The Post-Post-Cold War - New York Times

The Post-Post-Cold War - New York Times: "The Post-Post-Cold War
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

BUDAPEST

Being in Eastern Europe in the wake of Dick Cheney's warning to Russia against using its oil and gas exports as 'tools for intimidation and blackmail' has been revealing. The Financial Times noted that some Russian media presented Mr. Cheney's remarks as echoing Winston Churchill's 1946 speech in Fulton, Mo., warning that an 'Iron Curtain' was descending on Europe.

I actually don't think we're going back to the cold war. I think we're going forward. We're leaving the world we've been in — the post-cold-war world — and entering the post-post-cold-war world. Americans won't like the post-post-cold-war world, unless they get serious about energy.

The cold-war world was a bipolar world, stabilized by a nuclear balance between two superpowers. The post-cold-war world was, for Americans, a unipolar belle époque, in which an American Hyperpower, as the French dubbed it, seemed to dominate the global scene, economically and strategically — a scene characterized by a steady expansion of free markets and freely elected governments.

The post-post-cold war is a multipolar world, where U.S. power is being checked from every corner. China is rising as a power, thanks to hard work and high savings. Beyond China, though, other powers are r"