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Superpower: Americas
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In Chavez's scheme to undermine the "sole superpower," China has an important role. During an August 2006 visit to Beijing, his fourth in seven years, he announced that Venezuela would triple its oil exports to China to 500,000 barrels per day in three years, a jump that suited both sides. Chavez wants to diversify Venezuela's buyer base to reduce its reliance on exports to the U.S., and China's leaders are keen to diversify their hydrocarbon imports away from the Middle East, where American influence remains strong.
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The expanding range of China’s economic interactions has provoked the most recent attention to China as an emerging superpower. American media have taken note of recent Chinese diplomacy in search of long-term sources of oil, and the growth of China’s oil imports has had an impact on gasoline prices that American consumers notice at the pump. China’s enorm
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This did not prevent a far worse superpower crisis from developing in October 1962 over Cuba, after Khrushchev had surreptitiously tried to install nuclear-armed missiles on the island to protect its revolutionary regime from the perceived threat of an American invasion. At least the subsequent handling of the crisis, from which the allies and clients of both superpowers were notably excluded, showed that the superpowers were beginning to learn how to live with each other. On the one hand, the concentration of the decision-making power in Khrushchev and his docile Politburo and, on the other hand, the establishment of a special executive committee from which Kennedy prudently took and applied the advice, proved to be ways to avert a military showdown. Time and communication were of the essence, as were clarity of purpose and willingness to compromise while allowing the adversary to save face.
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For the moment, the U.S. is the sole superpower. But instead of deluding ourselves that we will go on that way into the indeterminate future, an intelligently self-interested foreign policy would have us do everything in our power to shape, according to our most urgent priorities, the international rules that will govern relations between states after the American moment has passed -- as it inevitably will.
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