Word: sovietism
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...power of the age. We can think of what we face as a choice between polite stasis and co-evolution, between stalemate and a commitment to a mutually assured stability that can mark our future with China as clearly as mutually assured destruction once marked our ties to the Soviet Union...
...making trouble? Nothing as big as China moves without pressing up against old ideas of power and stability. For most of the past 30 years, U.S. Presidents arrived in office bashing China and left praising it. Ties between the countries were cemented by a desire to balance the Soviet Union and, later, economic co-dependence. But these underlying forces have now been complicated. The growth of nationalism in China, American economic nervousness, China's changing economic model - all conspire against common interest...
...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 as a way to guarantee its security. And the solution he proposed became known as containment, the doctrine that dominated the next 50 years of policymaking...
...China is not the Soviet Union. There's no Jade Curtain 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...
...struggles with China over the relative value of its currency capture this dynamic well. The renminbi - it means "the people's money" - is the place where China's control economy touches the free-market world. Just as tensions with the Soviet Union sharpened at places where systems collided, the same will be true of China: the renminbi is the new Berlin. It needs to be handled with appropriate sophistication by both sides, especially since it reveals a deeper tension. Chinese find it inconceivable that the dollar will be the only global reserve currency in 10 years; Americans find it inconceivable...