ARTICLE: "Commodities' Relentless Surge: Chinese and U.S. Demand Push Food and Minerals Steeply Higher," by Clifford Krauss, New York Times, 15 January 2008, p. C1.
Whether or not China's Purchasing Power Parity-measured economy catches ours someday in the distant future, it is already our rough equal as a demand center across a wide variety of sectors. Put us together, and our collective demand function is gargantuan.
Given the stress that growing collective demand will place on the environment, it strikes me as willfully non-strategic to luxuriate in past-era definitions of threat and balancing and containment.
I see and hear that understanding in some 5th and most 6th generation Chinese leaders with whom I interact (the 6th being my contemporaries). The biggest problem we face? The leadership "above" us and in our way.
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In spike of this, it looks like containment of China -- by way of greatly increased US soft power initiatives -- is the new cornerstone of US strategic thinking.
Secretary of State Rice's "transitional diplomacy" and Secretary of Defense Gates' complementary military moves -- both of which appear more soft than hard power in nature (note the language) -- seem to have been initiatived to counter the substantial and continuing power and influence gains made by China.
By these new initiatives, the United States throws down the gauntlet; sending a clear message to China (and to the rest of the world) that further encroachment and erosion of US power and influence will not be tolerated and will be met head-on.
Thus, the "system that is being maintained and administered" is not one that allows globalization to compromise US national security via China or any other nation -- but one that provides that the United States remains dominant and in-charge.
Posted by Bill C. | February 13, 2008 10:15 AM