The Birth Of Great China

That rumbling sound you’ve been hearing? The birth pangs of a new superpower.
“Superpower” is a word that was coined in the 1960s to describe the two great blocs that divided up most of the world into spheres of competing ideologies: One-party Marxism in the good ol’ USSR and its satellites, and Liberal Democratic Capitalism in the West. Most of the nations that did not fall directly into either hegemony made up a wasteland that was dubbed the Third World, and there the two competing philosophies waged war against a third, more potent force: Abject Poverty.
The People’s Republic of China fell mostly into the Marxist camp, of course, but not too long after the success of the Revolution and the ascension of Chairman Mao to the impoverished Chinese throne, the PRC and its Soviet patrons had a falling out. While nominally Marxist, Mao had done the same thing that the Chinese had done with Buddhism a few centuries before: adopted it and adapted it and made it their own creature. Needless to say, without an influx of technology and money from the USSR, Mao exchanged China’s dependence on Moscow for a pervasive poverty in the world’s most populated country, effectively remanding it to economic Third World status. China may have had a fifth of the human population within its borders, but that fact and its permanent seat on the UN Security Council were the only claims China ever had to superpower status. At best it was a second-rate regional power.
That was then.
The days of the Maoist regime are gone, of course, and Deng Xiaopeng and his more liberal-minded successors have succeeded in putting the nuclear-armed Middle Kingdom on the global map. China embraced capitalism in the 1990s, started reinforcing its manufacturing sector, and with a little help from Wal-Mart made a fortune selling cheap plastic crap to overindulgent Americans. And it did all this while maintaining the trappings, at least, of a Marxist regime.
The result is a uniquely Chinese creation, a Sinic Superstate that has only just started to flex its geopolitical muscle. And this is only the Second Act. For the last few years the newly wealthy China (average annual growth rate has been 5% or better for over a decade, sometimes rising as high as 11%) has been shoring up its weakness and preparing to launch an assault on the West . . . sort of.
The PRC has always coveted a few things, and one by one it has gotten them. Nuclear Weapons. The economic powerhouse of Hong Kong. The gambling resort that is modern Macao. A manned space program. Industrial development. But that list isn’t finished. It wants Taiwan, of course, and has said it was willing to fight for it. No doubt it wants to bring the other regional powers into line, pulling them into its hegemony and away from the West. It would love control over Japan, Korea, and Singapore. Such acquisitions would only add to its rep as a legitimate superpower, and make the PRC into a de facto Empire, a Great China almost divorced from its Marxist past.
Some Westerners scoff – China needs our markets, they claim, and they need oil. But the Chinese have been securing every drop of oil they can by a combination of market domination and sweetheart deals cut with local corrupt leaders. Sudan, Chad, Zimbabwe, Angola – even the old US ally of Saudi Arabia has started looking East for deals. Nor is their quest for hegemony limited to Africa and Asia. China has been cozying up to anti-Bush elements in Venezuela and Cuba, as well as other Latin American countries. And its not above making quiet alliances with our erstwhile allies, either. While no one else was looking, China started the innocuous-sounding Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The SCO is the Chinese version of the Japanese WWII-era “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere”, at the time a blatant justification for aggressive imperialism. It promoted intraregional political and economic cooperation – which at the time meant that the subject states would cooperate with Tokyo or face a sky full of Zeros. The Sphere was a useful tool for managing Japanese imperial possessions, client states and allies.
The SCO was started back in 2001 and includes Russia and the four “Stans” of central Asia – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – in a political and economic network that promises to cause future hassles for the West. Apparently where China and Russia could not meet on Marxist doctrine, they can see eye to eye on energy futures. In June the organization meets again. At that meeting new nations will be invited to join, including Mongolia, India, Pakistan . . . and Iran.
While it isn’t the Warsaw Pact, this loose group of Eastern nations is self-identifying as a counter to Euro-US dominance in the global economic, political, and military spheres. Last year the Bush Imperium requested “observer” status in the organization and was turned away like a blinged-out rap star at a country club ball. Doubtlessly China sees the SCO as a means of organizing its hegemony over all of East and Central Asia. And by joining the organization Iran will have access to new sources of funding and technology, while China will have access to $100 Billion of Iranian petrochemicals. Add the other nations to the SCO standard and you have a bloc of states that is oil rich, adept at manufacturing, and who between them have 2/3 of the human population and no less than four nuclear states under its umbrella -- and if Iran has its way, five. You can find an excellent analysis of the SCO here: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050906T.shtml
But the Gold Standard for a Greater China will be the acquisition of Taiwan, and the easiest way of securing this “outlaw province” into the Greater China fold will be by removing the US from the immediate region. Simply put, the US could defend Taiwan from China successfully only if it didn’t have to worry about anything else. With the dual-front war in Afghanistan and Iraq going on, American military resources are already stretched thin. It wouldn’t take much to keep them well occupied elsewhere while the PRC has its way with its prodigal son.
The easiest way to do this is to fish in the troubled waters of the Middle East. Just this week a shipment of Chinese military supplies – night vision goggles and telescopic rifle sights – was intercepted in a commercial shipment to Gaza by Israeli authorities. There is nothing to suggest that this is an isolated incident. China is likely making clandestine back-door arms deals with dissident elements all over the Middle East, not for ideological reasons, but to keep Western powers off-balance and tied down to a deteriorating security situation. The linchpin of this plan is the upcoming War with Iran.
George II has painted us into a corner by threatening the Iranians with possible military action if they do not back down and quit refining Uranium. The Iranians aren’t going to back down, which means that either the US will initiate military action (which would put our 150,000 troops in Iraq in mortal peril) or George II will back down, lose the last shred of international credibility he has left – and then Israel will step in and bomb those facilities. Iran makes little distinction between Israeli and American forces (they call both of them part of the “Zionist-Crusader Alliance”) and our 150,000 troops in Iraq would be, once again, in mortal peril. So war with Iran is all but inevitable.
With the bulk of the military tied down in the Persian Gulf region, Iran could also make a stab at toppling the nascent regime in Afghanistan, and might go so far as to back a coup in Pakistan, thus creating a de facto Shiite Islamic Superstate from Iraq to Kashmir. None of this would bother China overmuch – it would make a pipeline from the Iranian oilfields to Xinjiang, China’s Nevada-like westernmost province, all that much simpler. They may even concede some autonomy to their local ethnic (and Islamic) Uigher population in Xinjiang to sweeten the pot.
Now, that should be enough to preoccupy Washington, but Chinese plots have always been thorough. Getting the Kims of North Korea to reignite the conflict with the South would pull Japanese and American forces even further away from Taiwan, at which point China could mount a (probably successful) invasion of the island and present the world with an imperial fait acompli before anyone could raise a fuss.
Meanwhile, we’d be getting chewed to pieces by Great China’s surrogates while they prepared for further conquest. Japan would be the Crown Jewel of such an achievement, and with the rest of East Asia in Chinese hands, it would only be a matter of time. Eventually Great China and its clients will stretch from the Pacific to the Mediterranean.
It may sound like paranoid fantasy, but one must remember that China has always been an Empire. It is difficult to govern 1 billion people any other way. Despite the Marxist veneer, we are seeing a resurgence of Chinese Imperialism that hasn’t been seen since Cheng Ho peacefully landed 15,000 Chinese ships in Africa and Arabia in the 1400s. And while it is unlikely that it will return to the trappings of Empire, there will soon be no doubt: Asia is Chinese, and eventually so will too shall the rest of the world.

Nukes? What Nukes? It's the oil, stupid.

George Bush is going to attack Iran. Before the end of the summer.
A bold prediction, I know, and one that some may consider unlikely to the point of impossibility. But there is a gathering of elements as potent as any astrological formation or perfect storm that puts the likelihood of such an attack squarely on the front burner. Whether the US does it or uses Israel as a proxy, there will be planes in the sky over Persia. And the reason has nothing to do with nukes.
On March 20th Iran opens a new PetroBourse, a marketplace wherein foreign companies can buy, sell and trade oil. That, in itself, isn’t an issue. There are several of these markets all over the world, and trade largely steers clear of politics in the naked cauldron of free enterprise. Those madcap mullahs from Tehran might despise the Great Satan and burn George II in effigy, but when it comes down to it they don’t care who’s making out the checks. Unfettered capitalism is good for that sort of thing.
The problem with Iran’s new bourse is the fact that the Iranians, in a fit of spite or in their national interest, depending upon whom you talk to, are having the temerity to accept something other than the US dollar for their oil.
And that has the Bush Imperium scared shitless.
You see, one of the great stabilizing forces in our former democracy is the fact that our economy is based soundly on the worth of the dollar. And for the last 50 years, if you wanted to buy oil, you needed dollars to do it – the infamous Petrodollar. Countries like China and India, who import the vast majority of their petroleum, needed huge cash reserves of greenbacks to buy the oil they needed, which encouraged them to buy those dollars by financing US debt. The exclusivity of the currency ensured that, whatever else may happen, the US dollar would always hold a certain level of value because it was needed to get the juice industry requires to operate. Our deadliest enemies were forced to use our currency in their transactions. Of course, for the last 50 years there have been few alternatives – as attractive as the Yen, Mark, or Pound Sterling has been at times, the dollar, backed by the full faith and confidence of the US government, has been the only decent reserve currency, the only one guaranteed to hold its values.
No more. The Iranians want to open their bourse – but only in Euros.
The economic impact of this would be devastating. Not only would the dollar be immediately devalued, causing huge losses in real wealth for our nation, but our main creditor, China, would be forced to convert large portions of its foreign reserve into euros just to play. That means selling dollars on the open market. A lot of dollars. And that could very well lead to a rapid decline in the dollar that would wipe out the impressive wealth built up over the last few decades. While that would allow us to buy back some of our debt at a discount, other consequences – massive unemployment, bankruptcies and foreclosures, fluctuating interest rates – would have a devastating impact on the Red States. Since Big Oil is one of the primary sponsors of the Imperium, they aren’t going to take this sitting down. Hence the planes in the air.
This isn’t the first time that a potential Petroeuro has spurred the US to action. A case can be made quite easily for the idea that the Iraqi war was predicated for no other reason than to stop Saddam Hussein from selling his oil to the UN oil-for-food program for euros, which he did in 2000.
Now Iran is going to do the same thing, only the stakes are much higher. A tin-pot dictator under virtual house arrest insisting the checks be made in euros is one thing; an entire market that depends utterly on the euro would be orders of magnitude more dangerous. To have said market in the hands of people who really, really don’t like us is intolerable.
From the point of view of the rest of the world (the part that George II likes to pretend doesn’t exist except as photo opportunities) has grown weary of US monopoly on oil currency, as it requires also tolerating our intrepid foreign policies, many of which these folks find objectionable. Even China, who could really give a rat’s ass about our Mid-East policy, would prefer to deal with the currency attached to a pathologically relaxed confederacy, rather than a tightly controlled, trigger-happy imperial power. It’s just more soothing, I guess. It also makes dealing with Taiwan and North Korea a lot easier if their hands aren’t tied by interminable financial entanglements.
So there is a market for this petroeuro market. Should it go forward, it will break the US stranglehold on petroleum trading. Which will weaken the ability of the US to take the lead in initiatives from human rights to economic development of the third world. And there is very, very little the US can do about it – except destabilize the Iranian economy so much that any further trading on their new bourse would be uncomfortable, at best. And the quickest way to do that would be with some well-placed strategic air strikes ostensibly at the nascent Iranian nuclear power industry – if the new bourse accidentally has a 500 lb. bomb land on it, then shucky darn, sorry ‘bout that.
Of course, such imperial action, especially without a UN mandate and against the express wishes of our strategic allies, would have its own consequences, the most glaring of which is the fact that a full 1/5 of our military might is nestled unprotected between two rivers just next door to the mountainous Iran. Our 130,000 troops would be suddenly exposed not just to the prospect of insurgent attacks, but might also enjoy the attentions of Iran’s 500,000 strong militia and its 100,000 Islamic Revolutionary Guard, battle-hardened veterans of campaigns going back to the Iran-Iraq war. Nor would they be ill-equipped. Iran has invested heavily in good equipment for its forces, as well as state-of-the-art anti-missile, anti-aircraft and anti-ship weapons systems. Unlike Iraq, whose navy was outmatched by the Hyannisport Yacht Club, Iran has taken an interest in naval warfare for years.
While the US has megatons of aircraft carriers designed as the perfect deep-water ocean, Iran has been designing a force more suited to the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf. In addition to six Russian-built SSK or SSI Kilo class diesel submarines, it has invested in a made-from-scratch submarine capability that includes a fleet of mine-laying 2-3 man minisubs and the new Ghadir-class fast-attack sub, the prototype of which is being tested even as I write this. With a decent mine-laying ability, closing the Straights of Hormuz against international shipping would be a mere exercise. And a US aircraft carrier bottled up in the Persian Gulf is well within the range of Iran’s robust missile systems.
Of course we could try to make the attack ourselves, but that would put our neck on the chopping block. Attacking Iran with US warplanes and missiles would definitely put all of our forces in the Middle East at risk of immediate retaliation, as well as draw universal condemnation for ignoring diplomacy – again. George II has kept this on the table, of course, including a recent update to the official US war handbook that includes the same shiny section on pre-emptive war that was used to justify the Iraqi invasion. The preferred method at this stage, one would imagine, is to sub out the bourse-busting to a staunch and deeply-obligated ally in the region: Israel.
Involvement of Israel in such an attack is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, the Islamic world hates the Israelis already. One more strike, more or less, isn’t going to make them hate Israel any more than they already do. In addition, Israel has a long history of completely ignoring the UN when its security is threatened, so they could make a strike with near-diplomatic impunity. On the other side of the equation, though, is the fact that involvement of Israel would also piss off our regional allies, allies we might need if we had to evacuate our troops in the face of a full-out Iranian/Syrian assault. Israeli help could well spread a conflict to Syria (who isn’t thrilled with us right now anyway), Lebanon (where the Iranian’s pet Shi’ites, Hezbollah, are ready and willing to fight), the West Bank (now firmly in the control of Hamas), Jordan, a poor but strategically located piece of desert, and Saudi Arabia, where the iron-fist of the Saudi secret police are just barely keeping the lid on a growing fundamentalist insurgency.
A bright spot might be Egypt, who is an ostensible ally of ours, and who stands to lose a lot from a fight with Israel. More than likely they would stay on the sidelines and wait to pick up the pieces. Likewise, we could expect some grudging help from Turkey, on the basis of our long NATO-derived defense relationship with them – but don’t expect them to be happy about it. They’re still pissed off we supported the Iraqi Kurds.
US forces in Afghanistan are also in danger from a belligerent Iran, as well as a resurgent Taliban/al Qaeda who would be glad to fish in troubled waters. And things would get really bad if a successful fundamentalist coup against “President” Musharraf put this nuclear-armed power into the hands of people who don’t like us.
Quite simply, we could see a swath of bloodletting from the West Bank to Kashmir – literally overnight.
So that is the course of action George II has in front of him, the two deadly horns of a dilemma: Attack Iran and be damned to WWIII; or not, and be damned to financial insolvency, domestic civil disorder, and potential irrelevancy.
Good luck, George.
Sucks to be you.

How To Build an Enemy Superpower Without Even Trying

(Thanks for joining me on this new geopolitical blog -- an off-shoot of the High Druid's Homily, which will henceforth be used for more personal, religious articles. This one is where I use my powers of foresight to see what is happening to the geopolitical world.)


As unlikely as it seems, the Bush Imperium, and its Israeli and European allies, have in their reluctance or refusal to treat with the legitimately elected government of the Palestinians gone further down the road of constructing their future adversary.

Huh? What?

It’s not that Hamas is on the verge of busting out with ICBMs – so far they haven’t shown anything heavier than some homemade, short-range rockets in the arsenal of their insurgency. Hamas has been fighting a police war, with the weapons of a guerilla movement. The idea that they would somehow rise to the stature of superpower stretches credulity.

However, by threatening to withhold promised funds from the Palestinian Authority (PA) because of Hamas’ election victory they may well set in motion a chain of events that will have long term repercussions. Despite its corrupt nature, the PA has been the sole administrative power in the Occupied Territories since the Oslo Accords. The PA was designed to inherit the functions of civil government usually handled by a state – but it lacks the essential independent sovereignty of a state, due to the Occupation. That includes taxation of the populace and the collection of import tariffs, both of which are done by Israel, held in trust, and turned over to the PA every month. Add to that the substantial amount of direct development aid paid out to the PA by the EU and US, as agreed, and it becomes a sum of close to $100 million a month. These monies are used to pay the security services, the civil service, the fire departments, schools, ambulances, hospitals and all the petty government officials that even a corrupt state needs in order to function. In many cases, these government checks are the largest source of income in a land that boasts unemployment rates ranging from 65%-80%.

Israel, the US, and the EU have all said that they will withhold promised monies until Hamas agrees to foreswear violence and acknowledge Israel’s right to exist – and the Israelis refuse to go even beyond that: they will not negotiate with Hamas under any circumstances. Too many suicide bombers and sudden mortar attacks on Israeli civilians.

From Hamas’ perspective, this will be an ineffective tactic – and perhaps welcome news.
As long as the PA has to depend upon its enemies for its bread, it will always be the weak sister in negotiations. That was Arafat’s dilemma: how could you talk tough to the Israelis when they were the ones writing the checks? The institution of the PA was basically Israel’s way of outsourcing the administration of the Occupied Territories to the PLO, giving them nominal self-government and very limited autonomy, while Israel continued with its settlement plans and “security” plans, including the Wall.

By denying the PA it’s meal ticket, Israel, the US and the EU have virtually guaranteed a more independent-minded, less docile PA. Hamas has always been as well-known for its humanitarian services among the Palestinians as its insurgency. Hamas is piously uncorrupt, compared to the secular-oriented Fatah movement. And unlike Fatah, they may well have the right people to govern the Occupied Territories efficiently, provided with sufficient funds. The powers may well believe that they are using a stick with which to beat Hamas into submission; instead, they are supplying an escape route to a more powerful position.

The Oslo Accords that created the PA were the stepping stones towards a two-state solution: Israel on one side, the West Bank and Gaza, united under the banner of a secular Palestine, on the other. But that second state never officially evolved. Instead the Accords turned the whole of the West Bank into a giant refugee camp dependent upon the good graces of Israel and the US/EU for support. Until there was a real state, Israel seemed content to treat the Occupied Territories as an extensive ghetto upon which to consolidate illegal settlements, steal natural resources (namely water rights and arable land) and blow stuff up in reprisals for strikes made by the intifadha. There would be no state, the late Yassr Arafat seemed to be telling his people, until “final status” talks came about. Only then would the Palestinians have their own seat at the table of nations.

Those “final status” talks never commenced, as Israel hounded Arafat, holding him responsible for the acts of all the various factions, most notably Hamas (who was not a party to Oslo) and his own Al Aqsa Martyr Brigades, his attempt to out-Hamas Hamas. Arafat was content to play the shifty politician and persecuted stateman while his regime pocketed millions in aid and he was marginalized into house-arrest and ineffectiveness.

Not so, Hamas. To Hamas the Palestinian State already exists. It may not be recognized, but Hamas will not suffer the same ineffective corruption of power that Fatah did. These mullahs mean business. To Hamas it is not a question of when the Palestinian State will come to be, but how. And some intransigent enemies cutting off their stipend is not likely to deter them.

It’s ironic that many Israelis and outside observers see the election of Hamas as a positive step towards real peace in the middle-East, despite the organizations stated intent to destroy Israel and re-claim its lands for Palestine, and its willingness to use force to achieve this objective. Hamas has been the main obstacle to the “final status” talks, blowing up just enough civilians in Israel to keep the Israelis from settling the matter with Fatah. With the impending death of Ariel Sharon, the ultimate Israeli hardliner (and I predict that this will happen this Friday, February 3rd) Israel has lost a politically tortured negotiator, a man who has fought against the Palestinians for so long that he would not be seen as a reliable partner for peace under any circumstances. His successor, whoever that may be, will have the unenviable task of dealing directly with Hamas as the PA. For the first time in a decade, Israel will be forced to talk to the people who have done it the most harm – and yet are the most likely to be able to make a deal with them stick.

Hamas has experience in running on a shoestring budget. It also is unlikely to cozen to threats. Take away the PA’s stipend, and they will find other sources of revenue. From whom, if the EU, Israel, and the US refuse to ante up?

Try Iran.

Hamas has had much closer ties to the Islamic Brotherhood of Egypt than the madcap mullahs of Iran – Hezbollah, the Shi’ite militia in southern Lebanon, has been Iran’s proxy force in the region, not Hamas. But Egypt is still under the rule of an anti-Islamic Brotherhood secular dictatorship, one allied to the US and one that has a peace treaty with Israel. Kuwait is essentially America’s first Islamic State, and Saudi Arabia is also under the heel of American hegemony, despite widespread unrest and the constant threat of revolution. Iraq is otherwise occupied (no pun intended), and Syria, while militarily powerful just doesn’t have the oil revenue needed for a long-term support program. But Iran . . . Iran has a definite enmity to the US/Euro Alliance, due to the nuclear debacle now taking place. And thanks to $69/barrel crude oil, Iran is flush with cash. Would they be willing to sponsor Hamas financially?

You bet your baba ganuj they would! If it means a) irritating the piss out of their sworn enemies, Israel and the US b) promoting radical Islam as a political force in the Middle-East, a step towards both organizations’ common long-term goal of establishing an Islamic Superstate, a re-birthed Caliphate c) gaining a powerful strategic ally on Israel’s doorstep and d) establishing itself as a potent regional power, Iran would jump at the chance. What is a mere $100 million a month to Tehran?

It would also serve to raise the already high stakes on Iran’s nuclear issue. As it is, a referral to the UN Security Council seems inevitable – and will likely prove ineffective as a real deterrence, due to the pressure China, and to a lesser extent Russia, will put on any ultimate UNSC decision on the matter. China needs Iranian oil. Bad. If they came out in favor of Iran on the nuclear issue, they would put themselves at odds with the West, essentially the NATO countries and their dependents. If the UNSC fails to act decisively, as predicted, and Israel or the US feels compelled to initiate sanctions or military action, as predicted, then Iran, at the very least, will cease oil exports to the regular market. This would not only drive prices in this market up over $100/barrel, but it is very likely that they would reward their nuclear-armed pals in the PRC with cheap oil on the sly. In return, China could easily act as a back-door conduit for illicit trade and financial management of Iranian oil wealth.

So that would put us in a difficult position: a foreign-funded Palestinian State, a dangerous, well-armed Iran just daring the US/Israel alliance to start something, and a People’s Republic of China that has discovered a source of cheap oil that would ensure it didn’t have to blow foreign cash reserves on obscenely high petroleum prices – this is the same PRC that has been making billions selling the US cheap plastic crap ala Wal-Mart for the last decade and a half.

What could we do about it? Very little.

We bomb Iran, and they respond by attacking US garrisons in Iraq and Afghanastan, and possibly subbing out an invasion of Iraq by Syria (who isn’t real thrilled with the current UN investigation into a perfectly routine political assassination in Lebanon that was done by Syrian Intelligence and implicates the “president”).

We force the PA to abandon the Hamas government, thereby throwing the whole “spreading democracy around the world” justification for our meddling in Middle-Eastern affairs right out the window, exposing the Bush Imperium as hypocrites of the first order (“We believe in the power of Democracy – as long as it agrees with us!”) and potentially sparks Islamic revolutions in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and beyond.

We insist China quit supporting Iran, against their own national interests, without having a whole helluvalot to bargain with (The PRC currently hold huge amounts of US debt, something on the tune of $200 billion – what if they started selling that debt at half price, taking a loss over an inevitable repudiation? That would likely have a negative impact on our credit rating as a nation). Our insistence on such a thing would have to be justified under international law, which would mean convincing an already-skeptical Chinese government that there was a compelling reason to do so. Might be a hard sell.

And what if China politely refuses to quit? I foresee US planes buzzing Chinese supertankers in the Straights of Hormuz, which is unlikely to improve Beijing’s mood. We could also stop them on the South China Sea, just outside of Singapore, where we have significant military strength. But we could not do so lightly. The China of today is not the third-world nation we grew up with. They have a modern navy, a rapidly-growing air force, a massive army, and if a million people get killed in a war that’s just more rice for everyone else.

And a belligerent China would likely soon devolve into a China confident enough to push towards Taiwan, and perhaps South Korea (through its North Korean proxy) and even potentially Japan. After four years of war in Iraq, we just do not have the forces to counter such a wide-ranging number of theaters in combat. It is a war we would lose on numbers alone.

It seems that the Bush Imperium has painted itself into a corner with the broad brush of ideology and blind support of Israel, compounded by an arrogance that favors international law only when it suits its purpose. Even the canny Condi Rice is subject to George W.’s myopic and misguided understanding of global realpolitik. As a result, we may yet be staring a new Asian superpower in the face, waiting for it to blink . . . while we have sand in our own eye.