Word: nationalism
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...Beijing's balance sheet, where to get rich has meant, frankly, to lend to an indebted U.S. But what is playing out with China is an expression of a debate that has been gathering force in Beijing: What sort of model should China follow? How should it construe its national interest? Can it trust the U.S.? This debate is electric, and it is inevitable in a nation facing such huge problems. The mood in Beijing isn't what you might expect from a nation that grew at some 9% in 2009. There is some arrogant chest slapping, to be sure...
...leadership trying to thread the passage between these extremes. Hu, for instance, has pivoted the nation's foreign policy away from older, slower-moving ideas like "Bide our time, get something done" and toward what are called the four strengths. China, Hu says, must deploy political influence, economic competitiveness, an attractive image and moral force in diplomacy. In so many words, Hu's strategy suggests, China must use what strength it can to make sure it isn't being done to again. It wouldn't let itself be done to at the climate-change summit in Copenhagen...
...Evolution: A Way Forward In the winter of 1946, George Kennan, who was serving at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, found himself confined to bed with a brutal flu and confronted with another dense cable from Washington, proposing ideas that made no sense for the nation he saw around him. Summoning his energy, Kennan dictated an 8,000-word reply to Foggy Bottom, the Long Telegram that became the defining document of the Cold War. The Soviet Union, Kennan explained, looked at the world and sensed danger in every corner. Its reaction would be to seek expansion...
...falling over Asia. And if Moscow sought security through expansion, China's leaders will take another path. Uneasy about collision and aware of their weakness, they are likely instead to manipulate and eventually reshape the international system. Such an indirect, slow route suits both the Chinese temperament and the nation's obsession with stability. It means trying to reshape the landscape around an opponent instead of colliding with it directly, to win battles before you need fight them. In terms of military strategy, this means that China will attempt to neutralize foreign technological advantage instead of matching it, attacking computers...
...Will Obama sit with Hu prepared to develop fresh ways to defend what Americans care about? We have to hope so. If not, it's likely that the U.S. will soon discover that China is not the only nation in the world that needs to worry that it is about to be done...