Russian transit routes now play a vital role in supplying American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

WHITEHOUSE: President Obama & President Medvedev Joint Press Conference | The White House

Meanwhile, companies like General Electric, Kodak, Dow Chemical and Ingersoll-Rand have indicated that they will displace American jobs by supplying the domestic market and markets in other countries with exports from their Chinese factories.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: China��s Mythic Market

The heroes of the blockade turned out to be Bevin, President Truman and Clay, the American proconsul who created the airlift which succeeded in supplying Berlin in the face of a belief within the Pentagon that Berlin could not be sustained by air.

ECONOMIST: The cold war

And the Asian businessman, because his economy has traditionally been about making and supplying for the world, generally knows more about it than the average American one.

CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia | Asia Buzz: It Still Isn't Very There Here

Even Russia, which has been supplying Iran with nuclear technology (and whose president, Vladimir Putin, pointedly declined American requests to halt the programme) would have had difficulty in opposing such a move.

ECONOMIST: Coming clean or playing for time? | The

In the Caribbean, a modern and generally well-led American fleet of five armoured battleships and their escorts prevented Spain from reinforcing or supplying its army in Cuba.

ECONOMIST: THE WAR OF 1898

For years it tried to get the multi-million-a-year account supplying uniforms to McDonald's (nyse: MCD - news - people ) North American outlets.

FORBES: Dirty Laundry

She would also appreciate its importance in the projection of American power in Asia and beyond as much of the nation's long-range transport aircraft supplying our military operations around the world transit through Elmendorf.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Sarah Palin's experience