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While Iraq continues to dominate the news in America and to haunt the Bush administration, events of potentially greater significance are occurring elsewhere. With little opposition from a distracted Washington, the world’s two largest authoritarian states—China and Russia—are not only taking full advantage of their burgeoning geopolitical opportunities but are using them to undermine America. They are doing so at the same time that others—especially rogue states—are actively attacking both the U.S. and the international system it leads.

True, neither the Chinese nor the Russians any longer promote Marxist revolution; both have abandoned their own decades-long struggle to overthrow and replace the world order. That is why many analysts and diplomats see them today as engaged merely in the normal rough and tumble of great-power diplomacy. But this assessment is radically incomplete.

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