China has also become an economic hub for the world economy that now rivals the United States and the European Union. ... Japan for one flirted with shifting from its primary alliance with the United States to a balanced alliance with both the United States and China. ..…

The European Union has been in a second recession for almost a year; Britain is now flirting with a third recession; and Japan slips back and forth from stagnation into recession. . ..…

He identifies many such flashpoints around the world: in the Caspian Sea region, where an energy-rich and resurgent Russia, in sometime alliance with Iran, contends with the U.S.-led West, or in the East China Sea, where boundary disputes between China and Japan revolving around the undersea..…