On Sept.14 BBC confirmed the Anti-American feeling in Europe. And on Monday Aug. 27,2007, selfcounscious American PBS presents
"The Anti-Americans: A Hate/Love Relationship" Yet there are other explanations - unrelated to Washington's glaring misadventures -- for the current transformation in international affairs. These include, above all, the tightening market in oil and natural gas, which has enhanced the power of hydrocarbon-rich nations as never before; the rapid economic expansion of the mega-nations China and India; the transformation of China into the globe's leading manufacturing base; and the end of the Anglo-American duopoly in international television news.
Then in April 2007, the Kremlin issued a major foreign policy document. "The myth about the unipolar world fell apart once and for all in Iraq," it stated. "A strong, more self-confident Russia has become an integral part of positive changes in the world."The Kremlin's increasingly tense relations with Washington were in tune with Russian popular opinion. A poll taken during the run-up to the 2006 G8 summit revealed that 58 percent of Russians regarded America as an "unfriendly country." It has proved to be a trend. This July, for instance, Maj. Gen. Alexandr Vladimirov told the mass circulation newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda that war with the United States was a "possibility" in the next 10 to 15 years.
Such sentiments resonated with Hugo Chavez. While visiting Moscow in June 2007, he urged Russians to return to the ideas of Vladimir Lenin, especially his anti-imperialism. "The Americans don't want Russia to keep rising," he said. "But Russia has risen again as a center of power, and we, the people of the world, need Russia to become stronger."By the time he arrived in Tehran from Moscow (via Minsk) in June 2007, the 180 economic and political accords the Chavez government had signed with Tehran were already yielding tangible results. Iranian-designed cars and tractors were coming off assembly lines in Venezuela. "[The] cooperation of independent countries like Iran and Venezuela has an effective role in defeating the policies of imperialism and saving nations," Chavez declared in Tehran.
"The support of China is very important [to us] from the political and moral point of view," Chavez declared. Along with a joint refinery project, China agreed to build 13 oil-drilling platforms, supply 18 oil tankers, and collaborate with the state-owned company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., in exploring a new oilfield in the Orinoco Basin.So dramatic has been the growth of the state-run company PetroChina that, in mid-2007, it was second only to Exxon Mobil in its market value among energy corporations. Indeed, that year three Chinese companies made it onto the list of the world's 10 most highly valued corporations. Only the United States, with five, had more. China's foreign reserves of over $1 trillion have now surpassed Japan's. With its gross domestic product soaring past Germany's, China ranks No. 3 in the world economy.
In the diplomatic arena, Chinese leaders broke new ground in 1996 by sponsoring the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, consisting of four adjoining countries: Russia and the three former Soviet Socialist republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The SCO started as a cooperative organization with a focus on countering drug-smuggling and terrorism. Later, the SCO invited Uzbekistan to join, even though it does not abut China. In 2003, the SCO broadened its scope by including regional economic cooperation in its charter. That, in turn, led it to grant observer status to Pakistan, India and Mongolia -- all adjoining China -- and Iran, which does not. When the United States applied for observer status, it was rejected, an embarrassing setback for Washington, which enjoyed such status at the Association of South-East Asian Nations.See our extensive research on this topic today:
What Next with the Current World Order P.1: In the end, there could be only one winner in the economic rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, and could end with no winner at all. But the losers in the Third World's War, can be counted in millions. The Truth about the Cold War:What Next with the Current World Order P.2: Settling into the White House in 1993, Bill Clinton had undeniably inherited a shiny new world where American power, no longer trammeled by the Soviet Union, stood at its historical apex. Superpower Politics
What Next with the Current World Order P.3: Where the United States is the security lender of last resort, American power is a provocation for the lesser players. Anti-Americanism.
"The Bush Doctrine is actually being defined by action, as opposed to by words," Bush told Tom Brokaw aboard Air Force One in 2003. Mai 2006 then, President Bush modulated himself; at a press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush swore off the Wild West rhetoric of getting enemies "dead or alive," conceding, "in certain parts of the world, it was misinterpreted."We now look at the situation in the World as it stands now: What Next with the Current World Order P.4: The Last WWIII.
In early August 2007, on the eve of an SCO summit in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, the group conducted its first joint military exercises, code-named Peace Mission 2007, in the Russian Ural region of Chelyabinsk. "The SCO is destined to play a vital role in ensuring international security," said Ednan Karabayev, foreign minister of Kyrgyzstan. In late 2006, as the host of a China-Africa Forum in Beijing attended by leaders of 48 of 53 African nations, China left the United States woefully behind in the diplomatic race for that continent (and its hydrocarbon and other resources). In return for Africa's oil, iron ore, copper and cotton, China sold low-priced goods to Africans and assisted African counties in building or improving roads, railways, ports, hydroelectric dams, telecommunications systems and schools. "The Western approach of imposing its values and political system on other countries is not acceptable to China," said Africa specialist Wang Hongyi of the China Institute of International Studies. "We focus on mutual development."
To reduce the cost of transporting petroleum from Africa and the Middle East, China began constructing a trans-Burma oil pipeline from the Bay of Bengal to its southern province of Yunan, thereby shortening the delivery route now traveled by tankers. This undermined Washington's campaign to isolate Myanmar. (Earlier, Sudan, boycotted by Washington, had emerged as a leading supplier of African oil to China.) In addition, Chinese oil companies were competing fiercely with their Western counterparts in getting access to hydrocarbon reserves in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. "China's oil diplomacy is putting the country on a collision course with the U.S. and Western Europe, which have imposed sanctions on some of the countries where China is doing business," comments William Mellor of Bloomberg News. The sentiment is echoed by the other side. "I see China and the U.S. coming into conflict over energy in the years ahead," says Jin Riguang, an oil-and-gas advisor to the Chinese government and a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Council.
China's industrialization and modernization has spurred the modernization of its military as well. The test firing of the country's first anti-satellite missile, which successfully destroyed a defunct Chinese weather satellite in January 2007, dramatically demonstrated its growing technological prowess. An alarmed Washington had already noted an 18 percent increase in China's 2007 defense budget. Attributing the rise to extra spending on missiles, electronic warfare and other high-tech items, Liao Xilong, commander of the People's Liberation Army's general logistics department, said: "The present-day world is no longer peaceful, and to protect national security, stability and territorial integrity, we must suitably increase spending on military modernization." It is noteworthy that Russian officials applauding the swift rise of post-Soviet Russia refer fondly to the pre-Bolshevik Revolution era when, according to them, Czarist Russia was a great power. Equally, Chinese leaders remain proud of their country's long imperial past as unique among nations. When viewed globally and in the great stretch of history, the notion of American exceptionalism that drove the neoconservatives to proclaim the Project for the New American Century in the late 20th century -- adopted so wholeheartedly by the Bush administration in this one -- is nothing new. Other superpowers have been there, and they, too, have witnessed the loss of their prime position to rising powers.