era".

Speculation is rife that Hu's next targets will be two of the nine members of the Standing Committee of the politburo: Jia Qinglin and Huang Ju.

The ill Huang, who is also vice premier and ranks as No 6 in the official hierarchy, was Chen's predecessor. Investigations into Chen's case have so far implicated more than 50 Shanghai officials and entrepreneurs. It is suspected that Huang could have been involved in some of the scandals that are being exposed as this investigation continues.

Jia is also chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and ranks as China's No 4 leader. Though not a member of the Shanghai Gang, Jia is close to Jiang, having worked under him.

Jia was based in Fujian province from 1985 to 1996 as deputy CCP chief, governor and then party chief. It has been noted that rampant smuggling by the notorious Yuanhua Group of Lai Changxing, who is now in exile in Canada, took place in Fujian when the southeastern province was under Jia's control.

Many Fujian officials have been implicated and jailed for their involvement in this, but Jia has appeared to be immune. Two years before Beijing launched an investigation into the Yuanhua smuggling case, Jia was promoted by Jiang as Beijing's party chief, replacing Chen Xitong, who had just been purged by Jiang for corruption. The Beijing post enabled Jia to become a politburo member.

In June, Liu Zhihua, a deputy Beijing mayor overseeing land requisition and infrastructure, was sacked for corruption. A team from the CCP's Central Commission for Disciplinary Inspection, China's top anti-graft watchdog, is now conducting an investigation in the capital city.

It is expected that Liu's scandal will snowball to implicate more and higher-ranking officials, as in Shanghai, where Chen was netted amid an investigation into lesser officials. Thus the belief that Liu Qi, the current Beijing party chief, and his predecessor, Jia, could soon be exposed.

If Huang and Jia are nailed for corruption, it would be the largest scandal since 1949 when the communists came to power. So far only two politburo members, Chen Xitong and Chen Liangyu, have been pulled down because of corruption.

Some analysts, however, don't think it is likely unless Hu's hand is forced, as the move could easily backfire. "The shock would be beyond imagination and people would rightly question the legitimacy of communist rule. Hu may not want to take such a risk unless he is driven into a corner," a Beijing-based political scientist said.

"The party plenum last month was evidence that Hu now is firmly in grip of power after sacking Chen. He has already achieved his goal and there is no need for him to escalate the struggle, which may force all his rivals to unite against him," the political scientist said.

After all, neither Jia nor Huang poses any direct threat to Hu or his reshuffle plans as both will step down in the 17th Congress because of their age. "Why would Hu want to remove them now, which would cause a reshuffle, only to disrupt his plans for a leadership reshuffle at the 17th Congress?" the political scientist said. But he added, "Of course, Hu could not and might not want to protect them if hard evidence is found against them. But then that's nothing to do with a power struggle."

Harmonious society
From another perspective, the current anti-graft campaign must be viewed as a key to implementing the new party line of building an harmonious society.

The late Chinese premier Zhou Enlai once told a visiting Western journalist how to read an official Chinese newspaper. He said what was hailed in "our newspapers" was "what we should make efforts to attain".

Hence Hu's decision to build a harmonious society means that society now is not harmonious. Indeed, there are far too many unharmonious factors: an ever-widening wealth gap; unbalanced development between regions and industries; street protests every day; deadly coal-mine accidents; local officials' abuse of power in bullying ordinary people, such as taking away land from farmers with little compensation - the list could go on.

Almost all such "unharmonious" problems could be blamed on social injustice stemming from official corruption. Hence the key to building an harmonious society is to restore social justice. But social justice cannot be restored without getting rid of official corruption.

This goes to the heart of the legitimacy of the rule of the CCP. Hu is fully aware of this. He once said at a party meeting that the CCP and the communist state would cease to exist if rampant official corruption were not effectively curbed.

While speculation about big fish being netted grabs most attention, China's anti-graft campaign is going deep into every corner of the country. Almost every day there are reports of local officials being caught.

From this point of view, by putting forward the idea of building a harmonious society, Hu aims to preserve communist rule in China. For him, this is a war he must win. If he succeeds, he will be remembered by the Chinese people. But if he fails, official corruption could provide the ultimately threat to the CCP.

John Ng is a Hong Kong-based freelance journalist.

Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HK15Ad01.html

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A war the West can't win

(PREPARING FOR A NEW COLD WAR, Part 1)

By W Joseph Stroupe

We are not concerned here with the implausible scenario of a Soviet-style collapse of the American superpower, perhaps induced at the hands of the rising East. Nor is it about the destruction of the US. Rather than thinking in such unrealistic black-and-white terms, the reader should consider whether the current US global position of dominance is at risk, not the existence of the US as a superpower.

Too many persons have become captive to thinking merely in terms of of black and white - the US destroys Russia and/or China, or conversely, they destroy the US. Or, the US economy collapses in ruins or else it upholds its global dominance, with no consideration given to any eventuality somewhere between those two ends.

The US need not be destroyed or suffer a collapse as did the Soviet Union in order to lose its top global position. It could well come about with a sufficient and permanent loss of US global political, economic and military leverage (the ability on the ground on an ongoing basis to successfully seduce and/or otherwise compel the world's players either to align with or else refrain from opposing US interests and goals), as the reader will see in the analysis that follows.

One must consider that most of the vectors potentially leading toward a loss of US global dominance are traveled by insidious progression, not all at once in a dramatic event. Such vectors lead to the incremental loss of the key underpinnings of the current US global position in preparation for more dramatic developments at the very end of the US-led unipolar order.

Hence, any shift of the US out of its global position would be accomplished simultaneously along the paths of multiple vectors undermining all its key underpinnings (the political, the economic, the energy security, the ideological, the military), not simply the military one alone. Furthermore, the cross-dependencies among all such underpinnings are extensive, such that the weakening or loss of one results in the compromising of the stability and potency of all the others.

Finally, there currently appears to exist insufficient understanding and appreciation of the principles, techniques and the potency of the asymmetric challenge as it applies to accomplishing a shift of the US out of its global position. The reader should avoid confining his/her thinking only to the overly rigid conventional concept of the boxing match, that is, a direct head-to-head contest between two opponents who are nearly equally matched to each other in size and power, and consider instead the proven concept of asymmetrical challenge, which the author will present in detail as it applies to mounting East-West rivalry.

It isn't yet fashionable to speak openly of a world subdividing itself again into two camps - those aligned with the US and those aligned with the Russia-China axis at the core of a new rising, multifarious yet coherent pole of the East - with the dividing line between the two camps consisting of the contest for control over global strategic resources.

Despite all the relevant signs pointing precisely in that direction:
# The deepening accord in all key spheres between Russia, China, India, the other rising powers of the East and the key resource-rich regimes of the world.
# Steadily rising East-West tensions, the ever-more divergent interests between East and West.
# The increasingly incompatible approaches to global issues and problems resulting in an ever-widening chasm between East and West.

The fact that the chasm between East and West can only be "bridged" superficially, merely papered over by ostensibly meaningful agreements that in fact embody very little of real substance (such as those agreements on North Korea, Iran, democratic reform and economic liberalization issues.)

Still, the rising of any new coherent pole of the East and the thriving of a new Cold War between East and West isn't generally accepted as a reality by most observers - not yet, anyway. Additionally, neither are the rising powers in the East seen by most observers as able to mount a truly serious challenge to US global dominance any time soon. Despite its current troubles, the US is still generally seen as the global colossus that no challenger can successfully "do battle" with, as it were.

Why are the clear developments signifying the building beneath the surface of a neo-Cold War and what will be proven here to be the grave and impending threat posed by the rising East to the current US global position still being widely overlooked, at least publicly, at this advanced juncture in global developments?

Illusions about global dominance
Fashionable new theories that teetered on the brink of the supposed global absolutism of US power arose after 1991 in the post-Soviet period, in the heady days of the aftermath of the astonishing disappearance of the once-feared Soviet Empire, leaving only one superpower to dominate the globe:

The new theories purported to describe and explain the supposed ushering in, not merely of a new unipolar configuration for the ongoing world order, but of a brand new American-made fabric for the international order itself - the de facto, virtual global totalitarianism of the US superpower - wherein virtually all global authority and leverage in every sphere - military, economic, political, ideological, moral and diplomatic - was seen for all practical purposes as vested in the US, in virtual perpetuity, as "the only superpower left".

The new fabric was seen as the de facto global ideological, economic and military totalitarianism of US democracy, and it was declared that from 1991 forward the world order would have to be defined in terms of that new international, but US-made fabric. According to the new thinking, the world order would continue for the foreseeable future to be unquestionably US-centric and US-dominated almost by default.

The leverage of all the other, lesser powers (if exercised independent of, or in opposition to the US) was seen as a perpetually insignificant factor unworthy of serious consideration.

According to the new global absolutism theories, the US was ushered into a unique position such that the position itself inherently and automatically guaranteed the US possession of virtually inviolable global dominance.

Wherever this absolutist view was not explicitly stated, it was (and to a considerable extent it still is) almost always implied and assumed. Hence, when Russia and China began dispensing their "multipolar" ideologies embodied in their numerous joint statements on the world order starting in 1996, most observers snickered at the prospects for actually putting an end to US global dominance any time soon.

There is still a great deal of snickering going on today because, while on the one hand the illusory concepts of a global American empire and the supposed global ideological absolutism (totalitarianism) of American-style democracy have been thoroughly discredited and prevented from achieving realization (by the global rise and bolstering of authoritarian regimes and "sovereign democracies"), on the other hand the illusions of a perpetual global totalitarianism of the US military and of the US economy have maintained until now their tenacious grasp on the minds of all too many observers, though ever more serious doubts are arising of late.

According to these and related popular theories, overwhelming US global economic, political, ideological and military power and leverage doom to ultimate failure any attempt by lesser powers, even acting collectively, to actually free the world order from US domination anytime soon. Those fashionable new theories declare the US cannot actually be shifted out of its position of global dominance any time soon for the simple reason that the US will not permit any other power or group of powers to rise to the level of becoming a match, and therefore a real threat, to the US.

Notwithstanding the current US troubles on the world stage, across the globe few observers truly see the US in grave jeopardy as respects its global position. And any who do claim to see it in such jeopardy are still not taken very seriously.

While China and Russia are certainly rising and their strategic cooperation is rapidly deepening, both powers are still widely seen as mini-sized as compared to the US, and both are also still widely seen as inordinately dependent on the US economy and US wealth.

Militarily, the two powers are seen as a long way off from being able to mount a serious challenge to the US. Even the Russia-China axis itself, and the wider rising East, still struggle with the compelling tendency to continue to see themselves in this very light - standing very small in the enormous global shadow of the US.

Consequently, the persuasive new theories that arose in the post-Soviet period to explain the supposed arising of a fundamentally brand new, deeply entrenched unipolar world order have gained wide acceptance and continue to have a profound effect on the thinking of persons across the globe.

The US is still widely seen as an enormous colossus whose global position cannot be gravely endangered except by another colossus of at least equal size - and no such rival colossus is evident. Instead, it is the multifarious rising East, a comparatively mini-sized and complex (not monolithic) creature, that is taking up its position on the world stage as challenger to continued US global dominance. Could the American Goliath really be at risk from comparatively mini-sized challengers in the East? Most observers have more than a little difficulty envisioning how and why such a challenge should genuinely be taken seriously.

Not in accord with the facts
But the new theories touting supposed US global absolutism have not, in fact, enhanced the ability of those embracing them to correctly analyze and forecast global developments. Quite to the contrary, as developments do keep steadily advancing deeper into a global realignment of key powers away from the US and toward the East, and along the trajectory of the rapid rise of the East and the equally rapid decline of the actual leverage of the West on the global stage, and toward the arising of a neo-Cold War rivalry between the two sides over control of global resources, the new theories are getting incrementally pushed ever closer to the trash bin of mistaken analysis and irrelevancy.

Those (the majority of observers) who still hold to the selfsame new theories keep trying to force-feed global developments into the idealistic, theoretical, fashionable mold that increasingly fails to match what is actually happening across the globe. This has the effect of fogging up the issues, the true condition of East-West relations, the ability to identify the genuine and persistent forces still governing those relations even after 1991. Consequently, the real meaning of ongoing developments gets clouded.

Actual global developments are not tracking along lines that are even remotely in accordance with the new theories. The US, bogged down in two rapidly mounting military-economic-geopolitical quagmires (Iraq and Afghanistan), facing numerous and simultaneous new quagmires (such as Iran and North Korea), facing a rapidly approaching day of economic reckoning for all its short-sighted, self-diminishing economic policies and facing also a world insidiously disconnecting itself from the US as the only global economic engine and suffering an unprecedented degree of international disdain and isolation, is in real strategic trouble on the global stage.

Simultaneously, the East continues its meteoric economic and geopolitical rise with a clear stance as a determined opponent to continued US global dominance. How is it that the US is truly wedged in a predicament of strategic trouble rather than merely experiencing a temporary downturn, as so many still assume?

US global leverage collapsing - permanently?
The degree of leverage the US is now actually able to successfully exercise on the global stage to seduce and/or otherwise compel the world's players to align with its interests and goals has severely and strategically collapsed from what it was only five years ago when the attacks of September 11, 2001 occurred. Its formerly overwhelming degree of global power and leverage is quite literally a thing of the past. How so?

Not Europe, nor Latin America, nor Central Asia, nor the Middle East, nor South and Southeast Asia any longer feel obliged to take the US line as they used to, whether willingly or under the compulsion of formerly overwhelming, multi-dimensional US strength.

Significantly, that former overwhelming leverage was the guarantee, the insurance policy that no new arrangements independent of, or in opposition to the US, ones that might undermine and endanger its global position by weakening, circumventing and undermining its key underpinnings, could ever be formed, enacted or could thrive. That all-important (to the US) insurance policy has already been canceled.

While the US is distracted and suffering worsening strategic trouble on the world stage noted above, the East and the bulk of the rest of the world are passing it by as the formerly unquestioned global economic and geopolitical center and constructing an ever wider, ever deeper web of ties and alliances in every key sphere (energy, economy, security, diplomacy, ideology), a complex that largely excludes the US.

That complex increasingly includes key European, Latin American and Asian states that used to be close US allies but which are now incrementally realigning with the East. The former depth of cooperation in every sphere the US used to enjoy around the globe after 1991 has turned appallingly shallow and virtually meaningless. The new complex of ties and alliances is thriving on a monumental level without US blessing or direct participation - and the US, in the face of the enormous collapse of its actual global leverage, can do little or nothing to undermine it.

Those who calculate that current US troubles are merely a temporary downturn in US power and influence wrongly assume the world has kept "pristine" the vacuum created by the current absence of potent US leverage, that the rest of the world is somehow keeping that vacuum safe for the US alone to re-occupy when it gets beyond its current troubles.

They have entirely miscalculated in this, for the simple reason that the rising East and other of the world's key players have rushed into the vacuum, ingeniously capitalizing on US misfortunes by putting in place the durable new arrangements (the web of alliances and ties spoken of above) centered around the rising East that will effectively block the US from ever recovering any meaningful portion of its lost global leverage. Once a vacuum is created and subsequently gets filled by something new and potent, as this one is being filled, then it's simply too bad for the party attempting to recover its losses.

The US is already suffering a real and verifiable permanent downscale of genuine consequence on the world stage. While still a colossus, it isn't remotely as massive as most observers apparently assume that it still is. Consequently, the new theories asserting the virtual perpetuity of overwhelming US global power and dominance are inordinately based in unfounded assumptions, wishful thinking and outright fantasy.

But what of the common argument that says current US troubles are little different from those it encountered during the Vietnam/Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) embargo era when it faced much the same kinds of challenges in the military, economic, energy, diplomatic and geopolitical spheres all at once, and from which it is assumed the US has entirely recovered? Why should anyone believe current US troubles are leading to a permanent and consequential loss of its global leverage?

Those making such arguments are in absolute denial about how fundamentally different the global situation and US troubles are now as compared to those in the Vietnam/OPEC embargo era:

# In the early-to-mid 1970s, the US was only 36% dependent on foreign oil imports as compared to its current 60% dependency. Therefore, during the same period in which the US appeared to fully recover from its Vietnam/OPEC embargo era troubles it was in reality simultaneously forfeiting to foreigners an even larger, majority chunk of its energy independence, and along with it its entire strategic energy security.

# In the aftermath of the OPEC (Organization of Petroleim Exporting Countries) oil embargo of 1973/1974, the US created and established the global liberal oil market order that now dominates and that features high supply liquidity and fungibility of oil via the buying and selling of highly liquid oil futures contracts.

This is in contrast to the former rigidity, much lower supply liquidity and the ability to enact the targeted embargo that resulted when the more rigid bilateral long-term supply contract ruled during the 1970s. To prevent the reviving of the ability to enact a targeted embargo, the US entirely relies on unwavering global adherence to the current liberal oil market order. Therefore, that liberal order is the single point of failure for the US and its economy.

Russia, China, India and the rest of the rising East have never fully trusted nor supported that liberal order, are not members of its governing institutions, have no say in the decisions of those institutions and do not see themselves as having any real stake in that liberal order, and they are actively reverting to the rigid bilateral long-term supply contract in their energy dealings across the globe, This locks up (and makes inaccessible to the US-led liberal order) a increasing portion of global supply and reserves.

The liberal order the US absolutely relies on for its strategic energy security is already being circumvented and undermined for the sake of the private and ever-more frantic energy security interests of the rising economies of the East. As experts are increasingly warning in their testimonies before the US Congress, the US is racing along the trajectory toward less energy security in the near future than it had in the 1970s. There are no exits for the US from that entirely ominous trajectory.

# By the latest figures, the West's oil majors control less than 10% of all global oil reserves, while the vast majority (over 70%) of those reserves is controlled by state oil companies within regimes that place US interests literally at the bottom of their priorities. Additionally, ever deeper cross-investment and political-diplomatic agreements between those regimes, and between those regimes and the rising economies of the East, place the US ever more fully outside a new, durable and exclusive circle of energy security centered around the East. This is an entirely new development that the US did not face in the 1970s.

# During the 1970s, the US dollar was not under any tangible threat of losing its international role and dominance. Today, the opposite is true. Other currencies continue to chip away at dollar dominance while the enormous reserves of the rising East are progressively but rapidly re-balanced out of the dollar.

The globe's oil and gas producers and the key economies of Europe and the Americas continue to pursue ever more determined "Look East" policies. Additionally, new oil-and-gas bourses denominated in currencies other than US dollars are opening and will continue to open in 2007, further undermining global dollar dominance. These and other developments represent real and mounting threats to the dollar and to the US economy as the global economic center continues to shift to the East.

# During the 1970s, the US was the largest creditor nation in the world and thereby enjoyed the maximum of economic and political independence and a resulting massive degree of leverage against both friends and rivals alike.

While the US was apparently recovering completely from its Vietnam/OPEC embargo era troubles, it was simultaneously buying that apparent recovery at the incalculable expense of forfeiting completely its economic and political independence and the massive global leverage that accompanied them, becoming the largest debtor nation in the world. The US relies massively on foreign cash inflows and financing to keep the economy solvent. This development has severely limited its leverage, both economically and politically, against friend and foe alike.

# Already colossal and rapidly mounting US public and private debt has pushed the US deeply into a genuine impasse. If it attempts to resolve its debt through devaluation of the dollar it seriously risks alienating the foreign economies that are crucial to keeping it afloat, and risks a concerted global exit from the dollar and a resulting US economic crash. If it continues to do little or nothing to resolve its worsening debt, deficits and imbalances it risks an eventual loss of international confidence in its economy and currency and all the negative repercussions that would accompany that eventuality. The US was in no such impasse in the 1970s.

# The consequential but temporary decline of US leverage on the world stage in the 1970s did not create a power vacuum that could readily be occupied by its rivals for even the medium term. Why not? In the aftermath of the Vietnam quagmire and US economic troubles of the 1970s, the Soviets attempted to fill the vacuum by making one-dimensional hard power moves such as invading Afghanistan in 1979.

That amounted to Soviet over-reach and resulted in a costly quagmire, with US help. It was a short-sighted and stupid move for the Soviets, who, along with the mounting economic over-reach resulting from the arms race (also with US help), were dooming their empire to early collapse.

Therefore, the US was not facing a smart rival in the 1970s and 1980s, one that understood how to adroitly, asymmetrically ply its strengths in multiple dimensions simultaneously, and multi-laterally along with its key allies, against US vulnerabilities, to curb US power at little cost to itself but simultaneously at great cost to the US. The US is facing such a rival presently in the East, one that is actively and resiliently filling the vacuum left by the contraction of US global leverage, very smartly capitalizing on US troubles. Conversely, US leaders continue to display a shocking degree of short-sightedness, unrestrained tendencies toward one-dimensional, unilateralist, overly-muscular thinking and rank stupidity, with no relief on the horizon.

# In the 1970s the US was not facing the virtual abandonment of its key allies around the globe in order to ally more closely with the East. Today, the US is facing global realignment wherein it has trashed and/or severely neglected its key global alliances resulting in its crucial allies in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia progressively but rapidly realigning with the rising East in the key spheres of the economy, energy, security and diplomacy.

The US gets only shallow cooperation around the globe these days. This further undermines already declining US global leverage and helps assure the collapse of that leverage will be virtually permanent.

For all the irrefutable reasons above, and much more, the current global situation and deepening US troubles are fundamentally different, and far worse, than those of the 1970s. They bespeak an already consequential and largely non-recoverable loss of US global leverage, and the impending loss of much more of that leverage along with the severe weakening of the very underpinnings of its position of global dominance.

Distorted perception is not reality
Even those who passionately disdain US-led unipolarity have generally fallen victim to the fog-inducing effects of the increasingly irrelevant new theories discussed earlier and have (erroneously) resigned themselves to live under US-led unipolarity for the foreseeable future.

They tend to "see" the US as virtually invincible, or at least as still towering almost irreversibly far above all other powers. They erroneously assume any credible challenge to US global dominance must come from a power (or powers) of nearly equal or greater size as compared to the US itself. Hence, laboring in that fog, the majority of observers "see" the possibility of the arising of a new Cold War between East and West as largely irrelevant for the simple reason that the East is not yet "seen" even remotely as a real match for the size and power of the US global hegemon and for the West in general.

Why would the East, possessing comparatively mini-sized global power, be so foolish as to embark on the "self-destructive" course of opposing the West in a new Cold War? Most persons have tended to conclude that it would not embark on such a futile course and that it is not now doing so.

Fog in place of clarity
To illustrate the proven effect of the new theories in fogging up the ability to see and think clearly about the real meaning and significance of global developments, consider the fact that only of late (generally only in the past several months) has it finally been discerned across the globe that a renewed Great Game over control of strategic global resources is in fact being played out between East and West.

This is despite the handwriting on the wall clearly proving the existence of that renewed Great Game in 2001/2002, when the US began an accelerated program of proliferating its military bases throughout resource-rich regions of the world.

Largely due to the effects of the new theories that disdain the supposedly "simplistic" and "Cold War" logic of a renewed fundamental East-West rivalry, the world at large usually doesn't "get it" with respect to the fundamental meaning of global developments until some lone but dramatic event occurs which finally shocks the world out of its theory-induced idealistic bubble back into stark reality. Yet, for those who cared to look starkly with their own eyes at the entire picture as it was and is, not as they might wish it were, the real meaning of ongoing developments is clear long before that lone but dramatic event occurs.

The same is true with respect to Russia's mounting global energy leverage - that wasn't understood or accepted by the world at large until the "shocking" event of the cutting off by Russia of Ukraine's gas in December/January, 2005/2006. In fact, before that dramatic event the majority tended to ridicule the idea of growing Russian global energy leverage as largely a "conspiracy theory". Yet, a relative handful of us have been documenting and warning of Russia's mounting global energy leverage, based completely on verifiable facts, since before 1999.

Consequently, the track record for accurate analysis and forecasting on the part of those holding to the new theories is largely an ignominious one, worthy mostly of ridicule. They utterly failed to predict, or even to recognize as it was occurring, the renewed Great Game between East and West over strategic resources, Russia's great advancement and advantage in that game, its ongoing and alarming energy-based rise, the likelihood of the very multi-dimensional global over-reach and unprecedented isolation the US finds itself in currently.

They also missed the falling of the vast majority of the world's energy resources under the control of increasingly anti-US authoritarian regimes, and many other developments of great consequence as regards sharply declining US power and the rising leverage of the East on the global stage. Not only did they fail to predict or even see these developments as they actually unfolded, but by and large they were caught predicting and asserting the precise opposite than what has actually occurred.

Why should that miserable track record continue to command respect as regards the issues discussed here, namely whether or not a new Cold War is now arising and whether or not the rising East can successfully shift the US out of its global position of dominance via exploitation of key US strategic vulnerabilities?

If your characteristically upbeat doctor had repeatedly either misdiagnosed as minor conditions, or entirely missed a string of potentially fatal illnesses over the preceding seven years, including cancer and heart disease, why would you continue to trust his habitually rosy prognosis for the coming months and years? Why keep trusting the in-denial, fanciful analysis of those who have repeatedly proven they possess little understanding of the genuine meaning and trajectory of world events?

Wide acceptance of the new theories of how the world supposedly works since 1991 has only fogged the view and clouded the fundamental, below-the-surface issues and forces that continue to drive events now just as they did during the old Cold War. As the fashionable theories come and go, one thing remains the same: global developments continue to move in the direction of East-West re-polarization with control over energy as the catalyst accelerating the division.

Whoever controls the resources controls everything in this highly industrialized world. Hence, two main geopolitical poles have once again become locked into a contest for that control. Many assume the US cannot really lose the game any time soon.

But is the possibility of shifting the US colossus out of its global position of dominance truly unfeasible, or nearly as thorny a task as it is generally assumed to be?

US power: Image vs reality?
It is entirely appropriate at this juncture to ask a series of questions designed to re-calibrate our thinking to be more in line with the reality of the current global situation:
# What if US-led unipolarity turns out to be a mere temporary aberration, not the new entrenched reality asserted by the new theories? What if US troubles on the world stage actually do signify, not merely a temporary downturn, but rather a strategic loss of global power, an ongoing, largely self-induced multi-dimensional (economic, political, military, diplomatic, ideological, moral) over-reach and a resulting irretrievable forfeiture of a consequential sum of its global leverage, as detailed here?
# Could such ongoing, deepening US troubles, coupled with certain clever, opportunistic and insidious asymmetric strategies hatched in the East and expertly directed against US strategic vulnerabilities, catch the US colossus massively off guard, resulting in the ability of a rising multifarious East to push the colossus past the tipping point as respects a loss of its global dominance?
# Increasing numbers of informed leaders and experts who are charged with oversight and protection of US national security are using such terms as "economic catastrophe" and are sounding an ever louder alarm about the increasing exploitation and the potential exploitation by the East of key US vulnerabilities, such as its huge foreign energy dependence, its gigantic foreign cash and financing dependence and its massive dependence on high-tech computers, networks and satellites.

During the old Cold War the West was united against a common foe, but when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the Cold War was won, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the West went looking for a new foe and a reason to remain united as "The West".

It didn't find a sufficiently threatening, galvanizing foe, and the naturally varied interests, goals and approaches to the world's problems between the US and its traditional allies began to surface. Additionally, the US itself became the problem, from the viewpoint of Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America as it pursued its self-serving, increasingly unilateralist and overly-muscular foreign, and short-sighted domestic economic polices. Lacking a common galvanizing foe and being handed instead a new and divisive foe (the US itself), the West began to fracture and its key states began to realign toward the rising East, to such an extent that at present the US enjoys only a very short list of determined, loyal allies.

Hence, this can be called the neo-West - much reduced in net size and power as compared to before, much more fractious, enjoying far less independent economic and political power and inordinately energy-dependent and cash-dependent on the rising East.

Additionally, the rising East is playing its energy, economic, ideological, diplomatic and geopolitical cards very smartly, gathering to itself strategic partners of key importance around the globe, spreading its influence deep into the realm of the old West. Consequently, this can be called the neo-East, the rising multifarious East. In any renewed contest (a neo-Cold War) between the neo-West and the multifarious East, the equations describing the genuine global leverage of each contestant have radically changed - this time around the pertinent question would be whether the neo-West has any real chance to win against the multifarious East.

Next: Asymmetric challenge to the US colossus

W Joseph Stroupe is author of the new book entitled Russian Rubicon: Impending Checkmate of the West and editor of Global Events Magazine online at www.GeoStrategyMap.com

(Copyright 2006 W Joseph Stroupe)

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Asymmetric challenge to the US colossus

(PREPARING FOR A NEW COLD WAR, Part 2)

By W Joseph Stroupe

Time and again informed leaders and experts have directly or indirectly employed the analogy of the Achilles' heel to warn that the US colossus currently faces very real danger. Even a "giant" has a pair of tendons which, if sliced, could bring the giant crashing helplessly to the ground.

If a knife is held against those very tendons in a credible and intractable threat, then the giant can be constrained, or even mastered and obliged to perform the will of players of comparatively much lesser stature. Does the analogy really fit mounting East-West rivalry and the efforts to end US global dominance? To answer that question we need to examine the principles of asymmetric challenge more closely and see if real-world, modern-day examples of its success exist.

The technique of asymmetric challenge involves the contest, not between equally matched opponents, but rather the assault of a smaller, but much more agile and clever challenger against a much larger, but clumsy and less brainy opponent:

# The asymmetric challenger carefully studies and identifies precisely what are his bigger opponent's key vulnerabilities, strengths and his likely response to attack.
# Carefully identified are how those vulnerabilities can be effectively and insidiously targeted with a minimum of backlash against the attacker, while simultaneously instigating the opponent to (mis)use his own strength to magnify the negative effects of the initial attack, or to otherwise cleverly leverage the strength, weight or size of his large opponent against him.
# The aim is to instigate the opponent, if possible, to instinctively (unthinkingly) use his superior strength at his own peril, such that as he struggles ever harder to respond to attack he merely exacerbates on himself the negative effects of the initial attack(s).
# His growing realization of increasingly being at disadvantage may instinctively (unthinkingly) cause him to struggle ever harder (not smarter), thereby further increasing the degree of his peril, and the process feeds on itself until his situation becomes entirely hopeless - he can find no way out of his predicament and his smaller challenger has won the contest.
# The end result is less often the destruction or total collapse of the larger opponent, and more often his crippling to a sufficient extent that his smaller challenger can move into a position of dominance over him, with such a position guaranteed on an ongoing basis by the challenger's continued leverage over the key vulnerabilities that were targeted in the first place in the initial attack.
# The technique is especially effective against large opponents who suffer from deep-seated over-confidence resulting from an inordinately exaggerated estimation of their own capabilities while simultaneously and unjustifiably estimating the capabilities of others as negligible by comparison.

Many real-world, modern-day examples of the proven success of the technique exist. The over-confident, miscalculating Soviets suffered a humiliating defeat by a few thousand insurgents in Afghanistan who were provided certain US weapons. Hezbollah has had a similar success against highly-militarized but over-confident, miscalculating Israel in the recent war in Lebanon, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is in serious and likely irreversible trouble in Afghanistan.

Of special significance, the US is on the verge of a massive and costly defeat in Iraq at the hands of only a few thousand insurgents employing bomb technologies from Iran and Syria. The net effect of the ever more desperate struggle of the US to turn Iraq into a "win" is that it has repeatedly miscalculated and genuinely deepened its own peril by further fueling sectarian divisions and strife, thereby helping to magnify the effectiveness of the clever asymmetric insurgent strategies and playing into their hands for a massive forfeiture.

That impending US forfeiture in Iraq will carry enormous global repercussions for the American colossus, further undermining its global position. Many other examples could be cited. Here, we find that the clever asymmetric challengers have entirely breached and utterly destroyed the former auras of Soviet, US, Israeli and NATO military and geopolitical invincibility. Those "giants" have all been significantly cut down to size on the world stage.

In each of these cases the overwhelming power of the larger opponent was not the key factor; it did not determine the outcome of the contest. Instead, the determining factor was the cleverness, determination and agility of the challenger in plying its strengths against the vulnerabilities of the opponent until success was achieved. Therefore, those who habitually resort to the argument of the US's possession of unequalled power in an effort to prove the US is not currently under grave threat of a loss of its global position are persons who are either ignorant of the facts or are in denial, or a combination of both.

These examples illustrate that "giants" are best and most often defeated, not by engaging in a "boxing match", that is, a conventional head-to-head contest between two matched opponents, but rather by mounting an asymmetric challenge as detailed here.

Consequently, the fact that the US is still the global colossus and still sits in the position of global dominance has little to do with the issue of whether or not the comparatively mini-sized rising East can successfully shift the US out of that position. If the rising East is proving to be clever, determined and agile enough in its challenge to US global dominance, then the US will increasingly find itself unable to hold onto its global position in the face of that mounting asymmetric challenge.

This is a reality check for the US colossus and for those who wrongly assume that its greater size and power is what somehow secures its continued global dominance. No such assurance exists. The recent history of the successful defeat of "giants" by very clever mini-sized opponents is not comforting from the US perspective.

An end to US dominance
Issues and problems of global importance that painfully demonstrate the increasingly divergent interests and ever-more incompatible approaches of East and West are rapidly coming to a head. As they continue to do so, they will increasingly bring to the surface and out into the open the true condition of East-West relations - that of a fundamental rivalry between two opposing poles.

What are the key issues and problems rapidly coming to a head?
# The Iran crisis and prospects for a US attack on Iranian facilities and assets.
# The North Korea crisis and the growing prospects for a war resulting from stringent US-led embargo and interdiction at sea.
# Continued NATO/European Union expansion eastward and the creation of an anti-ballistic missile shield on Russia's doorstep.
# The issue of international energy security and whether the current US-backed energy market order will continue to be dominant.

As these and other issues and crises inexorably and imminently come to a head, likely involving further military conflict and crisis as well as an intensified arms race and ever more strident East vs West energy geopolitics, then all the remaining fog with respect to the true condition of East-West relations will dissipate, and the full-blown arising of a neo-Cold War between the neo-West and the rising multifarious East, with the Russia-China axis at its center, will be more clearly discerned.

Under the surface, or behind the veil if you prefer, the foundations of that inevitable neo-Cold War have been building steadily for at least a decade. Inordinate US global dominance exercised in greedy, overly-muscular fashion and a growing wariness and determination on the part of the rising multifarious East to bring in a more equitable world order are fundamental forces fueling the inevitable arising of the neo-Cold War between East and West.

The deepening Russia-China axis and its growing constellation of strategic partners, though increasingly wary of US global dominance and not lacking in determination to bring it eventually to an end, of necessity have avoided directly confronting the US head-to-head in a conventional boxing-match-style economic or military conflict.

Such a conventional confrontation between the US and the comparatively smaller, less powerful Russia-China axis would quickly result in a catastrophe for the East. In fact, the rising East has intentionally kept its relations with the West as friendly as possible in order to avoid the terrible costs of a direct, conventional confrontation. This policy has facilitated, without needless interruption, the ongoing and massive transfer of wealth from the West to the emerging (rising) economies of the East. It is a very smart and pragmatic policy for the East.

Nevertheless, simultaneous with that policy another one is being actively pursued. The rising East is not content to merely assume that the US colossus will treat, or will learn to treat the globe's lesser powers in a fair and equitable manner, taking proper account of their legitimate views and interests.

Unilateralist, overly muscular and mostly self-serving US policies and actions since the 1991 collapse of the roughly balanced bipolar order of the two superpowers demonstrate that nothing can be taken for granted in that regard. Prudently, the rising multifarious East has been learning ever deeper and wider multilateral cooperation within itself in the energy, economic, diplomatic, political and military spheres aimed at developing and putting in place potent asymmetric leverages in all those same spheres.

Note how these are asymmetric leverages that match remarkably the precise strategic vulnerabilities of the US colossus:

# US diplomatic-geopolitical vulnerability. Beginning dramatically in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion in 2003, the East and its sympathizers and allies began to exercise and perfect their collective diplomatic leverage within the UN Security Council, with the formation of the so-called anti-war bloc that opposed the US invasion of Iraq.

Russia, China, France and Germany used soft power and the threat of the veto to marshal united global opposition to the US and Britain. By successfully opposing and isolating the US and Britain at the UN and keeping it isolated, the rising East has slammed the door on the US goals of owning Iraq for itself, of using Iraq as the first step toward reordering the entire Middle East and the rest of the globe after its own interests, of gaining de facto control of global oil, of instigating world-wide regime change along the lines the US desired.

The potent asymmetrical diplomatic leverage of the rising East has hit the US where it was (and still is) extremely vulnerable, namely in its fundamental need for the rest of the world to acquiesce to its will in order that it (the US) can continue to dominate the globe virtually trouble-free and largely cost-free. The rising East, capitalizing on unprecedented US international disdain and isolation, continues to foment and fuel a building global wave of geopolitical-economic-ideological realignment away from the US and toward the East.

Consequently, the material (in terms of lives, military preparedness and money), ideological, political and diplomatic costs to the US of its continued dominance have been raised to exorbitant levels by the rising East's clever exercising of its asymmetric diplomatic leverage against the US colossus. The underpinnings of the US global position are being weakened as a result.

# US addictions to foreign oil and cheap imported goods. Beginning dramatically in 2000/2001 when the price of oil had tripled from its 1999 lows of US$9 per barrel to $27 per barrel and when the US Federal Reserve began to radically lower interest rates to create economic growth through the housing "boom", Russia and China positioned themselves to capitalize via a massive transfer of wealth.

US dependence on foreign oil began to fill Russia's coffers, and US addiction to unrestrained debt-based consumer spending on cheap imports from China began to fill China's coffers. Soon other oil exporters and other Asian goods exporters got into the wealth transfer game. By now the most dramatic transformation of the global economic landscape in modern history is nearly completed - the emerging economies in the East is where the economic strength increasingly resides, with those economies massively operating in the black with gigantic forex reserves and trade surpluses while the US and the wider West are massively in the red with huge and growing deficits.

The rising East has hit the US where it is deeply vulnerable - its addiction to imported oil and cheap imported goods. This has come about by the rising East's adroit exercising of its asymmetrical export-based economic leverage against the US colossus.

# US addiction to foreign financing and cash inflows. Beginning in late 2003 to early 2004, Russian and Asian central banks began the process of diversification of their reserves out of the dollar, with a target of rebalancing their reserves to 50% dollars versus 50% other currencies and precious metals.

Accompanying that process was the policy change enacted by Asian central banks wherein those banks ceased buying large sums of dollars and switched to accumulating their ongoing surpluses in non-dollar-denominated assets.

Consequently, the diversification is being accomplished without selling large sums of dollars. Russia reached the target of reducing the dollar portion of its reserves to 50% in the summer of this year - it was much closer to that target than experts realized, and Russia's official announcement of reaching its goal caught most experts by surprise.

Experts believe China's reserves are currently at least 70% denominated in dollars, but according to an April 18 report in the China Daily China's central bank had already, by the end of 2005, reduced the percentage of its dollar holdings to 60%, far less than what experts believed.

Central banks throughout the rising East have also dropped their direct dollar currency pegs and established new pegs to a basket of currencies. All such policies work to significantly unlink their economies from the dollar and insulate them from a dollar crash. The US has already lost its official source of crucial foreign financing to keep the US government solvent, with the source of foreign cash inflows switching from stable and long-term central bank purchases of dollars to much more fickle private investor purchases.

The rising East has positioned itself to be able to instigate and withstand a dollar crash in the event an economic war breaks out between East and West. Capitalizing on the colossal US addiction to foreign cash inflows, the rising East now holds far greater economic leverage over the US economy than the US can exercise over the East.

# Inherent vulnerabilities of large and unwieldy US weapons platforms: Russia and the rising East have developed, proliferated and deployed an entire range of relatively cheap weapons systems that exploit the vulnerabilities of the huge and powerful weapons systems of the West. Heavily armored tanks are quite easily disabled and destroyed by anti-tank missiles such as the Kornet - Israel found out how potent such weapons are in its recent war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Widely available Russian portable anti-aircraft missiles pose a real threat, as do its passive anti-aircraft radars and anti-aircraft defense complexes like the S-300 and S-400. Not even US stealth aircraft are safe. Jane's Defence indicates Iran has purchased sophisticated Russian radars and anti-aircraft and missile defense complexes.

Lethal asymmetric missile systems that threaten US aircraft carrier battle groups and every other major power projection platform of the US have been developed and proliferated by Russia and the East. Additionally, the constellation of US satellites is also at risk from an array of new weapons systems, including ground-based lasers that can blind those satellites and global positioning system jamming systems that can blind US military targeting operations. While the US continues to spend enormous sums of money on its military, the rising East spends comparatively little to acquire the assured ability to prevent US military successes and victories in the air and on the ground.

# Colossal US vulnerability over energy. Russia and the rising East are establishing a new durable, exclusive circle of international energy security based on policies and principles that flow against the foundations of the current US-led liberal global oil market order.

The rising East has no say in the governing institutions of that liberal order, such as the IEA (International Energy Agency) and the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), and from their viewpoint they have little or no stake either in those institutions or in the liberal market order itself.

They, along with the vast bulk of the world's oil and gas exporting regimes, have already taken away from the West's oil majors control over 80% to 90% of global reserves. They are reviving the rigid bilateral long-term supply contract and locking up ever larger portions of global resources, making these less and less accessible to the current liberal global energy market order.

The rising East is establishing global control over such resources, opening the real possibility that the US could be left outside the circle of international energy security. Increasingly, the portion of global resources still accessible through the US-led liberal market order is becoming subject to the goodwill of Russia, the rising economies of the East and the East-friendly energy exporting regimes around the globe.

That development is one of enormous consequence for the deeply foreign-energy-dependent West because the rising East thereby increasingly controls that key lever over all the industrialized West. This has come about by the rising East's adroit exercising of its asymmetrical energy-based economic leverage against the US colossus.

All these spheres match the precise key strategic vulnerabilities of the US colossus. The reader must decide for himself or herself whether the development by the rising East of these very potent, virtually undefeatable leverages exactly matching all the key vulnerabilities of the US colossus is a result of random chance or of a significant measure of strategic forethought and planning.

Especially in the sphere of control of global energy resources, the rising East is increasing its global leverage far more quickly than most experts predicted, and the profound political effects across the globe are only now being recognized.

For example, in The Washington Times of October 29, David R Sands writes in his article entitled "Fueling US Adversaries" that America's most determined adversaries are being powerfully bolstered by exploiting the tight global supply situation and sustained high prices. He quotes Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who admits she previously underestimated the ways the "energy question" has distorted international relations. On the potent worldwide political effects being wrought by energy, Rice stated before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April: "I can tell you that nothing has taken me aback more as secretary of state than the way the politics of energy is - I will use the word 'warping' - diplomacy around the world."

The Council on Foreign Relations released a report entitled, "National Security Consequences of US Oil Dependency" in October. In it the authors lament the fact that few in the West understand the full dimensions of growing US vulnerability with respect to the energy weapon. The report expresses alarm at the multi-pronged, potent global changes being wrought by the increasing energy-based political, economic and diplomatic leverage of Russia and the East and the corresponding collapse of US leverage in the same spheres. The report is an alarming, but certainly not an alarmist, wake up call for the US and for the wider West.

To illustrate how quickly the West is losing its grip on global oil resources, The Observer of October 29 carried the article entitled "Big Oil May Have to Get Even Bigger to Survive". The author notes that the West's international oil majors are in real trouble as respects the collapsing of their control over global energy reserves and are facing a global wave of nationalization, forced renegotiation of existing agreements, inability to get access to new exploration and production acreage and rising taxes - a caustic mix that is dissolving the glue that holds together the US-backed liberal oil market order.

While the current production levels of the international oil majors are still high, their reserve position is dramatically shrinking - they now control much less than 20% of global reserves, while the rest is already under the control of the rising East and the East-friendly producing regimes around the globe.

Unless the oil majors can adequately replace their reserves on an ongoing basis as they produce oil for the market, they risk becoming niche players in that global market. According to Morgan Stanley, the oil majors replaced 140% of their reserves in 1997, but in 2005 they were able to replace only 75% - they are rapidly shrinking, while state-owned companies around the globe are growing by leaps and bounds.

That trend threatens to cut ever more deeply into the reserve position of the oil majors. It also has the real prospect of affecting current production by the West's oil majors, leading to the potential of seeing a situation where shipments of oil to the West could be negatively affected - not in the next decade or two, but within this very decade. Behind the facade of current high production levels and unprecedented profits by the West's oil majors lurks the specter of a precipitous collapse of their market leverage and ability to serve the energy security interests of the West.

The wide array of reckless strategies and foreign-policy blunders conducted by the US itself adds significant cover for the rising East as it completes the development and putting in place of its asymmetric leverages. This is because the argument is often put forth that global realignment away from the US and toward the East is not occurring as a result of any strategy conceived and executed in the East, but simply as a result of a string of US strategic blunders.

For those not accustomed to looking beyond the mere surface, such an argument makes sense. However, it completely misses the facts with regard to how the Russia-China axis has so cleverly, quickly and triumphantly capitalized on every one of those US blunders, acting like an irresistible magnet pole to draw the world's key states into a new alignment facing East instead of West, and specifically employing key and compelling ideological, energy-based, economic and security strategies with which to do so.

Very soon the "coming out" for the neo-Cold War will demonstrate to all observers what the true, fundamental global situation and condition is between East and West. That true condition of East-West relations has been hiding just below the surface, behind the facade, as it were, but the "coming out" will soon bring it into full view above the surface to be clearly recognized as the neo-Cold War.

The old Cold War was characterized by the ideological rivalry in the forefront between liberal democratic capitalism and communism, which ideological rivalry gave thick cover to the underlying contest to control global strategic resources. The ideological rivalry merely provided convenient justification for the geopolitical/military/economic moves by both sides designed to extend control over such resources.

The neo-Cold War is also characterized by a facade made up of an ideological rivalry between East and West - but this time it's liberal democracy versus the authoritarian "managed democracy" or "sovereign democracy", if you prefer.

The difference this time around, however, is that the new ideological rivalry provides only a thin veil to conceal the ongoing and underlying contest over global control of strategic resources. When the West instigates "colored revolutions" in key, strategically (from the standpoint of energy) located states, and when Russia-China consolidate domestic state control and bolster like authoritarian regimes (especially resource-rich ones) around the globe, one can discern how the ideological rivalry inherent in the neo-Cold War is merely used to justify energy-based geopolitical moves, just as was the case in the old Cold War.

The rising East is fully preparing its array of potent asymmetric levers enabling it to win any form of conflict with the West, but it will not provoke a conflict. While it fully intends to complete very soon its rise in all the spheres noted above, it won't be the multifarious East that provokes conflict; instead, it will be the US and its allies that will do so. The impending provocation, whatever it turns out to be, will oblige the rising East to scrap the policy of striving to maintain peaceful relations with the US in favor of employing the full range of tools, alliances and strategies it has put in place in order to win a renewed conflict with the West.

And the provocation that will mark the "coming out" for the neo-Cold War is impending. What will it be?

Opportunity awaits
Iraq was the opportunity to isolate the US - one of the key strategies pursued by the East to lay the basis for undermining the US global position. And the US did not disappoint by staying out of Iraq. It went ahead with its invasion and has suffered enormously on the world stage as a result.

While it has been suffering, the rising East has been cleverly capitalizing and preparing to win any future conflict, whether direct or indirect, whether in the sphere of energy, economy, ideology, diplomacy, or military or a combination of all the foregoing.

Now, should the US engage in a new provocation, such as an attack on Iran, a war with North Korea that starts at sea over the interdiction of ships, a renewed push to instigate "colored" revolutions throughout the East in an effort to scupper its geopolitical rise, further eastward expansion of NATO and the EU and setting up missile complexes and other military installations on Russia's doorstep or in Taiwan, or other serious provocations not actually listed here, the West will find the assertiveness and self-confidence of Russia and the East to be much greater than when it pushed past all objectors to invade Iraq in 2003.

This time the East will possess the viable option of bringing into play its wider and much more potent array of asymmetric levers to enormously increase the costs to the US of provocation, putting at grave and imminent risk the very global position to which the US still tenaciously clings.

Can the still relatively mini-sized but rapidly rising multifarious East accomplish the desired shift of the US out of its global position? After a review of the array of potent asymmetric levers now held in the rising East's grasp, a much better question is whether the US can possibly find a way to hold onto that position in the face of the clever, multi-dimensional asymmetric assault that awaits the colossus if it further provokes its smaller rivals, which it most assuredly will do. The world is now poised for the dramatic "coming out" of the neo-Cold War, and it is one that the neo-West can't possibly win.

W Joseph Stroupe is author of the new book entitled Russian Rubicon: Impending Checkmate of the West and editor of Global Events Magazine online at www.GeoStrategyMap.com

(Copyright 2006 W Joseph Stroupe)

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