The United States and the great powers

World Policy Journal; New York; Fall 1999; David P Calleo;

Volume: 16
Issue: 3
Start Page: 11-19
ISSN: 07402775
Subject Terms: International relations-US
Foreign policy
Geographic Names: China
United States
US
Europe
Russia
Abstract:
It is time for the US to formulate a foreign policy that does not leave us on a collision
course with all the rising powers of the world. China is expected to be a great
superpower in the coming century.

Full Text:
Copyright World Policy Institute Fall 1999

After all the wars of the twentieth century -cold and hot-only one superpower remains. For
some Americans, this may seem a great opportunity to shape history forever. More accurately,
it is a moment of great temptation. America's status is not so lonely as it seems. Granted, the
other superpower of the Cold War is today only a courtesy superpower-retired, or perhaps on
extended leave with severe disabilities. But even in its present disarray, Russia has a
formidable nuclear arsenal, a large, talented, and discontented population and a huge wealth
of natural resources. A great power since the eighteenth century, it has survived numerous bad
times and revived. It may well do so again.

Today's China is also an obvious superpower candidate for the near future. With its enormous,
vigorous, and gifted population, united for the first time since the nineteenth century, it is
certainly rising, even if not ready. Europe is a fourth, with collective resources that easily rival
those of the United States, even if it is still working to consolidate itself in the wings. Much of
the next century's history will doubtless be determined by how well the four succeed in
arranging their relations.

At the moment, the United States has choices not dissimilar to those faced by the British at
the end of the nineteenth century. It can either accommodate its rivals or oppose them. It can
oppose by pressing for a seamless "global" system that remains under its own hegemony. Or it
can try to accommodate by coaxing the others into a global sharing of power, with some mix
of regional spheres of interest and collective world responsibilities.

Public opinion does not seem particularly conscious that the country faces such fateful
choices. It certainly does not seem ready for an imperial world role. Indeed, the steady
"deconstruction" of the American presidency in recent years suggests that the American body
politic is vigorously rejecting the internal discipline needed to maintain a hegemonic role in
the world. Since the end of the Cold War especially, Congress, courts, and states all seem
driven by an instinct to cut the Cold War presidency down to size.
Paradoxically, however, this increasing disarray inside the American government, although it
makes any long-term, considered, and coherent foreign policy unlikely, nevertheless seems to
favor external assertions of American power. The United States still has its big imperial
institutions of the Cold War overdeveloped military, diplomatic, and intelligence
establishments, which are cheered on by an abundant supply of foreign policy experts. These
all have large ambitions, familiarity with the levers of power, and a keen sense of self-
preservation. Without the Cold War's sense of danger and presidential discipline, American
foreign policy is easily hijacked by special interests, bureaucratic or otherwise, intermittently
pushing their own agendas.

In its early years, the Clinton administration focused on domestic issues and was diffident
about exercising global power. As the presidency has grown weaker constitutionally, however,
the administration has grown progressively more enthusiastic about its world role. Its neo-
Wilsonian rhetorichuman rights and free trade-has taken on a more and more triumphalist and
hegemonic tone. In Yugoslavia, the administration has shown itself willing to combine
globalist rhetoric and large-scale military power.

American Hubris

The striking lesson from Kosovo was the quick tendency, in many parts of the world, to
condemn the American-led military campaign, despite the odiousness of the Serbian cause.
Even many who rejoiced in the West's determination to stop genocide were not pleased to see
the Americans take so prominent a role, and would have preferred a more European initiative.
Clinton's America seemed to have appointed itself global policeman, judge, jury, and
executioner. The appointment has been far from universally popular.

America's unipolar pretensions carry heavy overtones of hubris. The United States, which has
5 percent of the world's population and consumes 28 percent of the world's production, is an
automatic target for the world's disaffected.1 Perhaps our history has been too felicitous for
our own good. The United States, after all, has not been invaded since the war of 1812,
whereas, within living memory, the peoples of China, Russia, and most of Europe have
endured unspeakable suffering and humiliation from foreign invaders. Our comparatively
happy history doubtless has given American diplomacy some of its better qualities-the
confidence and generosity that led to the Marshall Plan, for example. But that history also
makes us insensitive to the fears of others who have suffered more and has not done much to
teach us how to live intimately with other great powers on terms of equality. Forever
"exceptionalist," Americans are either apart or on top.

The United States did, of course, conduct a remarkably complex, patient and successful
alliance policy for the nearly five decades of the Cold War. But that environment was much
more compatible with America's exceptionalist and hegemonic instincts than the more
genuinely global and plural world that is now evolving. America's political imagination has
not risen to the occasion. It has not really adjusted to the new world order that is unfolding. It
has made a facile change from a bipolar to a unipolar focus.

American-style globalism still means a unipolar Pax Americana, rather than a diverse and
plural world where power has to be shared. The gap between our fixed unipolar imagination
and the squirming pluralist trends in the real world is a growing danger. The danger manifests
itself in a series of policies that increasingly position the United States in opposition to the
interests of Russia, China, and even Europe-all at the same time.
In Europe, the Soviet collapse has advanced the European Union. After achieving monetary
union, the European Union has now given high priority to its Common Foreign and Security
Policy (CFSP). The United States faces a choice between pushing NATO to adapt or
reaffirming its own traditional military hegemony. The broad outlines of both courses are
clear enough: adapting calls for a NATO with a "European pillar" capable of acting on its
own, together with a significant "Europeanization" of NATO's overall command structure.
The aim would be to leave the Europeans actively equipped to take charge of security in their
own space.

In the alternative strategy, the United States clings to its military hegemony. Absent the Cold
War, this means finding new tasks for the old American-run NATOprincipally by enlarging its
membership or extending its writ to cover police or security problems, perhaps "out of area."
The United States develops its capabilities for high-technology warfare to punish
transgressors without risking high casualties among American forces. European allies develop
mobile ground forces to mop up and maintain order.

Ambivalent America

America's actual policy is ambivalent. The United States officially favors European
integration, including CFSP, and has slowly appeared to give ground to demands for a
European pillar in NATO. At the same time, it is always possible to put off reform by noting
the divisions among the Europeans themselves. European fractiousness does not usually need
much encouragement. Meanwhile, the United States has ostentatiously taken the lead in
expanding the alliance, and has generally conducted itself in a fashion certain to arouse
Russian apprehensions. Russia's angry reactions, in turn, make West Europeans reluctant to
press forward with plans for dispensing with American protection. The intervention in
Kosovo, where the United States not only took the leading role, but emphasized it, seemed to
reflect the basically conservative pattern of our NATO policy.

Longer term, however, several factors are working against continuing American management
of Europe's security problems. During the Cold War, a threatening external superpower
naturally called for a friendly external superpower to balance. Today's threats are internal-
neighborhood ethnic wars, terrorism, drugs, and gangsterismoften more police problems than
the traditional military challenges of the Cold War. To have an outside power, however
friendly, manage internal problems will grow increasingly uncomfortable-for Americans as
well as Europeans.

And indeed, for many of Europe's real security problems, Russian political and military
cooperation can be as useful as American. Furthermore, Russia's long-run economic and
political success are vital to Europe's own prosperity and security. Unless Russia goes
completely off the rails, European governments are likely to believe their security better
served by finding a modus vivendi with Russia than by emphasizing an abrasive U.S.-led
military preponderance. Insofar as NATO enlargement and America's propensity for exuberant
military exercises in Russia's peripheral areas2 are constant irritants, European governments
are likely to see the United States as a cause of their problems with Russia, rather than the
solution to them.

Current American policy naturally poisons our relations with Russia. Russians are alarmed,
above all, by NATO's open-ended policy toward enlargement. Nor are they reassured by the
American military's sporadic involvements in Central Asia. Unlike Americans, they do not see
American power as any different in kind from other people's, only greater. After 70 years of
communism, they are cynical about aggressive ambitions dressed in the trappings of
universalist principles of justice. NATO's ambitions for enlargement suggest a pattern all too
familiar in their own terrible history.

If Russia does revive militarily, NATO's promiscuous enlargement can easily result in a highly
dangerous zone of military as well as economic confrontation. Even in its present debased
condition, Russia disposes of over 6,000 nuclear warheads.3 It is not clear what American
interests justify running such risks. The current heedless enthusiasm for doing so suggests a
military establishment-in NATO and in the Pentagon-no longer controlled by the national
interest. The only logical justification for NATO's policy is to assume that Russia is finished
as a serious power. The United States is therefore compelled to use NATO to fill the vacuum.
Carried to its logical conclusion, such a view suggests that America's real geopolitical enemy
is now Europe itself. The United States must rush to fill the gap lest the Europeans do so
themselves.

The Need for Russia

Speculation along these lines only underscores the usefulness to the West of a strong Russia.
A weak Russia is a provocation in Europe and throughout all of Eurasia. It tempts both
Americans and Europeans to overextend themselves. European unity could easily be an early
casualty. Fears along these lines at the time of the Maastricht Treaty prompted the French and
Germans to press forward with European integration as well as to pledge early membership
for a number of East European states. But the EU is not really capable of managing a vast
pan-European system by itself. As a confederacy, it is not constitutionally enabled to run an
imperial hinterland. Extending the EU too far risks destroying its own internal balance and
cohesion.

NATO suffers from similar limitations. And it cannot organize "pan-European" security if it
excludes Russia. This prompts an obvious question: why not invite Russia to join NATO,
which would transform it into a genuine pan-European organization for collective security,
rather than an instrument of American or European hegemony? The answer is that a NATO
with Russia inside would deprive Western Europe and the United States of their mutual
alliance. Given the uncertainty of Russia's own evolution, this seems an unwise course-for
Russia as well as the United States and Europe. Better to create some pan-European
superstructure on top of a NATO limited to the West, one that includes the United States and
Russia as well as the rest of Europe.

Tripolar Europe

While the most Westernized and economically advanced countries from the old Soviet sphere
can doubtless be absorbed into the EU and NATO, the rest cannot. They should not therefore
be left in limbo, forced to subsist on promises that can never be delivered. The European ideal
remains a powerful asset, but it should not be the exclusive property of the European Union or
of NATO. A broader pan-European Union is needed-"a Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals,"
perhaps an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) with a Security
Council. Its essence should be a code of state behavior, including respect for human rights,
that the members embrace and pledge to enforce, along with the machinery for regular
consultation and concerted action. Such a regional structure would be a much more appealing
and effective basis for legitimizing interventions than America's claims to be globally
empowered by its superpower status.

The stability of any such pan-European structure is likely to depend on an overall "tripolar"
balance within it. A more Europeanized NATO should take primary responsibility for order
within the Western sections. Russia would be expected to take primary responsibility for order
within its own Eurasian Near Abroad. But interventions would at least be governed by a
system of common rules and procedures, with regular consultation and at least token
participation by all three elements.

Why risk Russian participation? As we learned in Kosovo, it cannot be avoided. In the end,
moreover, pan-Europe cannot flourish without a strong, prosperous, and reasonably
democratic Russia. Wishing for such a Russia obviously does not create it. But whatever the
internal vicissitudes of their politics, Russians cannot be said to have behaved badly toward
Europe over the past decade. In the final analysis, Eastern Europe is free because the Russians
voluntarily gave up their empire and went home. Russia's participation has been useful in
Bosnia. And it is not clear how the West would have extricated itself from its bombing
campaign in Yugoslavia if the Russians had not intervened diplomatically.

Obviously, having a strong Russia complicates matters. So does having a strong European
Union. But unless the United States dedicates itself to running its own Eurasian empire, it
should welcome both a strong Europe and a strong Russia, both collaborating in a pan-
European security system built around agreed rules and collective action. Since the Second
World War, the United States has made a huge investment in promoting a strong, prosperous,
democratic, and integrated Europe. Now that such a Europe is coming into being, deriding its
manifest remaining deficiencies is not a worthy or advantageous American response. Instead,
we should learn how to turn a stronger Europe to our advantage. Similarly, we presumably
fought the Cold War not to replace Russia with ourselves but to see it reform internally and
participate in a broad collaborative system. Granted, Russia must now rise to the occasion, but
so must we.

Consumer of Last Resort

American relations with the new China pose a similar challenge. America's hegemonic
position in the Far East has a much more obvious economic dimension than in Europe. By
opening its domestic markets, postwar America called the new Asian economies into
existence. As Asia's economies have mushroomed, so have America's trade deficits. It was
always hoped that trade disequilibria would disappear as the Asian economies achieved
Western living standards.

China's entrance into world trade has created an entirely new situation. Not only does the
Chinese economy's size make it a major producer, but its huge labor force guarantees that its
wage levels will never be near Western levels-at least not until some new form of energy
universalizes unpolluting abundance. Thus the recent strong deflationary trend in world prices
for manufactures seems a natural result of China's entry into the world economy.

Nor is it surprising that a financial crisis has recently afflicted other Asian economies and
exposed weaknesses that were not apparent in the less competitive past. The United States has
responded not only by becoming the chief animator of International Monetary Fund and other
international loans to keep Asian banks and producers afloat, but also by asserting its current
hegemonic role as "consumer of last resort."

The question is whether that role is sustainable. The U.S. current account deficit is now
running around $233 billion annually.4 And the level of U.S. consumption is now so high that
the country actually has a negative household saving ratio.5 Continuing high consumption is
now thought to depend on continuing gains in the bloated stock market, a risky foundation for
the new world order. Moreover, the very existence of the euro should eventually make the
financing of American deficits abroad more costly. Pressure therefore mounts to reduce the
deficit. The United States has hoped to pry open Chinese and Japanese markets, especially for
American high-technology products, but meets strong Japanese and European competition,
and also runs afoul of its own concern for controlling exports that would build China's
military prowess.

The United States also tries sporadically to pressure China on labor standards and human
rights. But, given China's huge supply of cheap labor, promoting labor rightshowever
commendable-seems unlikely to improve the American balance of payments. Under these
frustrating circumstances, trade diplomacy grows increasingly acerbic, symbolized by the
stymied negotiations over admitting China to the World Trade Organization.

Behind these maneuverings a huge question hangs over the world economy: how to make
room for China? The short answer is that China mostly needs to make room inside itself: to
develop its internal market and moderate its growth. In some respects, China has been
following such a strategyboth with a big program of fiscal spending and infrastructure
investment and by refusing to devalue its currency against the dollar, even though most of its
neighboring competitors have done so. Recently, it has also been trying to boost domestic
demand by easing credit. But it remains to be seen whether the Chinese government can
continue to control the situation. Managing things is not easy when capitalist energy is turning
life upside down, creating vast new wealth amidst a poor society based on different principles.
The horrendous massacre in Tiananmen Square notwithstanding, the government has, by and
large, maintained its authority and balance over the past decade. But while it is wise not to
underestimate the Chinese government's strength and skill, neither is it wise to take its
stability for granted.

American-Chinese relations also encompass a major military dimension. In Asia as in Europe,

America's extended deterrence required "flexible response"-providing conventional options,
which proved expensive. Asian containment actually compelled the United States to fight two
substantial conventional wars, in Korea and Vietnam. By the 1970s it had eased its burden by
being able to play the Chinese and Soviets off against each other. Now, however, the Chinese,
even without the Russians, are approaching a level of nuclear development that will logically
compel a strategy of flexible response. This will presumably mean augmenting our
conventional forces in the region. China's defense spending, currently equivalent in real terms
to Britain's, is increasing rapidly.6

Meanwhile, diplomatic relations are deteriorating over political and military questions as well
as over economic issues. China is widely criticized in America for its abuses of human rights.
Freedom for Tibet has become a fashionable cause, and, in the past at least, the CIA has
channeled major support to the Tibetan resistance.7
Taiwan remains another apple of discord. In principle, the United States concedes that it is an
integral part of China. In practice, it has been quick to react militarily to any sign that Beijing
might attempt to assert its sovereignty. The game has been continuing since the early 1970s
with no sign of resolution. Recently, Taiwan has begun asserting its formal independence,
with predictably vehement reactions from Beijing.

The Chinese have also, of course, reacted irately against the American role in the Kosovo
intervention. Having their embassy in Belgrade bombed naturally added to their ill temper.
Above all, however, they objected to the notion that the United States, as global hegemon, can
intervene where it chooses to stop what it decides are violations of human or ethnic rights.8
They have firmly in their minds a century and a half of humiliating foreign interference,
mainly at the behest of Western missionaries and commercial traders. Having finally
reestablished national unity under a strong state, they are morbidly afraid of returning to the
chaos and ruin of very recent times.

One consequence of China's deteriorating diplomatic relations with America has been a
further warming of its relations with Russia. This reconciliation has been going on for some
time, but Kosovo seems to have produced a major new burst of military cooperation. Better
Sino-Russian relations should be a positive development for Eurasian security, but not if what
unites the two is their anger at the United States. Such a lineup bodes ill for America's Asian
containment policy. If China is to be deterred by a strategy of flexible response, credibility
requires conventional options. Russia's vast, rich and thinly populated Eurasian territory ought
to make Russia America's natural ally. But thanks to America's aggressive and maladroit
stance in Europe, Russia is becoming America's opponent in Asia.

It might be assumed, of course, that Japan will be our major ally-the supplier of the
conventional forces needed for flexible response, the Asian Germany in the new Eastern Cold
War with China. It should not be surprising, however, if the Japanese end up having different
ideas. This is, of course, a topic in itself, and there is room here for only a few simple points:
Japan is sometimes included in lists of future superpowers. The Japanese are America's major
economic rivals in Asia, and our mutual commercial relations have been in deep conflict for
many years. Their economy has been in a prolonged crisis. They are likely to see China not
only as a possible military threat but also as a colossal market to help substitute for their
troubled American outlet. Under the circumstances, they may well prove reluctant to sign on
as America's principal military assistant in an alliance likely to alienate them still further from
China. The German parallel may be misleading. As an island, Japan is not so vulnerable to
conventional attack as Germany during the Western Cold War. As a leading technological
power, Japan could presumably provide its own strategic defense if it wanted to.

American Foreign Policy Hijacked

This quick survey of America's relations with three most likely future superpowers suggests a
rather alarming pattern. The United States, slipping into a hegemonic global strategy, seems
more and more committed to setting itself against all three simultaneously. It is not clear that
much conscious thought is being given to the national costs and benefits of such a strategy, or
that there is much public support for it. Americans like to think of themselves as the world's
number-one power, just as most people would like their local football team to be the best
around. But Americans lack the deep historical grievances or the passion for dominating or
reforming others needed to endow their rambling government with the discipline needed for
global hegemony.
Americans may acquire that discipline, as they did at the start of the Cold War, if they once
more feel threatened by mortal antagonists. The antagonisms we have been discussing here
can certainly be mortal; it is not clear, however, that they are necessary. Our military and
diplomatic difficulties with Europe, for example, could be resolved by resolutely taking a
back seat in NATO and gradually getting the Europeans to manage security problems in their
own space. What vital American interest makes us fear a NATO that is more European?

Our quarrels with Russia also seem unnecessary. We have let American foreign policy be
hijacked to create involvements in Eastern Europe and Central Asia that are of marginal
interest to us as a nation but make serious conflict with Russia inevitable. Given Russia's
history, we can hardly expect it to react otherwise. At the same time, we do damage to the
countries we presumably are seeking to help. We are in no position to defend them against a
serious threat. By alienating Russia when it is weak, these neighbors merely ensure their own
bad treatment in the future. Meanwhile, Russia's reactions gravely damage our interests in
Asia, where Russia ought to be our ally. Most serious of all, American policy damages
Russia's long-term prospects for achieving its own liberal democratic system. In the end, if
Russia does not succeed at home, prospects for peace and prosperity in Europe and Asia are
highly dubious.

Our inherent conflicts with China are admittedly more difficult. China's entry into the world
economy implies fundamental economic and social adjustments-in Europe and America as
well as in China. We and the Europeans must find a way to trade with China that does not
gravely damage our own industry and labor in the process. It seems counterproductive, as
well as insulting, to exclude the Chinese from the international organizations where these
accommodations are supposed to be negotiated. More fundamentally, it is irresponsible to
encourage the Chinese to develop their export industries to a degree that foreign economies
cannot sustain. Certainly, the United States must gradually reduce its overextended hegemonic
role as Asia's "consumer of last resort."

Accommodating China diplomatically means finding some way out of the Taiwan conundrum
we have created for ourselves. And, while we cannot suppress our concern for human rights,
we should make it clear that we recognize the difference between moral suasion and military
coercion, and have not, in our zeal, abandoned all respect for the sovereignty of other states.
We should make a serious effort to comprehend just how alarming the Kosovo intervention
has been for the Chinese, highly sensitive as they are to anything that smacks of the old
Western pretension to interfere at will. That sensitivity, it bears noting, is widely shared
elsewhere, including in India and, of course, in Russia. Given the unsettled state of China's
current society, it is not really in our interest to press them too hard. The next time China falls
to pieces, we are all likely to suffer the consequences. Surely the United States is in no
position to manage China's affairs, any more than it is equipped to manage Europe for the
Europeans, or take over Eurasia from the Russians.

In Asia, as in Europe, American policy ought to deemphasize explicit alliances of some versus
others, however necessary such alliances may still be, and focus on building cooperative
security systems, where all the major powers of the region participate. These require
institutions with regular collegial negotiations to reach and maintain a modus vivendi and,
when violence breaks out, to facilitate collective intervention. Such organizations already
exist embryonically in Asia, most notably the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN). Meanwhile, however, time seems to be running out. The mood is shifting away
from cooperation. More and more frequent abrasive confrontations bring out the worst on all
sides.

Stepping away from our policy of hegemonic denial-in Europe and in Asiawould mean
turning from the banal globalism of recent years and redefining the national interest to suit the
plural new world that is actually evolving. And it will also require reestablishing a more sober
respect for national interest throughout the political system. This will certainly not be easy.
But leaving things as they are suggests a very unpromising next century for the United States.
Given what is at stake, it seems high time to formulate a foreign policy that does not leave us
on a collision course with all the rising powers of the world.

[Footnote]
Notes

[Footnote]
1. The U.S. Bureau of the Census estimates that, as of July 15, 1999, the U.S. population stood at 272,995,517, out of
a world population of 5,999,276,443. The source for the consumption figures is the World Bank's World Development
Indicator 1999 (Washington, D.C., 1999), p. 226.
2. The United States has signed a range of defense cooperation agreements with Central Asian states that have formed
the basis for arms sales and military exercises in the region, including U.S. participation in CENTRAZBAT, the Central
Asian peacekeeping battalion. See, for example, the agreement signed with Kazakhstan in November 1997, reported
by Linda D. Kozaryn in "U.S., Kazakhstan Increase Military Ties," American Armed Forces Information Services,
November 1997, <www.defenselink.mil.news/news/Nov 1997/n11261997 9711262.html>.
Catherine Kelleher, the then deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia, stated at the time
of Exercise Asian Battalion '97 that "the United States' interest in this area is a recognition of the need for its
independence, sovereignty and stability. The Partnership for Peace gave a framework and justification for having more
direct and extensive contacts" (quoted in Douglas J. Gillert, "U.S. Ventures Cautiously into Former Soviet Territory,"
American Armed Forces Information Services, September 1997, <www.defenselink.
mil.news/news/Sep1997/n10061997 9710063. html>).
For intelligent and authoritative defenses of Western incursions into Russia's Near Abroad, see F. Stephen Larrabee,
Ukraine's Place in European and Regional Security (Santa Monica, Cal.: RAND, 1998, RAND reprints, RP-748), reprinted
from Lubomyr A. Hajda, ed., Ukraine in the World: Studies in the International Relations and Security Structures of a
Newly Independent State, Harvard Papers in Ukrainian Studies (Cambridge: Ukrainian Research Institute, 1998); and
Wolfgang Ischinger, "Not Against Russia: Security and Cooperation in the Baltic Region," Internationale Politik, February
1998.

[Footnote]
3. Russia, under START I procedures, declared 6,578 warheads as of January 1, 1999 (Arms Control Today website
<http://www.armscontrol.org/ACT/ march99/famr99.htm > ).
4. OECD Economic Outlook, June 1999 (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1999), p. 42.
5. In the United States, the household saving ratio (as a percentage of total income) for 1999 is -0.8, predicted to fall
to -1.0 in the year 2000 (OECD Economic Outlook, June 1999, p. 41). 6. The International Institute for Strategic
Studies estimates China's defense expenditure in 1997 to have been $36 billion in real terms. Such calculations, relying
on IISS definitions of defense spending and calculations of purchasing power par

[Footnote]
ity, are based on many arguable assumptions. In any event, Britain's, by comparison, stood at 222 billion ($37 billion).
The official Chinese defense budget increased by 11 percent from 1997 to 1998 (IISS, The Military Balance 1998-99
[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998], pp. 165-69).
7. See Jim Mann, "How the CIA Tried, and Failed, to Protect Tibetans' Rights," International Herald Tribune, July 7,
1999.
8. For a lucid and informed analysis of the Chinese response to the Kosovo crisis, see Lanxin Xiang, The Chinese
Military: Problems of Modernization, PSIS Occasional Papers, no. 3 (Geneva, 1999). One reaction was a public
subscription drive toward the purchase of China's first aircraft carrier!

[Author note]
David P. Calleo is Dean Acheson Professor and director of European Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced
International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University.
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