ARTICLE: Inside the Ring, By Bill Gertz, Washington Times, May 18, 2007

No surprise here: China's growing importance to the U.S. as a trade partner undermines our security relationship with Japan, which, quite frankly, needs to move beyond notions of "containing" China's rise and toward embedding it in shared security and trade regimes, like the expansion of ASEAN toward an EU-like entity and the replication of a NATO for East Asia.

You want to sell F-22s to Japan and not have Beijing balk, then sell them to Beijing too.

Inconceivable! I know.

But I will see such things unfold over my career--and sooner than you think.

We have common threats already. Soon enough we'll share common junior security partners.