Oil recently hit $140 a barrel, and it is still climbing. Unlike the oil shocks of the 1970s, this dizzying leap is not the product of an OPEC embargo or a sudden flare-up in the Middle East. Rather, it is a harbinger of a permanent new structure of world power, one in which market forces and military strength matter far less than the scarcity of vital natural resources. \\Now in paperback, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet surveys the energy-driven dynamic that is reconfiguring the international landscape: Russia, the battered Cold War loser, is now the arrogant broker of Eurasian energy, and the United States, once the world’s superpower, must now compete with the emerging "Chindia" juggernaut for finite and diminishing resources. Forecasting a future of surprising new alliances and explosive danger, Michael T. Klare, the preeminent expert on resource geopolitics, argues that the only route to survival in our radically altered world lies through international cooperation.

Originally published: New York : Metropolitan Books, 2008.

Prologue: The Unocal affair -- Altered states -- Seeking more, finding less -- The "Chindia" challenge -- An energy juggernaught -- Draining the Caspian -- The global assault on Africa's vital resources -- Encroaching on an "American lake" -- Crossing a threshold -- Averting catastrophe.