POSTED RESPONSE TO AN ARTICLE BY GIDEON RACHMAN IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES
“Power does not need to be a zero-sum game and nations need not fear the success of each other.”
These words of Obama's are true, and I wish they set the tone for relations between China and the United States.
But they are not the view of the American establishment, and they are extremely unlikely to set the tone.
People of power and privilege who think about power and privilege all the time do not regard such a parvenu with open arms.
We already have had a great deal of anecdotal evidence that insiders from the Pentagon to the State Department have not adopted Obama's words as their slogan.
I believe that America’s reaction to the rise of China is one of the greatest dangers to world peace we will see over the coming decades.
After all, if you go back and study the rise of Japan, you will see a pattern.
The United States did everything it could think of to hinder the rise of Japan. Indeed, the Japanese felt such intense pressure they did something they had never planned on doing, attacking the United States.
