Having read the China-US article in the FT, I’d say the position of choosing between “the disastrous and the unpalatable” is weak. Predicting the future, from any historic viewpoint is myopic. Consider this, when 77-year-old Mr. Lantos comments on China not being a threat to the US or to world peace, he opens a door of possibilities, and another level of responsibility for world leaders. Reflect again, “It’s very important to separate the very positive secular trend from the ups and downs of day-to-day diplomacy … we are at a moment in history when all the great entities—Europe, the US, India, China, Japan—are basically on the same side, and on the other side are the ‘rogue states’ and the global terrorist movement.” Who would have imagined in 1947 that Mr. Lantos, then 19, would, in the next century, make such a statement? There is unlimited potential, now, to re-imagine politics as an art of the possible. Now may be the time to throw down a gauntlet to world leaders, in Washington, Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, demanding them to design a new world view where nations struggle together to live up to extraordinary expectations, such as “being human” to one another, physically and economically. Perhaps someone, like Condoleezza Rice will imagine “beyond the obvious” and take on this potential to create a world view that challenges her political (global) comrades with a vision greater than these covert snake nests of “palatable” solutions.
