(This is Part 3 in a series. Go back to Part 2.)
For these reasons and others, two mammoth alliances are forming as counterweights to the only superpower:
Though the European Union was formed some time ago, it is pulling ever closer together now and has just added ten new countries. The European Union's total GDP is now higher than the GDP of the United States, and the euro, as we've seen, is increasingly looked upon as an alternative reserve currency to the dollar.
The other alliance is forming in East Asia. China and the ten ASEAN countries recently met in Laos and signed a treaty that will create a $2 trillion open market among the countries. India and South Korea are also interested in joining this economic community, while Australia and New Zealand are waiting in the wings.
It is not difficult to foresee a future in which three main geopolitical power centers exist: The European Union (EU), the East Asian Community (EAC) and the United States. Furthermore, it is quite possible to envision, as do some analysts in Europe and Asia as well as Stroup, an eventual alliance between the EU, Russia and the EAC to form a huge Eurasian Alliance.
A Eurasian Alliance would stretch from the shores of the Atlantic across the gigantic Russian landmass and down into East Asia and the Pacific. Russia is the natural backbone of such an alliance because European Russia is the eastern half of Europe while Asian Russia is the top half of Asia.
Indeed, a network of railroads stretching from Europe across the Russian landmass to Asia—the much-desired
Iron Silk Road—is already well on its way to completion.
The increasing economic, military and diplomatic decline of the United States is acting as an external force driving the tightening of the EU and the formation of the EAC, since both communities fear the instability which can accompany a power vacuum.
At the same time, the nations of Europe and Asia are increasingly alienated by the unilateralist tendencies in U.S. foreign policy and so are additionally drawing together as a counterbalance to the remaining unipolar power of the United States.
In addition, energy concerns are pulling the Eurasian countries together. Since the Middle East is increasingly unstable, the logical source of new oil and gas is from Russia and the Central Asian States, all of which are rich in oil and minerals.
China and India are scrambling to form strategic energy agreements with Russia and Central Asia. The EU is also doing so. China has just signed a 25-year, $100 billion liquified natural gas (LNG) supply agreement with Iran. Such agreements, now ubiquitous, have the practical effect of pulling together a deepening strategic partnership among the nations of the Eurasian supercontinent.
Another internal factor drawing together the countries of Europe and Asia is terrorism. The Eurasian nations have a fundamentally different view of terrorism than the U.S. They are less and less interested in U.S. military projects, which they see as fostering global instability.
Moreover, Eurasia sees the rising militarism of U.S. foreign policy as greatly fostering the frustration, anger and hatred so rampant now in the Arab-Muslim world. Because they view this rising Arab-Muslim frustration, anger and hatred as fertile soil for breeding terrorists, they conclude that the Iraq invasion has increased rather than decreased the threat of terrorism.
In contrast to unilateralist U.S. policies, the Eurasian nations see the long-term solution to terrorism as one of deepening networking and cooperation among themselves in the areas of intelligence, diplomacy and geopolitics.
Just this week there was a meeting in the Netherlands between China and the EU to boost their relationship. Russia and China are also steadily deepening strategic ties, as are the EU, Russia and China with India, Russia with Iran and so on.
This coalescence—towards a tri-polar world of the EU, the EAC and the U.S., or even a world revolving around a gigantic Eurasian Alliance—though not attracting much attention yet, is nevertheless happening with a rapidity that couldn't have been imagined only three years ago.
And if a large "triggering event" or crisis occurs, the precipitation of a mulipolar world in which the European Union and the East Asian Community compete with the United States for influence would only accelerate.
Such an event would also likely accelerate the even larger coalescence of the Eurasian Alliance. And, as well, the ongoing seismic shift of power from the North American continent to the Eurasian one.
(This is the end of Part 3. Go to Part 4.)
—jim sloman, 12.9.04 for Dec 21
|
