China isn’t going away and neither is Europe. OK, The EU isn’t a country in the normal sense, but as a new form of empire it is devastatingly effective, - as someone pointed out in the NY Times, it has been expanding its territory at the rate of one country a year. Neither the US or China comes close to matching this. It has no standing army (yet), but it does have several national armies, some of them pretty tough. It is nuclear (weapons and power stations), and highly successful technologically. If it expands into Turkey it gains a territorial position in the middle east. It is culturally close to Russia, and is in a very good position to take advantage of Russian and Central Asian oil, and other resources. It has come close to recreating the geographical boundaries old Roman Empire, a long standing fantasy of European leaders from Charlemagne on. Given its position between China and the US it could be capable of holding the balance of power within our lifetimes.