"No Rest for the Weary"

As always, Charles Krauthammer has an interesting take today on two fronts: 1) On where W has brought us to this point, and 2) How the world will be divided in the coming decades. If Charles is right, we won't be floating around on clouds, drinking champagne and slapping each other on the back when the War on Terror is won. There is two parts: the good news and the bad news, here's the latter:

I'm talking about the other, more subtle challenge to Pax Americana: the first stirrings of what might become an anti-American coalition involving at least two Great Powers. The most remarkable fact about the post-Cold War era is that for the first decade and a half no such opposition emerged. Historically that is almost unheard of. Hegemonic powers, such as Napoleonic France and imperial and Nazi Germany, tend almost inevitably to spur the creation of a coalition of Great Powers to oppose and contain them.

That may be beginning again. The quiescence with which Russia accepted the Soviet collapse may have run its course. Russia's helplessness at the loss of Ukraine followed a long string of humiliating losses: first the external Third World empire, then the outer Eastern European empire, then the inner empire of 14 Soviet republics.

Add to this NATO's attack on Serbia, Russia's traditional Balkan ally, and the expansion of NATO into the Baltic states. Vladimir Putin's Russia, already moving decisively back to traditional czarist authoritarianism, then suffered political defeat in Ukraine, which it considered its natural patrimony. This only compounds and embitters the feeling of alienation from the West in general and from the United States in particular.

It is no accident that Russia has begun hinting at making common cause with China. This is potentially ominous because of China's rising power and its status as the leading have-not nation on the planet, the Germany of the 21st century. In December, during the week of the rerun Ukrainian election that finally brought the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko to power, Russia made two significant moves toward China. First was the announcement of intensified economic cooperation in developing Russia's vast energy resources. More ominous was the Russian defense minister's Dec. 27 announcement of, "for the first time in history," large joint military exercises on Chinese territory.

China in turn is developing relationships with such virulently anti-American rogue states as Iran. Add such various self-styled, anti-imperialist flotsam as Syria, North Korea, Cuba and Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, and you have the beginnings of a significant "anti-hegemonic" bloc -- aimed at us.

This is not a new Cold War. The United States will still remain the vastly predominant world power. But it is a challenge that history has waiting for us on the day the war on terrorism is won, and perhaps even before. There is no rest for the weary.

There you go folks, you've been warned. God I hope he is wrong, the thought of my kids having to fight more wars is more than depressing. Let's hope that W reads Charles as well and is formulating long-term plans to deal with such a threat.