Energy concerns shape post-post-Cold War world

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Being in Eastern Europe in the wake of Vice President 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 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 epoque, 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 rising thanks only to soaring oil prices — powers that were on the decline in the post-Cold War.

These are: Vladimir Putin's Russia, which is countering the United States on a variety of fronts; Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, which is Castro's Cuba on steroids in the post-post-Cold War world, leading a new wave of nationalizations and anti-Americanism in Latin America; and, of course, Iran — using its oil windfall to go nuclear. Yes, $70-a-barrel oil is making this post-post-Cold War world a multipolar world.

"It's the 'axis of oil,' " says Michael Mandelbaum, author of "The Case for Goliath." "It is more lasting and more important than terrorism — and we don't have any policy for it."

Not only are others becoming more assertive: The United States has become less intimidating. With Americans bleeding in Iraq, with President Bush hugely unpopular in Europe, and with the U.S. two-party system so warped it can't even respond to a crisis like energy, America is not as feared as it was.

"In 2002 and 2003 everyone was talking about the American 'Hyperpower,' " said Eric Frey, editor of the Austrian daily Der Standard. "No one these days is talking about overwhelming American power, and that has even added to the anti-Americanism. Because before you had resentment and respect, and now you have resentment and scorn."