Our enemies, our solutions (part 2)

■"North Korea Sparks Proliferation Fears Throughout Asia: Historic Rivalries Exacerbate Nuclear Anxiety in Region; Tapei Frets About China; Japan's New Plutonium Plant," by Carla Anne Robbins and Gordon Fairclough, Wall Street Journal, 16 June 2005. p. A1.

■"Chinese City Emerges as Model in AIDS Fight," by Jim Yardley, New York Times, 16 June 2005, p. A1.

■"Disney's China Play: Its New Hong Kong Park Is a Big Cultural Experiment; Will 'Main Street' Translate?" by Geoffrey A. Fowler and Merissa Marr, Wall Street Journal, 16 June 2005, p. B1.

The U.S. is very unhappy to see North Korea get the bomb, and so it frets that Japan will reach for it out of fear, as will South Korea. Both certainly could, and then East Asia would have five nuclear powers, including the always present U.S. Right now it has two, which seems better. The countries with the most to lose in this development are China and the United Statesóno question.

So where is the quid pro quo to keep the status quo?

We can either deal with new nuclear powers, or we can eliminate the emerging third one. If we topple Kim, we secure America's long-term security standing in the region via a new strategic partnership with China. How do I know this? Such an achievement is basically the price for getting China's help.

Instead, we offer China nothing on security and plenty on insecurity and wonder why Beijing does not play along. We're asking China to sell something that was once very dear to them. So why can't we figure out the price?

You tell me that China can't be trusted, that it's political scene is too authoritarian. Non-pluralistic yes, but the authoritarianism is far more limited than most imagine. China is opening up to the outside world is all spheres, and in only oneóthe political sphereóis Beijing resisting the reformatting of its rule sets that such opening up typically entails. That is the price the Chinese leadership demand for this growing connectedness. It is a small price to pay, and one we've paid many times in the past, yielding, slowly but surely over time, real pluralism in countries like . . . South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

Of course, we have huge military power over all three of those countries, and we have far less over "rising China," but that just means we have to actualize our military advantage in different ways: by using it to give China things it wants and in exchange demanding certain efforts on Beijing's part.

You look around China and you see a society adapting rapidly andófor the most partóquite effectively to modernization and rapid industrialization and ever rapid post-industrialization. China will teach us many things in coming years, as it confronts problems like pollution, or AIDS, or cancer, or a host of other problems we've already marginalized but havenít really conquered. There is much profit and much promise in China's rise. I mean, if it can teach Disney about feng shui, it can teach the world about so much more.

What stands between the now and the strategic partnership that will define the 21st Century are old wounds and old fights from another age. It is time to move on. It is time to turn enemies into solutions.