but the rest of the world is starting to sit up and take notice.
From the editorial in today's Barbados Nation News:
Tiger and Bear in strategic embracePublished on: 8/25/05.
SOME VERY INTERESTING DEVELOPMENTS are taking place in geo-political relations that are being overshadowed by the Iraq war, but which are almost imperceptibly altering the global economic and political landscape.
Recently we saw the revitalisation of the Sino-Soviet axis and witnessed the largest joint military exercise in modern history between China and Russia that is widely viewed as sending a message to the rest of the world, particularly the United States.
The exercise was officially described as Peace Mission 2005 – Russia's and China's ability to fight terrorism and separatism. The "Tiger" and the "Bear" are now engaged in a strategic embrace at a time when the United States is distracted by war.
<snip>
The pendulum is now beginning to swing, though international equations are still quite fluid. But the pattern is clear. China has emerged as an economic power to reckon with and the United States, with its $162 billion trade deficit, has begun to show concern at the emergence of this economic giant.
http://www.nationnews.com/editorial/318059912937558.php From The Guardian:
Stagger on, weary TitanThe US is reeling, like imperial Britain after the Boer war - but don't gloatTimothy Garton Ash in Stanford
Thursday August 25, 2005
The Guardian
If you want to know what London was like in 1905, come to Washington in 2005. Imperial gravitas and massive self-importance. That sense of being the centre of the world, and of needing to know what happens in every corner of the world because you might be called on - or at least feel called upon - to intervene there. Hyperpower. Top dog. And yet, gnawing away beneath the surface, the nagging fear that your global supremacy is not half so secure as you would wish. As Joseph Chamberlain, the British colonial secretary, put it in 1902: "The weary Titan staggers under the too vast orb of his fate."
The United States is now that weary Titan. In the British case, the angst was a result of the unexpectedly protracted, bloody and costly Boer war, in which a small group of foreign insurgents defied the mightiest military the world had seen; concern about the rising economic power of Germany and the United States; and a combination of imperial overstretch with socio-economic problems at home. In the American case, it's a result of the unexpectedly protracted, bloody and costly Iraq war, in which a small group of foreign insurgents defies the mightiest military the world has seen; concern about the rising economic power of China and India; and a combination of imperial overstretch with socio-economic problems at home.
Iraq is America's Boer war. Remember that after the British had declared the end of major combat operations in the summer of 1900, the Boers launched a campaign of guerrilla warfare that kept British troops on the run for another two years. The British won only by a ruthlessness of which, I'm glad to say, the democratic, squeamish and still basically anti-colonialist United States appears incapable. In the end, the British had 450,000 British and colonial troops there (compared with some 150,000 US troops in Iraq), and herded roughly a quarter of the Boer population into concentration camps, where many died.
<snip>
China and India are to the United States today what Germany and America were to Britain a hundred years ago. China is now the world's second largest energy consumer, after the United States. It also has the world's second largest foreign currency reserves, after Japan and followed by Taiwan, South Korea and India. In the foreign reserve stakes, the US comes only ninth, after Singapore and just before Malaysia. According to some economists, the US has an effective net savings rate - taking account of all public spending and debt - of zero. Nil. Zilch. This country does not save; it spends. The television channels are still full of a maddening barrage of endless commercials, enticing you to spend, spend, spend - and then to "consolidate" your accumulated debt in one easy package.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1555820,00.html#article_continue 
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