US-CHINA: QUEST FOR PEACE
Part 1: Two nations, a world apart
By Henry C K Liu
The United States, the world's sole remaining superpower, is facing the reality of the limits of power, both military and economic, in its unilateral pursuit of global geopolitical objectives.
The US needs to recognize that it cannot win its "war on terrorism" with military force alone, however overwhelming. While the notion of preemptive defense can serve as a convenient pretext for outright aggression, a widening gap between the enormity of US power and the legitimacy of its use erodes support for US policies even by its allies. This gap acts to stimulate rising resistance by asymmetrical warfare of which terrorism is a central component.
The US needs to re-examine the moral prerequisite of its power. Unhappy experience with the war on poverty and the war on drugs should alert US policymakers to understand that to win the war on terrorism, the root causes of terrorism, the institutionalized socioeconomic inequities that lead to widespread rage fanned by hopelessness among the oppressed, must first be eliminated. Under current circumstances, conditions in East Asia have the potential of providing a model for a new and equitable economic order for the rest of the world.
World peace in the 21st century depends on long-range accommodation between the US and China, because US-China relations are the fulcrum for enduring peace in East Asia, a region with potential for enormous growth or, if improperly handled, for world-shattering destructive conflict. A stable East Asia contributes fundamentally to the prospect of world peace based on this new equitable world order.
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Next: The Taiwan time bomb
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