While America’s invasion of Afghanistan was widely seen as justified, the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq produced an open break between the US and its two major continental allies, France and Germany, which were supported by Russia and China. A great Eurasian bloc suddenly appeared in opposition to America’s hegemonic global pretensions, prefiguring a new fluidity in geopolitical relationships, if not a tectonic shift in alignments.
尽管美国入侵阿富汗被普遍视作正义之举，但英美联军入侵伊拉克却使美国和欧洲大陆两大盟国（即法国和德国）间产生了公开的分歧，俄中两国也支持法德两国的立场。一个反对美国全球霸权的大规模欧亚大陆集团的突然出现即便不意味着联盟关系的彻底改变，至少也预示着新的变数在地缘政治关系中逐渐形成。