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next century. How might Huang Hua, with his nature-of-the-age consideration of strategy have regarded the matter? What does gatekeeping tell us? The dominant view of future relations between Americans and Chinese generally runs along a nervously familiar historical track: An established power (the US) anda rising one (China) consider each other. Do they cooperate? Scratch at each other in constant annoyance? Each nation possesses a different image the world. Each holds, as well, distinct pictures of their role. One power has enjoyed a long period of prosperity, has built and defended a global structure; the other, trod mercilessly underfoot by history, feels the unbearable flow of power’s rising sap, a hunger for recognition and release and for some, revenge; her economy craves resources, trade routes, and markets. So Germany encountered and then attacked Great Britain at the turn of the 20 Century. Japan collided, similarly, with Russia in 1904. France taking on Austria, Russia and Great Britain in the Napoleonic age. Even if the leaders of the United States and China intend to avoid conflict, they face one of the most sobering, if not depressing, problems of international politics: The “security dilemma”. The world is a dangerous place. So countries do things to feel safer. Their populations demand it. Germany looks at Britain’s imperial navy in the 1890s: London could snap Berlin’s trade arteries. So the Kaiser orders two battleships. Britain builds three in response. Germany turns to submarines. And so on. Each country, chasing her own security, ends up /ess secure. This is the “dilemma”. The puzzle is like one of those woven wicker finger traps: The harder each side pulls to get out, the more stuck they become. America in 2012 pivots her military gaze to Asia. China feels encircled. She orders a couple of aircraft carriers, paves remote islands into military bases. America flies aircraft closer to Chinese waters. Are the two sides more secure? Collisions, arms racing, accelerating distrust become the threnody of contacts. Each side seeks something impossible: Perfect security. Move first, certain forces begin to whisper in each capital. The essence of this problem today, as the United States and China consider their future, is not merely or even mainly in the details of trade, territory, or cyber disputes we read about. These hot points are important, of course, but they are symptoms of differing judgments of the world, of a fracture at that first step of asking, “What is the nature of the age?” Americans generally believe the existing global power map is just, sustainable, in need — perhaps - of minor adjustments. America engineered this system; benefits tremendously from it’s fictionless operation. China regards that same layout differently. As broken, unbalanced, rocking towards a seizure — and, anyhow, built, lubricated and run without her participation. This view is sharpened by ideology, national psychology and the bald fact that no global mechanism ever functions perfectly. The larger nature of the age is, many in Beijing feel, Da po, Da li. Great destruction. Great construction. Certainly this is true inside China; it must be true outside. The nation has it’s hammers out. They see the paradoxes of power we read about earlier, the inability to act and the collapse of American credibility, as clearly as people in Washington or Damascus or Moscow. Surely the global system should be adjusted, they think. Tap. Tap. 178 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018410