Perfect NYT Trifecta Today on China

First one (major lead, of course) is about Bush trip to China: Bush, in Beijing, Faces a Partner Now on the Rise.

Then the two better counterarguments:

1) Budding alliances with other New Core members (here Brazil): Brazil Weighs Costs and Benefits of Alliance With China;

and

2) China's economic and diplomatic movement into Africa (the Gap): China Wages Classroom Struggle to Win Friends in Africa.

My point: China is playing a horizontal, asymmetric, nonzero sum game across the entire playing board, seeing all aspects of national power.

Meanwhile, the Bush neocons play a vertical ("We can surround China!"), symmetric ("It's America versus China!"), zero sum ("They rise and therefore we must be falling!") gamae that relies overwhelmingly on military power as the be-all and end-all of influence in the world.

And the world is watching this, and when combined with our sloppy peace-waging effort in Iraq, it signals to them that America is without rudder, without strategic vision, and without a sense of how the world works in the age of globalization.

And we have three more years of this . . .