Chastened in China

is to stick to the old trusted and safe formula; peaceful co-existence between two powers with, different socio-economic an political systems, simply because one power has to co-exist because the other one owns its bonds, while the orher has to co-exist because it still finds it profitable to own those bonds.

khairi janbek.paris/france

Let's hope the Chinese informed Obama that any Israeli strike on Iran, threatening China's access to il, will result in severe economic retribution.

Just to make sure, they'd need to directly inform the Israelis, who actually control our Mideast policy.

I made this question before professor Walt. Let suppose you are offered the wheel of the State Dep. (though, that would include assuming the AIPAC would collapse). What is the first steps you would follow....

It should be beyond question that events during the last eight years have weakened America's international position in a number of ways. It is nonetheless a mistake to reason from this to the conclusion that the meager results of President Obama's trip to Asia were inevitable.

Obama went to China without a trade policy. In the big picture, he has a trade policy for the United Steelworkers and other Democratic constituencies, but not for the governments with which America must negotiate. Obama also went to China with messages to the domestic audience about terrorism with America's enemies and engagement with other countries; with respect to the Chinese all he had was a determination to do and say nothing that would lead Chinese government media to criticize him.

And Obama went to China with his biography. God, but I get tired of this. It isn't just that I've listened to him tell his "story" what seems like thousands of times already, or that some of the chapters in his life story -- for example, Harvard -- are less inspiring to me than they may be for either Americans who have never been to any college or for Americans who went to Harvard themselves.

It's that there is just no reason to think his insistence on importing campaign themes into the Presidency will have the impact on each and every foreign audience that it does on Democratic primary voters. The Chinese, both government officials and others, are interested in China; they are interested in what America thinks of China, and in American actions that affect China. The story of one American who has no Chinese ancestry, a story that has no conceivable analog to anything possible in China today, doesn't say anything to the Chinese. It's just a means of filling up time -- and perhaps, of making it easier to get through a state visit without dwelling either on things Obama fears might aggravate the Chinese government or on areas like trade about which Obama does not have anything to say.

We all know that the US is the biggest uneducated consumer society on earth, with the current state of affair; it is unlikely that the US can play hardball with China. Although the economic success of the latter depends on a strong and viable economy of the former, otherwise the pile of junk manufactured in China would not find a home to stay. Despite being in a weak position to negotiate and influence a competitor, the US policy makers still think they could choke China as far as energy access is concern. The latest move to create the AFRICOM center is to counter China assertive* African policy. The same policy is applied for the Middle East, China has strong commercial interest in Iran, the US is trying isolating that country using legal channel such as the IAEA and the UN to attain its political objective. The picture is grim for the US; the Obama administration needs to clean up the mess left by the previous administration before undertaking any meaningful foreign policy initiative.

Yeah, "American model" is not appealing for China. Any concessions during the visit but many promises. I'm doing my term papers just now about this visit.