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Around 1990–?1992, world capitalism opened for itself a new period of expansion, marked in particular by the incorporation of China. But the movement whereby “capitalist production overcomes its immanent barriers, but does so only by means which again place these barriers in its way on a more formidable scale” is under way. New contradictions and antagonisms are discernable, alongside earlier ones. The consequences of the relationship between "man and nature" developed under capitalism will now impinge on the accumulation process directly and indirectly. Given the external economic foundations of the U.S. hegemony, the scale on which it has accumulated fictitious capital, and its dependency on energy, the situation is ripe with financial crises and with military conflict.