Since then, mutual enmity, expressed in military confrontations, acts of sabotage and a steady stream of invective, has ripened into a broader strategic rivalry.
"The Europeans have been on board in terms of desirability to topple Saddam Hussein and to eliminate the weapons of mass destruction programs," said Charles A. Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations whose book, "The End of the American Empire," predicts a broad-scale rivalry between the United States and Europe.
For a broad range of rivalry phenomena, the dependence of dominance, dominance durations, and switch rates on the two input strengths then follows certain rules, typically referred to as Levelt's propositions.
Moreover, in those countries where there are significant Sunni or Shia populations that do not hold political power, as in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain, popular discontent with ruling governments is being subsumed into a broader Iranian-Saudi/Shia-Sunni rivalry.
Lebanon is also a microcosm of broader sectarian and strategic rivalries.
The Indian Express reported on Saturday that the police were looking at three possible motives: revenge by Maoist guerrillas following the recent acquittals in the Bathani Tola massacre, local political rivalry, and a broader contest for influence among landlords in the region.
A significant facet of Syria's uprising is the degree to which protesters have bridged traditional rivalries between cities, forging broader identities even as sectarian tension sharpens.
In the past, sectarian rivalries have colored the broader Anglo-Irish relationship, and both sides have long historical memories of a past characterized by war and turbulent relations dating from the 12th-century invasion by King Henry II of England.
The Mets Phillies rivalry or Battle of the Broads of Major League Baseball is said to be among the "hottest" in the National League.
The resulting modified, propositions are shown to apply to a broad range of bistable perceptual phenomena, not just binocular rivalry, and they allow important inferences about the underlying neural systems.
