■"U.S. Increasingly Pursues Two-Track China Policy: Economic, Security Goals Yield Approach Combining Engagement, Containment," by Jay Solomon, Wall Street Journal, 17 November 2005, p. A1.

■"The FTA Fetish," op-ed by Bernard Gordon, Wall Street Journal, 17 November 2005, p. A16.

■"Old Age Tsunami: Asia's graying population could roil the global economy," by , Wall Street Journal, 15 November 2005, p. A22.

The Bush neocons in the Pentagon believe their job is to contain China's rise, deluding themselves into thinking that strengthened mil-mil ties with countries surrounding China will somehow "manage" its growing strength that is overwhelmingly based on its economic power.

I'm with Larry Wilkerson on this one: Not only are the Indians laughing at our stupidity, everyone we court in Asia is. If anyone thinks these countries, even Japan, are choosing us militarily over China economically over the long haul, then they're working to cut off America's nose to spite its face.

Such is the state of grand stategy iin the Bush Administration: fighting the past while trying to shape the future, and effectively hamstringing itself in the process better than Osama bin Laden or AMZ ever could.

This focus allows the Big War crowd to continue to argue for Big War platforms and weapons systems, and this continued focus in acquisition will not only cost American lives in the warfare and peace-waging that the Army and Marines will inevitably be drawn into inside the Gap over coming years, it will prevent and delay our ability to shift assets from East Asia to the Middle East and deny our ability to better tap China's vast human potential for SysAdmin work in the Middle East, Africa and South America, where diplomatically the Chinese continue to kick our asses--slow but steady.

Meanwhile, the Big War clientele that want to make their money off China's rise by casting it as inevitable enemy will continue to get their programs of record approved in budget battles, so many purposes are served--just none that lend themselves to the real strategic tasks we face in the decades ahead, or what I call shrinking the Gap. Just watch net-centric operations' potential for recasting the SysAdmin force's capabilities get lost in the shuffle, because China's just too good a big, bad, Cold War-like enemy to pass up.

Meanwhile, China will deftly shut America out of East Asia's growing push for economic integration, as the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) process becomes the ASEAN + Three process, with Japan, India, and China joining that economic package in the first steps toward creating the Asian Union that will inevitably appear in coming years with China as the anchor.

Yes, yes, we are told by the neocons that the Chinese only get rich so they can threaten us later.

But which happens first, as I ask in my BFA brief and in the book: Will China get old? Before it gets rich? Before it gets threatening?

Which one seems inevitable to you?

And so stands America's grand strategy in the hands of the neocons, whose understanding of globalization's continued unfolding is just this side of dumbass, it's so unbelievably ignorant of economics.

You want to know why necons are so routinely described, as Doug Feith was repeatedly, as the "dumbest f--cking so-and-so on the planet"?

It's because they are.

And the sad state of State is why it happens. The talent pool there is so shallow, that the neocons win by default.

Yet again: this is why I wanted Kerry in 2004. We are at the end of imagination and intelligence with this crowd on foreign policy strategy. They have nowhere to go but down. These will be three wasted years unless somebody over in Foggy Bottom pulls their skulls out of that familar, warm, wet space and seriously looks ahead to this country's strategic interests beyond January 2009.

Bob Zoellick, the world needs you now more than ever.