"What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?" famously asked the early church father Tertullian. His question in the third century addressed the relationship between the reason of Greek philosophy embodied by Athens and the revelation of Judeo-Christian religion embodied by Jerusalem. Today's foreign policy equivalent of Tertullian's query could be "What hath Damascus to do with Darwin?" (the Australian city that is, not its namesake English naturalist)

Plenty, because oftentimes strategic opportunities transcend just one region. This is the case with the Middle East and Asia today. Looking at those regions together, the Obama administration has a strategic opportunity to push far-reaching changes that will anchor American interests for a long time to come. Here I will echo many of the good points that Dan Blumenthal makes in his post below. The White House (and the Asia policy shop at the State Department) should be applauded for last week's moves in Asia, including plans to base a small contingent of Marines in Darwin, Australia, support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, and further development of the AirSea Battle Concept. If one doubts the significance of these moves, just a glance at the querulous reactions from China tells another story. This new posture is all the more significant -- and welcome -- considering that the Obama Administration took office less than three years ago intent on pursuing a dubious "G-2" partnership with China.

While I share Dan's concerns about the administration's commitment to resourcing America's forward posture in Asia and political will to follow through on free trade, the fact of these decisions is still encouraging and merits bipartisan support. Basing a small contingent of Marines in Australia sends a political signal that far surpasses its military significance, and will bring positive reverberations not just in Canberra but also in Jakarta, Hanoi, Manila, and Bangkok. And more may be yet to come, if the recent liberalization trends in Burma continue and Secretary Clinton's upcoming visit, encouraged by Aung San Suu Kyi, helps lure Naypyitaw out of Beijing's orbit. If even Burma comes in from the cold, Beijing will have realized the dubious geopolitical distinction in the last two years of having alienated almost every other nation in its neighborhood (or at least everyone not named "North Korea").

Yet as Dan argues, the White House would be undercutting its own strategic initiative if it treats these moves in East Asia as pivots away from the Middle East and South Asia. Our nation's actions in one region shape our credibility and power in other regions. India realizes this, hence its hesitation to partner with an America that it worries will be drawing down prematurely in Afghanistan and further complicating India's rough neighborhood. China and Russia realize this, hence their efforts to constrain American influence by vetoing the recent U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria and watering down an emerging resolution on Iran, which as Mike Singh and Jacqueline Deal point out remains China's favored partner in the region.

Syria represents the crucible of strategic opportunity. The once-timorous Arab League has now spoken boldly that Assad must go. The European Union, too politically paralyzed to deal adequately with its own economic crisis, has marshaled the political will to impose severe sanctions on Damascus that are now bearing fruit. The people of Syria have braved the massacres of over 3,500 of their fellow citizens and persist in their demands for a new government in Damascus. It is time for the Obama Administration to capitalize on this multilateral momentum by leading a concerted diplomatic effort to end Bashar Assad's barbaric rule.

While moral concerns alone justify the demise of the Assad regime, the strategic consequences would be enormous. Iran would lose its only regional ally. Hamas and Hezbollah would lose a valuable patron state. Lebanon would have the chance to reclaim its sovereignty. Turkey would see the benefits of being a responsible regional actor. Iraq's border security would improve. The Green Movement in Iran would likely be resuscitated and pose a new challenge to Ayatollah Khameini's regime in Tehran that is otherwise barreling ahead with its nuclear weapons program. China and Russia would lose both a client state and international credibility, and democratic reformers in China might even be energized.

China, after all, sees its subtle rivalry with the United States playing out not just in East Asia but across the world. As David Ignatius describes, when American leadership is perceived to be diminishing in a region, other actors will step in to fill the void, such as the Saudis are doing in the Middle East. And if America abdicates our leadership in the Middle East, the effect will be to undercut rather than strengthen our posture elsewhere such as Asia. This is why Marines in Darwin and democracy reformers in Damascus are important players on the same global chessboard.

With a nod to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, when it comes to China the central neoconservative truth is that the regime matters most. The central realist truth is that we have limited capacity to change the regime.

The Sino-American competition is not about whether "state capitalism" (whatever that means) will beat out "democratic capitalism." China does not have an exportable economic and political model. No one is rushing to the streets in the Arab world or elsewhere to push their governments to adopt the "Beijing Consensus." Arabs (and others) want representative government, not tyranny. The Chinese people themselves are not fond of the Chinese model. The uptick in daily protests in China against corruption and injustice speaks for itself.

The Sino-American competition is also not really about the "structure of the international system." Yes, there is historical evidence that rising powers tend to challenge the reigning power for hegemony. But sometimes they do not (see India, the European Union, and Japan circa 1990). The current international system made and maintained by the United States has plenty of room for China to succeed.

Instead, we are in a security competition because the Chinese Communist Party has made it so. The CCP is trying to make the world safe for its continued rule. This desiderata is very difficult in a liberal international order dominated by the United States. The CCP has to beat back attempts by its people to push for democracy. And, because the CCP has made the restoration of a Sinosphere in Asia synonymous with its own legitimacy, the Party must "reunify Taiwan," pacify Xinjiang and Tibet, keep Japan down, and make sure any other pretenders to the throne in Asia (India, Vietnam) are put in their place. Washington cannot be trusted to simply go along with any of these projects. So China must extend its military ambitions. If Washington seeks to undermine China's plans, than it is also imprudent for Beijing to rely on the U.S. Navy to secure its energy supply lines. So Beijing has decided it needs a military that can coerce Taiwan, push around its neighbors, and thwart American attempts to help its allies and protect its long sea lanes. That is why we are in a security competition with China. Beijing has decided upon a set of goals that are rather uncongenial to our own vision of peace and security.

If China was ruled by a regime whose legitimacy rested on the consent of the governed, perhaps it would not see the need to build a big military to: 1) protect itself from its own people; 2) beat back American "containment; or 3) to embark on revanchist projects. If China had a different sort of regime, I submit, we would not be in a security competition with China.

But, there is little the United States can do to affect democratic change in China. We can do more at the margins (e.g. try harder to speak directly to the many reformers in China -- the entrepreneurs, the Christian leaders, the social activists). But in the end this is only moral support. Whether or not as a policy matter our moral support matters for change in China, we have and always should stand with the Chinese people.

Until China changes we are left with the fundamentally realist project of protecting ourselves and our interests by maintaining a strong military presence in Asia and building up our alliances. For now, the central realist truth carries the day. We must engage with China when it is in our interests to do so. But our most urgent task is to successfully play balance of power politics in Asia until a new regime emerges in China that is more accepting of the international order and less afraid of its own people.

A unicorn is a beautiful, make believe creature. But despite overwhelming evidence of its fantastical nature, many people still believe in them. Much of China policy is also underpinned by belief in the fantastical: in this case, soothing but logically inconsistent ideas. But unlike unicorns, our China policy excursions into the realm of make believe could be dangerous. Crafting a better China policy requires us to identify what is imaginary in our thinking about China. Author James Mann captures some in his book.

Here are my own top ten China policy unicorns:

1) The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. This is the argument that has the most purchase over our China policy. Treat China like an enemy, the belief goes, and it will become an enemy. Conversely, treat China like a friend and it will become a friend. But three decades of U.S.-China relations should at least cast doubt on this belief. Since the normalization of relations with China the aim of U.S. policy has been to bring China "into the family of nations." Other than China itself, no nation has done more than the United States to improve the lot of the Chinese people and to welcome China's rise peacefully. And, rather than increase its deterrence of China -- a natural move given the uncertainty attendant to the rise of any great power -- the United States has let its Pacific forces erode and will do so further. We may soon go through our third round of defense cuts in as many years. Here is just one example of how unserious we are about China: As China continues to build up its strategic forces, the United States has signed a deal with Russia to cap its strategic forces without so much as mentioning China. Unless Beijing was insulted by this neglect, surely it could take great comfort in an anachronistic U.S. focus on arms control with Russia. But despite our demonstrations of benevolence, China still views the United States as its enemy or, on better days, its rival. Its military programs are designed to fight the United States. The self-fulfilling prophesy is far and away the most fantastical claim about China policy and thus the number one unicorn.

2) Abandoning Taiwan will remove the biggest obstacle to Sino-American relations. Since 2003, when President Bush publicly chided then-Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian on the White House lawn with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at his side, the United States has been gradually severing its close links with Taiwan. President Obama's Taiwan policy has been the logical dénouement. Arms sales have been stalled, no Cabinet members have visited Taiwan since the Clinton years, and trade talks are nonexistent: there is essentially nothing on the U.S.-Taiwan policy agenda. The reaction from China? Indeed, it has moved on. But rather than bask in the recent warming of its relationship with Taiwan, China has picked fights with Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, and India. It does not matter what "obstacles" the United States removes, China's foreign policy has its own internal logic that is hard for the United States to "shape." Abandoning Taiwan for the sake of better relations is yet another dangerous fantasy.

3) China will inevitably overtake the U.S. and we must manage our decline elegantly. This is a new China policy unicorn. Until a few years ago, most analysts were certain there was no need to worry about China. The new intellectual fad tells us there is nothing we can do about China. Its rise and our decline are inevitable. But inevitability in international affairs should remain the preserve of rigid ideological theorists who still cannot explain why a unified Europe has not posed a problem for the United States, why post-war Japan never really challenged U.S. primacy, or why the rising United States and the declining Britain have not gone to war since 1812. The fact is China has tremendous, seemingly insurmountable problems. It has badly misallocated its capital thanks to a distorted financial system characterized by capital controls and a non-market based currency. It may have a debt to GDP ratio as high as 80 percent thanks again to a badly distorted economy. And it has created a demographic nightmare with a shrinking productive population, senior tsunami, and millions of males who will be unmarriageable (see the pioneering work of my colleague Nick Eberstadt).

The United States also has big problems. But we are debating them vigorously, know what they are and are now looking to elect the leaders to fix them. China's political structure does not yet allow for fixing big problems.

4) (Related to 3). China is our banker. We cannot anger our banker. In fact, China is more like a depositor. It deposits money in U.S. treasuries because its economy does not allow investors to put it elsewhere. There is nothing else it can do with its surpluses unless it changes its financial system radically (see above). It makes a pittance on its deposits. If the U.S. starts to bring down its debts and deficits China will have even fewer options. China is desperate for U.S. investment, U.S. treasuries, and the U.S. market. The balance of leverage leans towards the United States.

5) We are engaging China. This is a surprising policy unicorn. After all, we do have an engagement policy with China. But we are only engaging a small slice of China: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The party may be large -- the largest in the world (it could have some 70 million members). We do need to engage party leaders on matters of high politics and high finance, but China has at least one billion other people. Many are decidedly not part of the CCP. They are lawyers, activists, religious leaders, artists, intellectuals, and entrepreneurs. Most would rather the CCP go quietly into the night. We do not engage them. Our presidents tend to avoid making their Chinese counterparts uncomfortable by insisting on speaking to a real cross section of Chinese society. Engagement seen through the prism of government-to-government relations keeps us from engaging with the broader Chinese public. Chinese officials come to the United States and meet with whomever they want (usually in carefully controlled settings, and often with groups who are critical of the U.S. government and very friendly to the Chinese government). U.S. leaders are far more cautious in choosing with whom to meet in China. We do not demand reciprocity in meeting with real civil society -- underground church leaders, political reformers and so on. China has a successful engagement policy. We do not.

6) Our greatest challenge is managing China's rise. Actually, our greatest challenge will probably be managing China's long decline. Unless it enacts substantial reforms, China's growth model may sputter out soon. There is little if nothing it can do about its demographic disaster (will it enact pro-immigration policy?). And its political system is too risk averse and calcified to make any real reforms.

7) China's decline will make our lives easier. China's decline may make the challenge for the United States more difficult for at least a generation. It could play out for a long time even as China grows more aggressive with more lethal weaponry (e.g., what to do with surplus males?). Arguably both Germany and Imperial Japan declined beginning after World War I and continuing through the disaster of World War II. Russia is in decline by all useful metrics. Even so, it invaded a neighbor not too long ago. A declining, nuclear-armed nation with a powerful military can be more problematic than a rising, confident nation.

8) We need to extricate ourselves from the "distractions" of the Middle East and South Asia to focus on China. This is a very popular unicorn among the cognoscenti. But how would this work? As Middle Easterners go through a historic revolution that could lead to the flowering of democracy or the turmoil of more extremism, how do we turn our attention elsewhere? Are we supposed to leave Afghanistan to the not-so-tender mercies of the Taliban and Pakistani intelligence? This view is particularly ironic given China's increased interests in the Middle East and our need for a partnership with India to deal with China. There is no way to create the kind of order we wish to see in Asia without exerting a great amount of influence over the oil producing states in the Middle East and by allowing India to become tied down in a struggle in South Asia. We are the sole superpower, our foreign policy is interconnected. "Getting Asia right" means "getting the Middle East and South Asia right."

9) We need China's help to solve global problems. This is further down on my list because it is not really a fantastical unicorn. It is true. What is a fantasy is that China will be helpful. We do need China to disarm North Korea. They do not want to, and North Korea is now a nuclear power. The same may soon be true with Iran. The best we can get in our diplomacy with China is to stop Beijing from being less helpful. It is a fact that the global problems would be easier to manage with Chinese help. However, China actually contributing to global order is a unicorn.

10) Conflict with China is inevitable. A fair reading of the nine "unicorns" above may lead to the conclusion that we are destined to go to war with China. It may be a fair reading, but it is also an inaccurate one. Sino-American relations will be determined by two main drivers; one we can control, the other we cannot. The first is our ability to deter aggressive Chinese behavior. The second is how politics develop in China. The strategic prize for Washington is democratic reform in China. Democracy will not solve all Sino-American problems. China may be very prickly about sovereignty and very nationalistic. But a true liberal democracy in China in which people are fairly represented is our best hope for peace. The disenfranchised could force their government to focus resources on their manifold problems (corruption, misallocated resources, lack of social safety net). The United States and the rest of Asia will certainly trust an open and transparent China more, and ties would blossom at the level of civil society. Historically, the United States has almost always been on China's side. It is waiting patiently to do so again.

For those who believe it is just a matter of time before China rides its commercial success to global hegemony, this week offered some compelling imagery: Europe, on its knees, reeling from political discord, rising bond yields, and bank downgrades; China, sitting atop its $3.2 trillion hoard of foreign exchange reserves, condescending to dictate the terms of European surrender.

Of course, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was not so tactless as to describe it as surrender. He actually expressed a "readiness to extend a helping hand and a readiness to increase (Chinese) investment in Europe." It wouldn't hurt, he went on, if Europe should decide to grant China market economy status, effectively lowering trade barriers.

Fareed Zakaria translates this into great power politics terms:

In a world awash in debt, power shifts to creditors. After World War I, European nations were battered by debts, and Germany was battered by reparation payments. The only country that could provide credit was the United States. For America, providing desperately needed cash to Europe was its entry into the councils of power, a process that ultimately brought a powerful new player inside the global tent. Today's crisis is China's opportunity to become a 'responsible stakeholder.'"

That's a twist on the original conception of what it meant to be a responsible stakeholder, but no matter. This interpretation falls apart as soon as one scratches at it a little.

The idea that a big infusion of Chinese cash would set Europe aright misinterprets the problems facing the Eurozone. Although the troubled countries there -- Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Italy -- each took their own paths into difficulty, they are all in unsustainable fiscal situations. These require difficult choices about future taxes and spending, not just a quick bridge loan. Oddly enough, Zakaria recognizes this early in his piece, when discussing the implausibility of a "eurobond" solution, under which France and Germany would effectively co-sign loans taken out by their neighbors:

The minute such bonds are floated, Italy, Greece and the others would lose all incentive to make painful reforms; they could borrow all the money they need at German-subsidized rates, so why go through the dreary work of restructuring? The Germans know this -- hence their opposition."

Read on

With exquisite timing, the Pentagon released its annual China military report on Wednesday just as Chinese state television broadcast a documentary trumpeting the PLA's cyberwarfare capabilities. For those following security issues in Asia, there was nothing particularly new in the Pentagon report. It noted the challenges posed by China's new doctrine of maritime power projection, plans for multiple aircraft carriers, the new J-20 stealth fighter, and PLA interest in cyberwarfare (exclamation point helpfully provided by CCTV). Nor was there any real news in the delay of the report, which is also an annual event because of the tedious but necessary bureaucratic process of ensuring the contents are credibly presented.

The fact that the PLA is aggressively pursuing cyberwarfare is also not news, though CCTV's bravado about it did catch some analysts by surprise (visitors to Beijing should make a point of watching CCTV-7, the PLA channel, which provides a steady stream of military propaganda, uniformed game shows, and gorgeous singing colonels in jackboots). Many of us in the national security or Asia fields receive repeat "visits" from Chinese-based hackers. Sometimes these come in the form of crashing Google accounts or targeted "phishing" attacks -- seemingly from other colleagues' email addresses with attached reports on "PLA modernization" or the "Hu-Obama Summit" that contain malware. I have also enjoyed démarches from Chinese officials expressing concern about travel plans to Dharamsala (seat of the exile Tibetan government) or Taiwan. My stern but courteous callers were generally better informed about my itinerary than my own travel agent and made little effort to conceal their knowledge. A Chinese academic friend confided to me a few years back that one of his former students is working with 20,000 other tech-savvy youth for the Ministry of State Security -- and that was just the unit in charge of domestic surveillance. It is hard to maintain operational security when the operation is that massive and the PLA propaganda machine is openly encouraging a culture of aggressive defense of China's "core interests."

The administration refrain is that we must have more military-to-military transparency with the PLA. This may be necessary, but it is hardly sufficient and it carries some negative consequences. For one thing, the administration seems fixated on sustaining mil-to-mil dialogue with Beijing to the point that it is distorting decision-making on arms sales to Taiwan (this because the PLA will routinely cut off military-to-military dialogue in retaliation for the sales). The other problem with a focus on mil-to-mil transparency is that it exacerbates the larger problem of PLA autonomy within the Chinese system. Yes, the Central Military Commission (CMC) ensures that the "Party controls the gun" and the chair and vice chair are Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping, respectively. But every other member of the CMC is uniformed military, and Hu and Xi have no independent sources of oversight or expertise on the operational practices of the PLA (particularly the PLA Navy). By pushing for more mil-mil dialogue with the PLA, we risk reinforcing PLA autonomy and further weakening civilian control. Instead, we should put the priority on working collectively with other states to insist that China's leaders be held accountable for the actions of the PLA and that the PLA be held accountable to the leadership. This burden will have to be carried by the president and other leaders since the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs is too weak to make a difference on its own.

The China military report and the CCTV cyberattack documentary should also cause U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to begin making the case for reversing the administration's planned cuts in defense spending. Mil-to-mil dialogue is no substitute for necessary recapitalization of our air and naval forces in the Pacific.

I know the U.S. is still recovering from the financial crisis.…Under such circumstances, it is still spending a lot of money on its military. Isn't that placing too much pressure on the taxpayers? If the U.S. could reduce its military spending a little and spend more on improving the livelihood of the American people and doing more good things for the world -- wouldn't that be a better scenario?"

This was the Chinese People's Liberation Army Chief of General Staff Gen. Chen Bingde's suggestion to Americans during the visit of his counterpart Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen. Well, we are obliging the Chinese general -- at least in part. We are cutting defense. General Chen would be especially happy to know that in particular we are foregoing investment in the types of systems that help keep us "present" in Asia -- though Admiral Mullen assured Asian audiences that we will be there for the long haul. Whether we are cutting defense in order to improve the livelihood of the American people is a separate, hotly debated question. Color me skeptical.

But on the first part of General Chen's suggestion, here is how we are heeding his advice. We are not properly resourcing: a) the submarines the Navy says it needs, or, for that matter, the number of ships in its own shipbuilding plan; b) stealthy tactical aircraft (by the Air Force's own account, they will face an 800-fighter shortfall later this decade); and c) a long-range bomber, now called "the long-range strike family of systems," particularly by those who think this system is silver bullet for our Asia posture.  We were supposed to be deploying new bombers by 2018. Not a chance. The program is estimated to cost $40-50 billion in total, and respected aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia predicts that we will not see a new bomber until well into the next decade. Yes, that's right, a new bomber somewhere in the 2020s.

So General Chen, no need to worry about our defense spending -- we will not have enough submarines or tactical aircraft, and there is no new bomber on the horizon. All are supposed to play a role in the much vaunted AirSea Battle strategy that is our answer to China's growing military power.

But Mullen insists, as did Secretary Gates and other top U.S. leaders, we will still be there for our friends and our allies.  Given the numbers, the next time a leading U.S. official insists that we are going to be "present" in Asia, journalists have a duty to ask, "With what?"

Those who believe that the United States is no longer capable of strategic planning should pay a visit to the Pacific Command (PACOM), headed by the impressive Admiral Willard. Besides the almost unimaginable number of tasks associated with running a command of 325,000 personal that covers half of the globe, Admiral Willard has also charged himself and his staff with long-range strategic planning for this most vital of regions. Unfortunately, Washington is of little help. Not only can the bureaucracy (under any administration) no longer respond to anything but a day's events, but political leaders on both sides of the aisle have been asking PACOM to do more and more with less and less for over a decade.

What's more, PACOM has little strategic guidance. As a country, we vaguely know that we want to deter Chinese aggression while encouraging "responsible behavior"; integrate India as a full strategic partner; empower Southeast Asian countries as independent, prosperous, and hopefully democratic partners; encourage Japan to play a "normal" role; and denuclearize North Korea while working for eventual unification of the peninsula under Seoul's governance. But military staffs need to plan -- and no one knows for what exactly we are planning. Will we or won't we come to Taiwan's defense? Will we get into a conflict over disputes in the South China Sea? Will we intervene in a Sino-Japanese conflict? What if China is the main aggressor in a Korea conflagration? All unclear.

The situation is most akin to the years of "Orange" planning at the Naval War College that unfolded over the three decades before the Pacific War. We knew we might one day have to fight Imperial Japan, but we had no idea over what. We possessed the Philippines but we certainly would not go to war over those islands alone. Taiwan today is the closest analogue. It may be the trigger over a fight for, as Aaron Friedberg has put it, "mastery" or "supremacy over half the world."

While Taiwan may seem today to be an idiosyncratic American concern about democratic friends, if attacked the island may look like the place where China has chosen to change the global balance of power. Unfortunately, the years of "Orange" planning ended up in a horrific Pacific War. American ambiguity over red lines played its part in triggering that conflict. Japan attacked China with no response. Tokyo did not know if an invasion of Southeast Asia would be met with similar passivity. Finally, Japan decided that one decisive blow against the U.S. fleet in Hawaii would keep Washington out of the sphere of influence it was building in Asia. It was wrong.

Ambiguity has its place -- it allows for flexibility. In the case of Sino-American relations, ambiguity allows the United States to respond both to an aggressive China and one that does not repeat the mistakes of Imperial Japan. But clarity serves its purposes too. Secretaries Clinton and Gates, for example, proclaimed "core interests," as the Chinese would say, in freedom of navigation through the South China Sea; PACOM is now trying to interpret and operationalize Washington's guidance.

But an uneven commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act, a law that has helped to keep the cross-Strait peace for decades, only invites more Chinese probing and testing in the place where Beijing is most likely to challenge American staying power.

PACOM is doing its part to, as the military likes to say, "shape" the region in concert with U.S. interests -- through its planning, its robust program of engagement with allies and partners, and its very active and enduring presence. Besides the lack of clarity from Washington -- a function of the absence of effective strategic planning mechanisms -- political leaders are overtaxing the command charged with defense of the world's most vital region. We are slowly and without due deliberation heading toward the famous "Lippmann Gap" -- our declared interests in Asia keep growing, we ask PACOM to do what it can to advance them, but we starve them of resources to do the job. We are coming to a point where either we retrench from our commitments in Asia (a policy with untold consequences) or we decide as a nation to properly fund them.

Isn't this the era of the "Rise of the Rest," isn't the unipolar moment over yet again? Isn't China already a global leader, pushing for what it wants internationally? Alas, despite all the predictions about the new international politics, the world is waiting to see what Washington will do. When it comes to the biggest issue of the day -- the revolt of Middle East publics against their leaders -- China has nothing to say. To the contrary: Rather than show any leadership at all, China has run home and hidden under a very large stone (or behind a Great Wall and Firewall).

The expectation that a Chinese regime scared of its own shadow would ever take a leadership position on a matter of high diplomacy -- especially regarding political transitions -- was always far-fetched. Beijing is terrified of its own upcoming authoritarian transition in 2012. True, China's successions have gone off relatively smoothly in the past, but that does not mean future successions, cloaked in secrecy, will be trouble-free. So much can go wrong: a last minute challenge, a call by reformers for more openness in succession decisions, and so on. Even one mistake by China's leaders can set off leadership splits and spark protests that would make Egypt's transition appear relatively manageable.

As in the Middle East, if (when?) there is a leadership crisis in China, Washington will look back on the last thirty years and wish it had done more to push for evolutionary changes in China - among these, the creation of a real civil society independent of the Party and outreach to groups in China outside the Party. If China were to face an internal crisis, Washington would not have a clue with whom to speak.

The unrest in the Middle East reveals, then, two important facts about China. First, talk of its impending global leadership is greatly exaggerated. Second, we should adequately prepare for China's day of reckoning as well. A tired United States may wish someone else would help manage the global order; wishing is not going to make it happen.

Faithful readers of Shadow Government know that there are good reasons to be wary about China's strength (as explained here and here).

But this short report in today's Washington Post reminds us that there are also ample signs of China's weakness. And there can be many ways in which a weak China could be just as vexing as a strong one.

The Post reports that state censors interrupted the Obama-Hu news conference and substituted a black screen for Hu's response to questions from a reporter about China's human rights record. Hu's response was hardly revelatory, though he did acknowledge that China's record was not perfect and that more progress needed to be made -- a statement so banal that it could be said about every country, indeed President Obama has said much the same thing about the United States.

A regime that will not allow its own leader's banal public remarks to be broadcast at home is a regime that is so insecure it doubts its own legitimacy. Remember, these are remarks that were playing live to the entire world, yet Chinese propagandists were apparently afraid to let their own public hear them.

So while signs of Chinese growing strength should not be ignored, neither should we ignore signs of lingering, and perhaps deepening, weakness. Indeed, the two can combine to pose special challenges for U.S. foreign policy, producing the very bellicose hypernationalism and overconfident adventurism that we have seen in the past year.

Most years during the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day weekend, I re-read a few of his sermons, as a way of reflecting on his legacy. This year, I read a passage in one of those sermons that seems especially timely:

Christianity insists that man is an end because he is a child of God, made in God's image.  Man is more than a producing animal guided by economic forces; he is a being of spirit, crowned with glory and honor, endowed with the gift of freedom."

King titled this sermon "How should a Christian view Communism?" and in it he distinguished between the communist and Christian views of the human person -- the latter holding that all human beings are created in the divine image and thus "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights," in the words of the Declaration of Independence. Though King's primary devotion in his too-short life was to the civil rights struggle in the United States, he constantly connected this effort with the universal aspirations of all human beings to realize in fact this liberty and dignity. And as he spoke out against the human rights depredations of communist governments, he also condemned the hypocrisy of his beloved America in fighting against communism abroad while denying basic rights at home to a class of its own citizens. 

The communist ideal largely perished with the end of the Cold War, and exists now only in a few flickering embers in isolated outposts such as North Korea. But one of communism's cardinal flaws -- this belief that human beings are subservient in value to the State -- persists still today in too many authoritarian nations.

This past week alone witnessed considerable ferment in the cause of freedom. The news was not all good. In its invaluable global assessment of each country, Freedom House found 2010 to be the fifth consecutive year of retrenchment for human rights and democracy. The proximate cause is the persistence of authoritarian governments who see their citizens as mere subjects of the State, but the report is also an indictment of sorts on the democratic governments of the world -- including the Obama administration -- for doing too little to support liberty beyond their own borders.

Read on

Next week Chinese President Hu Jintao will travel to the United States for his eighth meeting with President Obama, his first state visit with an U.S. president, and his valedictory call on the American people before he retires as part of the Chinese leadership transition in 2012. There will be no breakthroughs, transformations, or stirring visions for the future of U.S.-China relations, but the trip is badly needed in terms of relationship management. It will also serve as a good opportunity for a stock-taking of U.S.-China relations.

The Good News

1. Obama Gets It
The Obama administration came into office intending to continue the broad Bush policy of engaging China based on strong alliance relationships in Asia, particularly with Japan. The Obama team hoped to build on that basic approach by establishing a more enduring formula for mutual strategic reassurance with Beijing. To set the right tone early on, the White House delayed sensitive arms sales to Taiwan and a meeting with the Dalai Lama in advance of the president's first trip to China in November 2009 and then sought language in a joint statement in Beijing that would signal U.S. understanding of China's "core interests" with respect to Tibet, Taiwan, and other issues. Set against the backdrop of the financial crisis and increasing confidence in China, these gestures backfired and the administration soon found itself responding to a series of assertive Chinese moves at the Copenhagen climate summit, in the South China Sea, on the Korean peninsula, and in the Sino-Japanese territorial dispute over the Senkaku or Diaoyutai Islands. To its credit, the Obama administration adjusted and spent much of 2010 reminding Beijing of the depths of U.S. strategic power and influence in Asia, as countries from India to Vietnam and Japan sought closer security ties with Washington to re-establish a stable strategic equilibrium vis-à-vis Beijing. The top national security team -- Donilon, Gates, and Clinton -- have now replaced the administration's earlier dreamy visions of transformational U.S.-China cooperation on global issues with a much more hardheaded appreciation of the underlying power realities of dealing with Beijing.

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The Obama administration had a relatively good year in Asia (relative, that is, to its disastrous first year), but it still must follow up and break bad habits, as my colleague and former State Department official Randy Schriver likes to say. They stood up to China's bullying in the South China Sea, declaring that freedom of navigation and the peaceful resolution of disputes are American "core interests." They finally signed the most significant free trade agreement since NAFTA, with South Korea. When President Obama went to India he removed barriers to high-technology exports and pressed for more business-to-business ties. In Indonesia, he signed a number of agreements that should help both trade and defense relations. The administration accepted an invitation to the East Asia Summit, which is very important to Southeast Asians and will make it easier to forge lasting bonds in the region.

Now for the critique. The administration seems ready to go wobbly on North Korea, and in the process China. It has shifted from supporting whatever tough measures President Lee Myung-bak wanted to take to nudging him back to the failed six-party talks and congratulating China for its diplomacy in getting North Korea to signal agreement to talk. This is the worst of the bad habits in Asia we must break. The North did not just test a missile this time; they twice killed South Koreans in cold blood last year. No president can allow his people to be killed without responding. We seem not to understand that. The first task for the U.S. and South Korea is to re-establish deterrence, which could well mean proportionate retaliation against the North.

Instead, we are falling back on the same old failed patterns. The North commits an act of aggression and eventually China urges their ally back to the table. Washington then falls over itself complimenting China for its diplomatic skill. This will not get the North to denuclearize or stop its aggression. And it is dangerous. North Korea can continue to commit acts of war with impunity while China simply looks the other way. It will only lead to more attacks on South Korea and is more likely to lead to conflict -- South Korea will eventually have to strike back. Instead, we should thank China very much for its efforts, cut Beijing out of any future talks we wish to have with North Korea, re-establish deterrence, and implement a number of coercive measures against the North to rebuild our negotiating leverage. Not only would direct talks backed up by coercion put us in a more powerful position with North Korea, if carefully orchestrated with our allies, but China might fear being excluded from future arrangements on the peninsula and pressure its friends in Pyongyang to abide by international rules.

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Kudos to President Obama for his statement applauding Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo. His measured words of praise provide a stark contrast with the shrill and defensive reaction to the Nobel Ceremony from the Beijing regime, which seems to be going out of its way to prove why Liu was the right choice for winning this year's prize. Obama's rare self-deprecation -- praising Liu as more worthy of the prize than he was -- was especially gracious and welcome.

When Obama speaks out in defense of the values on which our country stands, he can be very compelling. Even a politically weakened president still commands a powerful bully pulpit. I hope and expect the president will make good use of it in the coming year. His response to the Nobel Ceremony is a good start.

The Chinese and the Russians have joined forces to launch an assault on U.S. financial hegemony! From China Daily:

China and Russia have decided to renounce the US dollar and resort to using their own currencies for bilateral trade, Premier Wen Jiabao and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin announced late on Tuesday.

This all signifies... not much. At most, it is a symbolic attempt to lodge a complaint against perceived U.S. mismanagement of the dollar as a global reserve currency.

Remember, hardly anyone is required to use the dollar. They do so because it is convenient. This is true domestically as well as internationally. A pundit could try to barter a column for a latté, with no money involved, but it would require finding just the right politically-curious barista. It's much easier to use dollars to facilitate exchange.

Globally, there is nothing novel about discovering an exchange rate between the Chinese RMB and the Russian rouble. Once you have each currency's exchange rate against the dollar, it's just straightforward division to calculate (known as the cross rate).

The problem for Beijing and Moscow is that if their trade does not balance - and China, at least, has occasionally had a problem with that - someone is left holding a bag of roubles or renminbi. Other than buying Russian goods, there's only so much one can do with roubles. That's what sets apart the big global currencies, like the dollar or the euro. Even if you don't want to shop in New York, you can always go to a Middle Eastern bazaar and buy a few barrels of oil. 

There are perks to issuing a global currency; it's nice to be able to print money that's accepted around the world. There are also responsibilities. If the U.S. Federal Reserve prints too much, all those bags of dollars will drop in value. China, sitting atop many of those bags, has been particularly vocal about its concern.

That's why the Chinese premier is in Russia, issuing joint proclamations, trying to take the dollar down a peg. The Chinese and the Russians may be joining forces, but given the way global finance works, they're mostly going to end up simply encumbering each other.