What we support and defend

[wm]

From where I sit, preventing Communist takeovers in the Pacific has had much more to do with maintaining market access than with containing the spread of an ideology inimical to the United States. What Bob describes as containment, I would describe as keeping trading opportunities available. I suppose one could describe this effort as a form of containment, but to do so would be to do violence to the customary usage of the term 'containment,' the definition of which Entropy was nice enought to share with us a few posts back on this thread.

An interesting thread with regard to China policy crosses the last 2 adminstrations with regard to China. It has nothing to do with containment as far as I can see.

Mrs Clinton wrote an article outlining her foreign policy in which she stated that America's relationship with China would be the most important bilateral relationship in the world this century [emphasis added]. . . . Speaking to the BBC on [the eve of her first trip to Asia in Feb 2009, her first as Secretary of State], Mrs Clinton said there were real opportunities to develop a good relationship with Beijing on issues such as climate change and clean energy.

The United States Ambassador to China Clark T. Randt, Jr . . . said in the 2008 Herbert G. Klein Lecture on April 21 that he and President George Bush consider U.S.-China ties to be the most important bilateral relationship of the 21st century [emphasis added]. . . . Under President George W. Bush’s instructions to maintain a “candid, constructive relationship with China,” Amb. Randt reported that he’s worked continuously since his 2001 appointment to foster dialogue with the Chinese on trade, human rights and other global and regional problems. Amb. Randt’s first trip to China was in 1974 during the Cultural Revolution. Ration coupons, he remembered, were needed at that time to buy even staple foods such as rice and flour. But today, three decades after his first visit, the Chinese have become the world’s greatest collective consumers of luxury goods in the world. China has come a long way politically, culturally, and economically. China’s rise is the most significant development of our age, according to Randt, and he insisted that the U.S. welcomes China’s return to prominence.