Only a strong Europe can provide the necessary counterweight.

For them, the US is above all the strategic counterweight needed to balance China.

That alone would provide the counterweight to the forces that pull him in the wrong direction.

Given these realities, China sees the expanding European Union as a likely counterweight to unchecked US power.

Today, however, there is no external counterweight to the domestic political pressure that is stalling further liberalization.

Nor will any posture succeed that seeks to put Russia forward as a geopolitical counterweight to the United States.

Furthermore, by raising regulatory capital costs in boom times, some counterweight to the pro cyclical bias intrinsic to financial systems would be introduced.

Sarkozy, for example, has revived a long standing French argument for some form of economic government in Europe as a counterweight to the ECB.

While China is not about to dominate these institutions, in southern Africa it is regarded as a potential counterweight to the US and the EU.

But, once Germany was united, Bavarians did not like the outcome, and then thought of a united Europe as a counterweight to the German state.

In a country that regards itself as a civilized counterweight to belligerent American hegemony, nearly half of all prisoners have never been convicted of a crime.

When all things are considered, Germany is a more reliable ally and partner than Ukraine, which some in Warsaw see as a potential counterweight to Russia.

Turkey has no desire to serve as a strategic counterweight to Iran and believes that only a territorially intact Iraq can continue to play that role.

Indeed, Albert del Rosario, the foreign minister of the Philippines, which was under Japanese occupation during WWII, now strongly supports a re armed Japan as a counterweight to China.

In the heyday of American dominance, European governments profited doubly they were part of a powerful West and courted as a potential counterweight to US dominance by third countries.

Is the bank supposed to serve as a counterweight to global multilateral development banks like the World Bank, or to reduce American and European dominance over the Bretton Woods institutions?

The second point of convergence between Indian and Western interests is one that will probably get no public mention during Chirac s visit India can perhaps serve as a counterweight to China.

A counterweight to the peace crowd may be new migrants from Eastern Europe, for whom cuts in social services would break no promises, and for whom job availability and wage levels are more important.

Franconians in southern Germany disliked the fact that the Napoleonic Wars subjected them to Bavarian rule they saw German nationalism as a way to use Prussia and Berlin as a counterweight to Munich s hegemony.

One shudders to think what will happen if Europe does not pull out of its current funk. Certainly, Europe would lose traction as a badly needed counterweight to the US in world economic policy.

With periodic bouts of contagion in the eurozone and residual uncertainty about America s commitment to a strong dollar and fiscal discipline, major reserve holders in Asia and the Gulf need to become a stabilizing counterweight.

What we need today is for the world s leading statesmen to stop pussyfooting and to unite in nudging Obama towards a successful conclusion of the Doha Round. That alone would provide the counterweight to the forces that pull him in the wrong direction.

The withdrawal of US forces from Iraq only seems to have encouraged Turkey s will to create a cordon sanitaire on the Iraqi side of the border and possibly to establish a counterweight to Iran s influence on a Shia led government in Baghdad.

For example, the Philippines is revamping its security strategy by enhancing cooperation with the United States China s counterweight in the region only two decades after it closed two major American military installations, the naval base at Subic Bay and Clark Air Base.

As President, he achieved virtually nothing in terms of the rule of law, decentralization, or economic modernization nonetheless, a significant part of Russia s elite and middle class pinned their hopes on him as a counterweight to the Putin clans and siloviki (security officials).

Many of these countries will look to the US as a strategic counterweight should China seek to assert local dominance. But some may conclude that it is safer to steer closer to China than away from it, because their economies depend so strongly on Chinese trade.

Though India is rightly allergic to being seen as a US supported counterweight to a rising China, in practice it is avidly courted by Southeast Asian countries anxious to balance the Chinese, a development that suits American interests. Obama s visit to India last November reinforced a perception that the two countries share an increasingly convergent worldview, common democratic values, and thriving trade.