At present, across the globe the gravely ill condition of US-led unipolarity (US global hegemony) is widely recognized, both by experts and by laymen. While there remains debate about precisely what sort of global order is now replacing US-led unipolarity and what kind of leverage a strategically weakened US can exercise in the emerging world order, almost no one goes out on a limb these days to make a case that the global hegemony the US used to exercise post-1991, nor anything like it, will be revived anytime soon.

The present widespread acknowledgment of the grave condition of US global hegemony contrasts dramatically with the pervasive uncertainty, and even disbelief of only 7 months ago when I laid out the compelling case (Epitaph to Unipolarity) for the imminent collapse of unipolarity and of US global hegemony itself. Back then, only 7 months ago, the global consensus was that unipolarity, though in some significant trouble, was only very remotely at risk of any imminent predicament or failure. Challengers to unipolarity and to the US global hegemony were seen as still-small by comparison and inadequately organized to constitute any genuine test of US global dominance.

However, since then imperative developments regarding the profoundly worsening US quagmire in Iraq, the rapidly mounting global leverage and the increasingly potent assertiveness on the part of Russia, China and their global partners aimed squarely against unipolarity, the accelerating demise of the US position as the global economic center, as well as a number of other key developments, have placed unipolarity virtually on life-support, as it were. That spectacular reversal, and the recognition of the fundamental demise of unipolarity's immediate and strategic fortunes occurring across a span of a mere 7 months, illustrates both how fast global developments are now unfolding and how vital is analysis that isn't deceived by mere surface appearances, but looks below the surface. May 15, 2007

The Russian president's recent visit to India resulted in the concluding of a wide range of economic, energy and military agreements between the two key powers, which are clearly moving much closer to each other. That development is giving pause to those who have wrongly assumed that India was genuinely moving into geopolitical alignment with the US - and it should give them pause. India isn't genuinely aligning with the US in a geopolitical sense, but only leveraging its relations with Washington to acquire crucial advanced technologies to further fuel its rise. A strategic Russia-China-India triad is progressively emerging on the world stage. What is the proof for this assertion? What would be its potency and leverage across the globe? How could impending US policies and actions regarding Iran and North Korea quickly advance the triad to full completion and emergence, with what implications? Why can it be rightfully said that its elemental nucleus is Russian, and what are the implications of that fact for US-led unipolarity? January 27, 2007

No one doubts the existence of a number of new rising powers (or "poles") in the East, or that the two primary poles are identified as Russia and China with India rapidly rising as a third pole of mounting importance, or that the rising economies and markets in the East are increasingly attracting the main attention and the tangible interest and respect of the rest of the world. Few would argue that the US and the wider West have little to worry about as a consequence of the unrelenting rise of the new poles in the East. Notably, their dramatic rise is a phenomenon that has been judged as carrying real meaning only in the last three years or so, demonstrating how quickly the geopolitical landscape can change - is changing. These matters are not debatable. But significant uncertainties still plague the minds of many observers when it comes to a discussion of whether the Russia-China axis will continue to hold together and whether it will further tighten its cohesiveness, whether India will align with Russia-China to form a strategic triad, whether the lesser poles in the East, along with the bulk of the energy-exporting states (poles) around the globe and even key EU states (poles) might be ever more cohesively aligning with Russia-China and whether a tangible arrangement of some kind that encompasses all of them might be coming together, and whether any such arrangement would pose a real challenge to US global dominance anytime soon. These are the key questions that demand sound answers. November 27, 2006

On December 16, 2006 China hosted its first major consumer-nations energy summit, with ministers from the United States, India, Japan and South Korea in attendance. It was billed as a rare move by China to take a leadership role on global energy issues. On the sidelines of the summit China signed a huge deal with US corporation Westinghouse for the construction of four advanced nuclear reactors.

What is the real significance and meaning of such developments? Is China moving toward the US and away from Russia? Is India? Or do such developments represent a clever public relations ploy designed to alleviate fears in the West with respect to the pursuit of an energy strategy in the East that poses an ever more grave threat to the viability of the current liberal US-led global energy order? December 24, 2006

The vast bulk of the world's oil, gas and strategic minerals resources is either coming under, or is already under the control of authoritarian, or less-than-democratic, or leftist, or otherwise radical regimes either with a decidedly anti-western political stance and ideology or pointedly decreased sensitivities to strategic US interests. In virtually all cases the interests of the West and of its multinational oil companies and big Western financial institutions are being minimized and/or pushed out as the global trend of nationalization, by one means or another, of the oil and gas sectors picks up speed. That is occurring in Russia, which has now surpassed Saudi Arabia as the world's largest exporter of oil, in Central Asia, the Middle East and in Latin America. Within virtually all such regimes the lines of separation between the top levels of political leadership and the directorship of key corporations and industries are not only blurred, but are being obliterated. The multinational oil companies of the West are being marginalized as a direct result, with profound strategic implications. August 23, 2006

Russia has found the Achilles Heel of the US Colossus. In concert with its global oil-producing partners and the rising powerhouse economies of the East, Russia is altering the foundations of the current US-led liberal global oil market order, insidiously working to undermine its US-centric nature and slanting it toward serving first and foremost the energy security needs and the geopolitical aspirations of the rising East, all at the impending incalculable expense of the West. What is increasingly at stake is secure US access to global energy resources - strategic US energy security - because the West's traditional control respecting those global resources is seriously faltering in the face of the compelling strategies undertaken by Russia and its global partners. The US Giant is increasingly at risk as it faces what is gradually but now more widely being recognized as Russia's clever, skillful and insidious exploitation of US foreign energy dependency and the hemorrhaging of its all-important economic-geopolitical capital: its traditional global energy leadership and dominance via its one-time virtually all-pervasive oil majors. October 10, 2006

2003 was the year that marked the implementation of bold and reckless strategies aimed at handing the US and Britain virtual ownership of the crucial Middle East region and far beyond, but 2006 was the year all the negative repercussions of their failed policies finally converged, obliging the two reckless powers to stare into the yawning chasm of a regional forfeiture. Now, 2007 is the year that marks the full-blown arrival of the endgame in the Middle East, when the US, Britain and Israel attempt to somehow pull a "win" from the mauling flames of region-wide failure. Their desperate policy of "one last push" to achieve that win is already shoving all the region's fractious players into a similar endgame stance, powerfully accelerating the region's descent into instability and upheaval as all its players get set into an endgame posture to make their final moves to prevent a loss of their respective goals and interests, each one attempting to win the game against its opponent(s) before time and opportunity quickly run out. January 1, 2007