Sara
Your Russian friend makes sense to me. I mean what is John le Carré going to write about if the "West" doesn't have an enemy. I have heard many people remark about how the fall of the Soviet Union might not have been such a blessing, but I don't think those people live in the parts of Eastern Europe that are joining the EU. From a broad historical viewpoint it seems whenever such a power vacuum occurs there is usually a period of some chaos as various factions fight for control.
Personally I don't think that the "Arabs" are the people who will ultimately fill the void of the "Super Power." My tendency is to think that region will either persist in its elite class stupidity, or degenerate into civil war. Historically the "west" (if I can call it that) has always had a large influence on what are today Israel, Turkey and Iraq. Often it has been a source of conflict. I know that for many reasons people are concerned with Israel, and worried about Iraq but from my point of view, at least, I don't think those are the events that will foreshadow the next century.
China, and Asia in general I think are much more important. If you remember the Vietnam war it was never so much the USSR we were fighting but Communism. In some sense we played the two powers against themselves. China and Southeast Asia seem to be chugging along quite nicely right now. I think that economy is growing at like 6%. My tendency is to think that if China rejects the Intellectual properties issues relating to technology, ie uses Linux and creates it's own chip standards. A far greater threat exist to this country than a few scud missiles and a little Islamic fundamentalism. I am not very familiar with Patent Law in the last hundred years but I don't think anyone ever paid royalties to the Chinese for paper!
I think in part right now you have to wonder if the opposition to Iraq, (China built the fiber optic infrastructure there, Russia has been looking after the oil contracts etc.) and the opposition to Iranian Nuclear Power plants (which the Russia is building) has more to do with Islam or more to do with just plain old Economics. World wide we are not gaining markets we are losing them.
But apart from all that I am not sure how I really think about this Hegelian Dialectic. The Chinese have their Ying and Yang and one is not necessarily Good or Evil they are just two forces that work to find balance. Like in a game of Chinese checkers they move throw each other. Or Levi Strauss and his binomial thinking, the "Raw and the Cooked". The Bi Cambreal (SP?) Mind. The whole left brain right brain world. Is that really how the world works? Do the two strands of DNA represent some mirror of Universal "Logic" ? The wave and the particle?
Well I guess I have quite gone off the deep end now.
Forgive me
Ergo Sum
AI
Market Data 
Markets 
