China and coping

Via mini-prak, Thomas Barnett let's one fly on the pretensions of out-and-out "containing" China:

Such is the state of grand stategy iin (sic) the Bush Administration: fighting the past while trying to shape the future, and effectively hamstringing itself in the process better than Osama bin Laden or AMZ ever could.

Ouch. In terms of administration mentality and behavior habits, a valid point. I think the real problem is simply a pattern of neglect over the past few years, despite China angst suddenly becoming en vogue in the past few months. While Barnett sort of re-treads the Eisenhower "military-industrial complex" thesis, the reality is more complex, especially given China's burgeoning military-industrial complex spending and oft successful technological espionage directed at the US. However, the US has a decades-long strategy of approaching Asia with a set of bilateral, "hub-and-spokes" relationships, so hand-wringing about that now seems misplaced. The question now is rather that strategy is sufficient in meeting US security needs. At the end of the day, however, the United States is -- for all intents and purposes -- as much an Asian power as any other country, and has every right to be involved in any regionalist evolutions.

Regarding war. While the argument that rising China is necessarily (i.e., inevitably) going to war with the United States at some future juncture (hence we need a military buildup conjoined with some sort of ill-defined containment of China) is wrong-headed, refutations of this ought not suffer the trap of necessitarian illogic by predicting China will become a peaceful economic giant eclipsing us unless the US embraces it now. Hedge, my friends. Hedge.