China is now the largest importer of Middle Eastern oil and the largest exporter to the region, replacing the United States. Trade relations are growing fast, doubling in the past five years.

The implications for world order are significant, as is the quiet rise of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes much of Asia but has banned the U.S.-potentially "a new energy cartel involving both producers and consumers," observes economist Stephen King, author of Losing Control: The Emerging Threats to Western Prosperity.

In Western policy-making circles and among political commentators, 2010 is called "the year of Iran." The Iranian threat is considered to pose the greatest danger to world order and to be the primary focus of U.S. foreign policy, with Europe trailing along politely as usual. It is officially recognized that the threat is not military: Rather, it is the threat of independence.

To maintain "stability" the U.S. has imposed harsh sanctions on Iran, but outside of Europe, few are paying attention. The nonaligned countries-most of the world-have strongly opposed U.S. policy toward Iran for years.

Nearby Turkey and Pakistan are constructing new pipelines to Iran, and trade is increasing. Arab public opinion is so enraged by Western policies that a majority even favor Iran's development of nuclear weapons.

The conflict benefits China. "China's investors and traders are now filling a vacuum in Iran as businesses from many other nations, especially in Europe, pull out," Clayton Jones reports in The Christian Science Monitor. In particular, China is expanding its dominant role in Iran's energy industries.

Washington is reacting with a touch of desperation. In August, the State Department warned that "If China wants to do business around the world it will also have to protect its own reputation, and if you acquire a reputation as a country that is willing to skirt and evade international responsibilities that will have a long-term impact ... their international responsibilities are clear" - namely, to follow U.S. orders.

Chinese leaders are unlikely to be impressed by such talk, the language of an imperial power desperately trying to cling to authority it no longer has. A far greater threat to imperial dominance than Iran is China's refusing to obey orders - and indeed, as a major and growing power, dismissing them with contempt.

The New World Order