I don't see the current situation between the U.S. and Iraq as the sole cause, I see it more as "the straw that's broken the camel's back" than anything else. In my mind, there must have been some previous circumstances and trends which have been contributing towards these shifts, and I'm at a loss as to what those might be. I figure there are probably some cultural factors, some domestic political factors, and, almost certainly, some economic factors. I just don't know what they would be, because I have enough trouble following what's going on across the street, much less across the globe.

I think you've posed a great question here, but I hesitated to respond because I didn't feel like I had anything cogent to say. One thing came to me, though: whatever else can be said for good or ill....if the ballot in Palm Beach County had been different and Al Gore was now sitting in the Oval Office, would we now be launching Tomahawks at Baghdad?

I'm honestly not trying to inject the rightness/wrongness of this war and I know that some folks would consider it a Real Bad Thing (tm) if Gore was in office and we *weren't* invading. I bring it up to question the "straw that broke the camel's back" notion. It is conceivable to me, under different political circumstances, that we could be pursuing a strategy that didn't break the camel's back *quite* so much.

It is still one hell of a question, though. What are the alignments? Are they new? What is being left behind?

There are a lot of countries that are awash in misery right now, whether because of war, disease, or famine or some combination thereof. From a political standpoint, though, the ones that stand out as having some bearing globally are those where religious differences divide the countries and regions. Specifically I'm referring the the Nigerias and Algerias and Phillipines and the sharp divisions between Islamist parties and other groups.

As concerned as I am about what I consider to be the dangers to western "liberal democracies" from humorless crypto-fascists like Ashcroft, I have to say that the ascendency of super-hard-core Sharia-oriented political movements and governments forms what I think is the biggest potential divide across the globe. So, if I had to take a pessimistic view of your question and draw a map of the world ten years out, I would probably divide it into:

-"The West" North and South America with parts of Western Europe (Catholic, Judeo-Christian, nominally/marginally "democratic") and some defensible outposts (Au/NZ...).
-China (big and repressively self-determined)
- Everything else

Boy, do I open the floor for dissenting opinions!