Last SCO/Cold War Post of the Weekend - I Promise
I've been making the argument that China and Russia formed SCO (the Shanghai Cooperation Organization) as an entity to counter US influence in the Middle East and promote their own ascension to superpower status. They then began to prop up Iran, who as we know has been supporting various violent factions in Iraq. Thus we have a situation where US soldiers are battling proxies of Iran, who is in turn a proxy of China and Russia.
This may see far-fetched to some people, though every element of that argument is supported by multiple sources. For example, today we have Bloomberg talking about SCO: Russia and China today host Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a summit of a Central Asian security club designed to counter U.S. influence in the region. |  |
The question now is "What do we want to do about it?" That is, I think you could make the argument that a multipolar world would be more fair, as the US's disproportionate global influence was balanced by peers. Perhaps we should begin promoting multipolarity ourselves, to the presumed benefit of the world's people.
There are, however, two problems with multipolarity. The first is that Russia and China make a pair of very untrustworthy poles. In fact, I suspect that an eventual return to a unipolar world is the ultimate goal of those countries. The second problem lies in our standard of living, which will be seriously compromised as competition for resources becomes more fierce. China's effect on oil prices is already being felt, and their consumption continues to skyrocket.
As for me, I was comfortable in a world with a single, reasonably benign, superpower. I'm not particularly anxious to see that situation change. And if it is going to change, I'd like to know that there's a well-thought-out plan for preserving our security and standard of living. Because in as little as five years, that standard is going to start dropping.