BEIJING - For the first time in its millennia-old history, China now acknowledges the existence of a world outside that it must confront. Up to the mid-19th century - the time of the Opium Wars - China perceived itself as a world apart, a perfect and self-sufficient universe. Contacts with the European colonial powers and Japanese expansionism caused a shock. Feelings of frustration and humiliation ran to the ends of the empire, from the Opium War against the British (1840-42) through the clash with the colonial empires between the two centuries, the birth of the republic (1911) and the time of the warlords (in the 1930s), until the Japanese invasion, World War II and the advent of communism with the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists in 1949.

Under Mao Zedong and his successors the People's Republic of China remained a country closed to the outside - and thus exotic to Western eyes - conceding at the most to a few games with the Soviets or the Americans (president Richard Nixon's triangular diplomacy in the 1970s). It was only in the 1990s that Jiang Zemin's China emerged as a regional power with global ambitions capable of playing on all the chessboards and crisis areas from the Balkans to the Middle East.

Without this historical parable that over 150 years marked the decline and renaissance of China, it is impossible to gauge the significance of its current and tumultuous economic development and the vision of the world of the leadership that is preparing to take over power after the Communist Party's Congress in November. Chinese national pride is rooted in the memory of an immense country that, for most of its existence, considered itself so wealthy that it did not need to trade with the Western powers. It was nearly able to deny the existence of the rest of the world. Indeed, at the end of the 18th century a third of the world's population and nearly half its wealth were Chinese. Other peoples were considered barbarians or minor civilizations with which it was not worth having relations. China was Tianxia ("All That Is Under the Sky").

The first cracks in this peculiar Chinese consciousness emerged with the arrival of the Catholic missionaries. When the Jesuits landed in China in 1583, Matteo Ricci (1522-1610) started to convert the imperial elite, convinced that it would produce a domino effect and convert from above the Chinese people - wrongly so, as the following centuries proved. Jesuit propaganda clashed with three central aspects of the Chinese way of life: the question of Chinese "rites", or reverence for Confucius and one's family ancestors, the name of "God", and local sexual habits, tending toward concubines rather than monogamous marriage. However, it was under Ricci that the first world maps with China at their center were produced, a revolutionary geopolitical representation that allows for the existence of an "other" world - the world outside - hierarchically subordinated to China. In the course of the 17th century, Zhongguo ("the Land in the Middle") was born from Tianxia. To this day Chinese maps follow that model.

Outside China no one seems to consider the Middle Empire as central. The People's Republic of China is not the cornerstone of the global balance. However, recently some in what is universally recognized as the Middle Empire - ie, the United States - have started to fear that by the middle of this century or even before, China could actually become what the maps portray it as. Even the fight against terrorism, according to some White House advisers, is seen in this light: as a preface to the real clash that within a couple of decades will pit the US against China.

What is certain is that only in the second half of the 1990s did the Chinese leadership feel that it could finally close the long parenthesis of decline that had been inaugurated by the Opium War and return Beijing to the center of the global game. Not (yet) primi inter pares, but pares inter primos. Deng Xiaoping, the patriarch who took China beyond Maoism's horrors, expressed an approach that was in essence subservient to the United States. Only his successor Jiang Zemin started to accept the idea of a competitive cooperation with the Stars and Stripes superpower.

On the economic front, the divergence of interests between a more assertive China and a United States triumphant in the Cold War are visible especially in the US attempt to invade the Chinese market with low-cost products without giving away its high-tech know-how. On the strategic and geopolitical front, the Chinese leadership is rightly convinced that some in Washington love China enough to want three or four Chinas. This type of fragmentation could indeed emerge from the growing gap between the regions that are more developed and open to the West and the more isolated and backward regions, as well as through the explosion of regionalism and of some geopolitical issues largely of an ethnic-religious type (Xinjiang, Tibet). Finally, fragmentation could follow a possible war between Beijing and Taipei.

China's shift toward the external world was marked by the Asian economic crisis of 1997. Jiang Zemin resisted the temptation to devalue the yuan and offered a safety net to the rapidly falling Asian economies, by replacing the US capital that had fled from Asia. With its trade agreement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), its entry into the World Trade Organization, the proposal of an Asian Monetary Fund, its support of the Thai-sponsored Asian Cooperation Dialogue, and its participation in the Shanghai Group (which aims to counterbalance US strategic influence in the region), Beijing is becoming a big regional power at the heart of the Asian continent: a benign power, integrated but not hegemonic, the pole of a system of global balance currently tipped too far toward the United States. This idea is visible, for example, in the official photographs of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit held in Shanghai last November: all leaders - from US President George W Bush to Russian President Vladimir Putin to Jiang Zemin - wore the traditional dress of the Tang period. The message from the new China was clear: We no longer are the whole world, but we are inferior to no one.

This geopolitical representation is accompanied by a rapid process of modernization that is also a form of Westernization of China, from the economic point of view - it has one of the most deregulated production systems of the world - but especially from the social point of view. Anyone comparing today's China to that of 20 or even just 10 years ago is shocked by the enormous changes, visible in the way one opens a bank account, how one is treated at a restaurant, or in fashion, care for the body or sexual customs. The Western way of life (xifang) is synonymous with "modern" (xiandai), and thus progressive.

To accept such opening toward the world with a strong awareness of itself means having to face the question of relations with the United States. Against the expectations of many, the US bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999 and the spy-plane incident on Hainan in 2001 did not ruin the relations between Beijing and Washington. At the moment the power relations between the two will not allow China to break off, for it would be very inconvenient for the Americans. The ties between the two economies are too tight to risk a crisis that could threaten the many US investments in China. And the United States cannot give up on the vast and expanding Chinese market. While the US economy has been stuttering over the past three years, China's continues to grow. Perhaps the real growth rate is below the official one of 7-8 percent a year, but even a gross domestic product (GDP) growth of about 5-6 percent a year, the figure most skeptical European observers believe, means a growth rate about five times that of Europe. The Chinese market counts today about 300 million individuals of a population of about 1.3 billion: these figures are enough to give an idea of the potential development of the domestic market. Everyone can feel the expansion of the Chinese economy in the region, especially in South Korea and in Thailand.

Geopolitical stability is the condition for China to have more influence in the world and to continue modernizing its economy. From this point of view the Chinese leadership is still uncertain. Fears of socio-economic cleavages, ethno-religious differences, and possible external (US) influences interested in accentuating these potential fractures of the Middle Empire, all condition Chinese policies. They also support the self-legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party, understood more in terms of nationalism than ideology. The communist lineage is a kind of dynasty, which will soon be placed next to the Qing and the Ming. Its legitimacy derives from its imperial history, not from Marx.

The self-legitimization of the Party can work as long as the economy continues to grow. It will then be necessary that the various centers of power that have grown in the shade of the Party do not start fighting one another. These are the issues that the new leader, Hu Jintao, will have to face. Once the Party was the dragon hovering above everyone; now it is only the umpire, among various groups and power centers.

The match is open. There are regional powers, lobbies and even very ambitious mafia-type groups that tend to take influence away from official power. Pressure groups also cut across the government.

At some point, issues related to the rule of law and democracy will become unavoidable. Of course, China is likely to become a sui generis democracy - as all existing democracies are, after all. A neat transition from the Party's absolutism to the "one man, one vote" criterion is unthinkable. It would be far more reasonable to aim for the development of an acceptable rule of law starting from a system of rules that can assimilate China to the largest industrial countries. It would be hard to hope for foreign capital entering the country without a civil code protecting fully the right to private property.

China has sought to use the fight against terrorism to convince the United States that it does not want to become an enemy. September 11, 2001, should have made the Americans understand the origin of threats - whence the attempt to develop all possible avenues to build confidence, starting from the confidential information given on Afghanistan during the war last autumn. This approach was confirmed to Heartland during a Euro-Sino-American conference held in Rome on May 10-11 on "geopolitical black holes". The seminar was organized by Heartland together with Washington's National Security Information Center and the Chinese think-tank Strategy and Management, and was dedicated in particular to identifying a common approach between the Chinese and Americans on northern Myanmar, a land governed by traffickers and mafias.

More than one year after the September 11 attacks, Beijing found that the United States did not respond very satisfactorily to Chinese openings. Of course, some signals from Washington were considered favorable: the inclusion of the Liberation Front of East Turkestan on the list of terrorist groups published by the US government; the arrest of some Xinjiang Muslims present in Afghanistan who were immediately imprisoned in Guantanamo, Cuba; and especially the intervention to placate the drift toward independence of Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian in July.

But the Chinese are still skeptical of the US approach to the fight against terrorism. Afghanistan and Central Asia have not been stabilized yet. And China cannot remain indifferent to this climate in its back yard, especially as US soldiers are deployed there in large numbers. On this aspect there are two schools of thought in Beijing: those who view the US military penetration in the region with fear and suspicion and those who believe that a few military bases are not sufficient to establish a permanent influence in the area. In any case, the geopolitical compromise between Russia and the United States on Central Asian transport routes for energy cannot avoid taking Chinese interests into account. Beijing is fundamental in any equation of Asian power. Even the Americans cannot ignore China.

War against Iraq is another story altogether. Having insisted at length that the issue go through the United Nations Security Council, Beijing cannot directly oppose an attack against Baghdad. There are not vital Chinese interests at risk in Iraq. On the contrary, the risk is of inflaming the Islamic world and destabilizing Pakistan - China's historical partner.

Sooner or later the war against terrorism will end. Or rather the Americans will decree that it is over. At that point we will all return to focus on the real core of global geopolitics: the relationship between China and the United States.

In observing the strategic orientation of a country and the security situation of the world, though specific and eye-catching incidents have to be taken into the observer's view, that which decides the historical course of human beings is, as pointed out by French historians from the Annals School, "the historical structure" that is winding and flowing down, ie, the historical current itself, while the big events are but a spray in the current.

To understand human security and world history after the United States' withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, importance should be attached to what was said by Alfred Thayer Mahan, an American sea-power theorist, a military expert as well as a well-trained historian: in formulating the state's strategy, close coordination should be ensured between the long-term view and short-term needs. A sudden incident is likely to change a country's orientation, but once the short-term needs have been addressed, the state should again consider the long-term view.

The "long-term view" Mahan mentioned is in fact the strategic cultural tradition and mentality. In the long-term international competitive relations among the big states, the relative stability of state interests, geographic environments, population structure and state of economic development often result in an inertial strategic thinking mode, which may be called the strategic cultural tradition or strategic mentality. Accordingly, this article will, on one hand, review the great events and historical currents, to point out the "internal veins" of history itself, and on the other hand, will analyze how the great events have contributed to, altered and reinforced the historical currents.

America under the influence of God

Let us first deal with Mahan's "long-term view". The history of a country can well explain its present state, and only if America's strategic cultural tradition is well understood can we know better its present strategic decisions. I am especially interested in the role of religions in shaping the unique strategic cultural tradition of the US. While reading American history, a clear impression arises that the US-style strategic mentality is distinctly branded with religious marks. If we do not pay attention to this, we cannot be aware of the profound "holy war" complex behind the strategic decisions of previous US administrations.

"Justice" vs "evil". Let us start with the State of the Union address delivered by US President George W Bush on January 30 in which he explicitly claimed that Iran, Iraq, North Korea and their allies form an "axis of evil", and said that the United States will not watch idly as these dangerous regimes threaten it with the world's most destructive weapons. Hardly had he used the expression "axis of evil" than opposing views from all countries were aroused. Beside the three countries mentioned, which voiced the strongest criticism, other countries, such as China, Russia, South Korea, and even the European Union, also expressed their grave concerns. Even beyond the influence that the expression of "axis of evil" exercises on global political relations now, it is worth reflecting on the mindset behind Bush's use of this term.

The easy branding of other states as "evil" reminds us of a previous US president, Harry Truman, who, on March 12, 1947, fully prepared to check the Soviet Union, energetically preached in an address to Congress that "at the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life ... one way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms." He also claimed that "nearly every nation must make a choice ... either they stand with us, otherwise they will be regarded as opposing us". This address, later called "Truman Doctrine", marked the beginning of the more than 40-year Cold War.

The Cold War has now elapsed, though leaving behind the cognitive modes displayed in the Truman Doctrine. A simple analysis may reach the following conclusions: 1) in this world there existed the opposition of "justice" and "evil" in the world, the United States representing the "justice" and the Soviet Union the "evil"; 2) between "justice" and "evil" every nation must either chose "justice" or "evil", and there could be no other alternative; 3) in face of the "evil", "justice" had no possibility of compromise, but only a life-and-death rivalry between them.

The Truman-style holy-war mentality, "either with the USA or with the USSR", has found echoes in George W Bush more than 50 years later. Look at what Bush said after the terrorist incident of September 11, 2001, and you will be surprised to find how similar it is to Truman's remarks. On the ninth day after the attack, Bush delivered an address before a joint session of Congress, just as Truman had in his time, and asked foreign governments to make a choice. He said: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists ... from this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." And on October 8, 2001, he said in a radio speech: "Every nation has a choice to make. In this conflict, there is no neutral ground," and asked the whole world to support the United States to launch a holy war against terrorism. These speeches after the September 11 incident now are frequently referred to as "Bushism".

To be neutral is immoral. Thus said John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state in the US administration of president Dwight Eisenhower, the American fighter of the Cold War, and today Bush is saying the same thing. All of them, Truman, Dulles and Bush, professed "the mode of living of the United States of America and the civilized world". From Truman, Dulles through to Bush, is there a clear clue that has run through the US-style strategic cultural tradition? I tend to believe that this thinking mode that too hastily divides "justice" and "evil" is a specific strategic thinking habit that has long functioned in US history and has been displayed in the past half-century in a very pronounced manner.

Either positive or negative, there is absolutely no middle ground. This simple dichotomy about the world is naturally associated with Manicheism. (1) Religious thinking often easily produces the dichotomies between "light" and "darkness". In the early 1960s, David Horowitz, an editor of Ramparts, in his book From Yalta to Vietnam: American Foreign Policy in the Cold War, used "Manichean world view" to refer to McCarthyism, which developed as an anti-communist mania in the 1950s. McCarthyists simply classified nations and people in the world into two types, those for and those against communism. Those who agreed with senator Joseph McCarthy and his followers were dubbed anti-communist, while those who did not were labeled communists. The abhorrence and hatred against the communist "pagans" not only ignited enthusiasm in the United States for the Cold War, but also initiated a big influential movement in the country to eliminate "internal enemies". How much substantial difference in ways of thinking and the practical mode of action can we find between Bushism and the Trumanism/McCarthyism of 50 years ago?

A nation ruled by "God". Though the distinction between "justice" and "evil" is the usual manifestation of a religious world view, we cannot simply say that anyone who tends to distinguish things by "light" and "darkness" and acts accordingly is exclusively under the influence of religion. Is it really religious factors that have caused Truman, Bush and others to be engrossed in categorizing the world into "justice" and "evil"?

It is common sense that Americans have their religious beliefs. The US presidents, the supreme executive leaders, must swear solemn oaths on a Bible in front of them at their inaugural ceremonies, and in terms of their own beliefs almost none of them does not believe in God. Most US presidents have had clear and strong religious convictions, in the 20th century in particular.

At his first inaugural address, Eisenhower initiated the practice of starting with a prayer. He said that unless the government was established on heartfelt religious convictions, it would be meaningless. He took up the big stick of "containment" from Truman, considering it "God's will" to impose sanctions against communism. David Horowitz called what Eisenhower adopted in the struggle with communism an eccentric "Manichean language".

Richard Nixon, the US president who stepped down in dismay after the Watergate scandal, was also a faithful believer in God. In his memoirs and political works written after his resignation, he repeatedly took pride in the United States of America as a nation ruled by God, deeming that America's prosperity was derived from Americans' belief in God. President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s was also a pious believer in God, and even made a special "praying chamber" in the White House, and introduced praying activities into the very center of US politics.

In terms of faith in God, the current US president is not different from his predecessors. After the September 11 incident, his immediate reaction was to embark on a "crusade" against Osama bin Laden and Islamist terrorism. The plan of Operation Enduring Freedom was initially given the name "Infinite Justice". The religious meanings of "crusade" and "infinite justice" are known to all. Although both the president and the Department of Defense opted for a different code name, in light of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory, the immediate subconscious reactions truly reflected their essential views.

The religious complex of the US presidents is but the tip of the iceberg once we probe deeper into the US historical and cultural tradition. By examining America's past, we will realize how firmly rooted is the distinction between "justice" and "evil" and the related political phobia.

The notion of "the American nation" is inseparable from religious beliefs, in terms of its origin and development. About 400 years ago, a large number of Puritans moved to North America from Western Europe, and one of the causes for this was religion. Protestant Puritans had suffered all kinds of oppression in Britain, their motherland, and on the European continent. In order to pursue religious freedom they crossed the Atlantic Ocean and settled down in the New World.

With the increase of population and the diversification of religious beliefs, these people were not able to avoid other forms of religious tyranny, and religious struggles resumed. The situation was grave prior to the War of Independence in the North American immigrant community: where the Protestants dominated, the Catholics would be oppressed, and vice versa. Thomas Jefferson, one of the forefathers of the United States and the "democratic soul" of the country, strongly called for religious tolerance and separation of religion from politics. After unremitting struggles, in 1777 the Virginia Congress drafted the Bill for Religious Freedom, which was not passed in the Confederate Congress until 1785 under the strong prodding of James Madison. The spirit of religious freedom and religious tolerance began to be gradually established.

This difficult course through which Jefferson strove for religious freedom might help us understand the influence of religious beliefs on the US Congress. On the first Thanksgiving Day after the Puritans reached Plymouth on the Mayflower, they held a solemn ceremony to thank their Christian God for the opulent New World, the land, their families and everything they had, believing all of these were of God's making, though it was the native Americans who taught them how to plant corn and other plants and fertilize the land.

To this day, Americans' religious complex is still very obvious, and even stronger than that of the Europeans under the influence of traditional Christianity. Recent statistics show that not only ordinary people but also the elites hold strong religious beliefs. Though in recent years religious beliefs have tended to become somewhat weaker, their influence cannot be neglected. While visiting China not long ago, in his speech at Qinghua University, Bush mentioned expressly that "America is a nation guided by faith. Someone once called us 'a nation with the soul of a church'. This may interest you - 95 percent of Americans say they believe in God, and I'm one of them."

Another aspect of the separation of religion from politics. Many might be puzzled by the hysterical anti-communism sentiments that have manifested themselves since the late 1940s. At that time, when the Chinese Communist Party gained control of most of China, Britain, France and other European countries, adopting a realistic stance, were ready to recognize the new Chinese government. In the United States, however, the new government met all-out obstruction. This attitude, differing from other Western policy circles, to the new Chinese government and Communism flowed, to a great extent, from the "crusade" mentality which, in turn, is based on American religious beliefs.

The United States is a country where religion and politics are separated. Theoretically, religion will not interfere with political practice. However, this non-intervention of the religious organizations into politics does not mean that the religious mentality will not exercise influence on the political behaviors. Though the influence is formally indirect, what is the real significance of the distinction between "direct" and "indirect"?

The strategic cultural tradition of any country will be under the influence of the national cultural tradition as a whole. American culture is constituted mainly by two elements: one is the material civilization, ie, the commercial culture, which stresses actual military and economic interests, embodied in the emphasis on the actual state interests; the other is the religious civilization, ie, the elements of the Christian culture, from which came the American concern with ideology. This is more conspicuously present in the United States than in Europe, and also marks a major difference vis-a-vis China, Japan and other countries, which feature strong secularization.

In fact, the two elements are not unbridgeable, but rather can supplement and support each other to bring out the best.

All monotheism-based beliefs, Islam, Christianity, and other religions, have an inherent repulsion toward other beliefs, which is particularly obvious in the history of Christianity. The absolute worship of "God" and the utter abhorrence of "Allah" triggered Christian "crusades" one after another in Europe during the last millennium.

Nowadays the exclusiveness in Christian culture is not so noticeable because of the secularization process. It should be noted that the tolerance of Christian culture toward other religious beliefs might have largely been due to its absolute predominance. Christian culture displays its tolerance when no one challenges it. In fact, the same thing happened several hundred years ago in the Ottoman Empire, a political entity in which the Islamic civilization was absolutely predominant, and which allowed the believers of other religions, including Jews and Catholics, satisfactory freedom. But once a religion senses pressure and challenge from other cultures, can it retain its tolerance? The rise of Islamist terrorism in the modern world after the disruption of the Ottoman Empire is a clear answer. The same mentality is also typical of the Christian faithful. When Christian culture senses the impact from other cultures and beliefs, and Americans sense the presence of an opponent, can Christian culture as a whole, and Americans in particular, remain unperturbed?

Apparently, the tolerance of the American nation is limited. It can be tolerant until other countries pose challenges or it senses that other countries are becoming its potential opponents. When the Soviet Union, a communist, heretical country, emerged to face the United States as a victor after World War II, Truman's immediate reaction was to override it and maintain American features and modes of life. US containment against the Soviet Union was thus very similar to the European crusades against the Islamic world.

At the same time, the orthodox posterities of the British immigrants have never given up their efforts to establish a culture in which Christianity has a leading position. In terms of "combining into one" or "dividing one into two", the American mainstream culture advocates "combining into one", ie, establishing one culture as the mainstream. Thus, there is no surprise that some US conservatives repulse "cultural studies" prevalent in Britain, the United States and other countries, for non-mainstream and non-Western views have increasingly posed challenges against the mainstream position of Western culture.

The American nation has inevitably inherited the European "crusade" complex. As American scholars Seymour Martin Lipsett and Gabriel Salman Lenz have pointed out, the temperaments of Protestant and Evangelical believers are more likely to make people follow absolute values. Politically, they tend to think that the social and political events are wars between God and Satan, and compromise is unlikely. For a predominantly Protestant nation, it is more than natural for the United States to develop the "crusade" complex in countering communism. Without the backing of profound religious sentiments, it is hard to imagine that in the modern world a major confrontation between convictions, ie, ideologies, may arise, and an "evil" imagination associated with other alien cultures and beliefs may be easily engendered.

According to James O Robert, an American scholar, the classical American mythology embraces the following correlated elements: 1) the United States of America is unparalleled in civilization and morality and superior to any other countries and nations in the world, while those nations that do not believe in God are "evil", inhumane and anti-humanity; 2) the United States, the incarnation of "justice", is destined to assume the obligations to promote its superior and unique civilization and values. Hence, it must unremittingly undertake Christian expeditions everywhere in the world to wipe out all kinds of "evil" forces; 3) to spread the American civilization and values, the United States is entitled to employ all possible tools, including nuclear weapons. The above three points are directly related to Americans' beliefs in God.

Fault lines and "in search of monsters to destroy". In 1912, when the Progressive Party was organized by Theodore Roosevelt, the representatives to the national assembly convention stood up and sang the popular holy song: "Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before." Roosevelt gave a speech and closed with a ringing call: "With unflinching hearts and undimmed eyes we stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord."

Roosevelt's words are of course religious. If the United States of America represents "justice", "light" and "kindness", then what are those nations that do not accept America's "justice", "light" and "kindness"? How is America to get along with them? History tells all clearly about America's choice: all countries and nations that do not accept but rather oppose the American culture and values are "evil" pagans and enemies, who must be subjugated.

On the other hand, as mentioned above, the cultural superiority and destiny world view in fact is also subject to the logic of power. That is to say, though belief conflicts, or "clashes of civilization", as Harvard University Professor Samuel Huntington put it, do exist, the clashes between beliefs and civilizations are also a reflection of the wrestling between power and interests. American strategic culture manifests itself in two objectives: 1) permanently and firmly protect the predominant position of the United States in the world, either in the field of culture and ideology, "soft power", or actual military and economic strength, "hard power"; 2) once a country or a civilization might pose a threat to the predominant position of the American nation in culture, economy, politics and military affairs, they will be considered enemies and checked without hesitation.

Besides "holy war" against its enemies, the US-style holy mentality often searches and demonizes "enemies". Faced with a "pagan" enemy, what course to follow for the United States? The natural choice is to undertake an expedition and holy war against the "evil" enemy. This is a habitual mode in praxeology. First, a moral proclamation is made from a commanding position, then the practical means are employed, consisting of containment or even military strikes against the "evil" enemy.

John Quincy Adams proudly addressed Americans on the 1821 Independence Day: "She [the United States] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy." If that happened, "she might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit." However, "in search of monsters to destroy" became exactly part of the strategic cultural tradition of the American nation, and the "crusade" complex was revived and flourished on the fresh land of the New World after being dormant for several hundred years on the European continent. It has to be noted, however, cultural and moral dominance is the major root of the clashes in the world and human misery, which, nevertheless, can hardly be noticed by the American nation. In 1901, Mark Twain asked in an article: "Shall we go on conferring our civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest?" The writer's heckle is obviously unlikely to beget self-reflection by his complacent and haughty compatriots.

Absolute security, cultural expansion and unipolar order

Big states intrinsically tend to expand their powers, and this is truer for a nation with a profound holy-war complex. The more than 200-year history of the American nation is but one of continuous expansion, though prior to World War I, it pursued the foreign policy of isolationism and had no intention to expand globally. After World War II, when Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman ushered the country into the world, it grew into the strongest country and expanded its national interests to all over the globe. The "destination" view had completely changed its spatial conception, the traditional isolationist ideas had waned, and it since World War II US foreign policy has been to shift from Americanism to globalism, launch a global "holy war" and establish its absolute predominance.

When the Cold War came to an end, the United States proclaimed victory; when Francis Fukuyama's The End of History was published, what applause it received! The 40-year Cold War ended with the Soviet Union in chaos, greatly reinforcing the unique myth of American culture and values. The holy-war mentality is an important part of US tradition, though it is not the whole picture. Its influence has extended after the Cold War. Having accumulated from more than 200 years' history of clashes, wars and expansion, it cannot be discarded easily, for its enormous inertia will keep Americans from getting off the track of a foreign policy set by history.

Those who deem that the end of the Cold War will result in a complete change in America's strategic pursuit are short-sighted, for the strategic orientation designed by US strategists and the actual policies the government has carried out since the end of the Cold War are unmistakable signs.

In the first place, let us have a look at the views and the schemes of the influential American strategists, of whom four are listed here: Richard Nixon, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington and Joseph Nye.

Richard Nixon. For America's global strategy during the post-Cold War era, Nixon, as president, had a three-point program, to which special importance should be attached. First, to the question whether the United States will continue to lead the world, Nixon gave a definite answer. In 1999: Victory Without War, a book published in 1988, when the Cold War had not ended, he proposed that the United States must assume the "destiny" to "lead the world", and in the remaining 12 years in the 20th century, the chief mission of the United States was to "shape" the US-led peace in the next century. In order to achieve this goal, the United States must throw off the United Nations when necessary. Second, after the end of the Cold War, Nixon maintained that the United States should retain its strategic achievements, "to seize the moment" and achieve more. In terms of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the US-Japan alliance, Nixon had totally different views from others. In the 1990s he repeatedly stressed that NATO should be expanded instead of being debilitated, so that the United States could play an even more prominent role and assume a new mission. For Nixon, NATO was American's main link with Europe and should never be cut off. He also proposed that NATO expand eastward and actively support Poland, the Czech and Slovak republics, Hungary and other new democratic nations to achieve the goal of a complete entry into NATO. At the same time, he energetically supported strengthening the US-Japan alliance, saying that the United States and Japan should step into the next century in concert. Third, on the issue of the military security level in the post-Cold War era, he did not approve of the view that economic security overrode military security. In Seize the Moment, he repeatedly refuted the view that the importance of military strength had decreased in diplomatic decision-making after the Cold War, and pointed out that power politics still relied on military force.

Zbigniew Brzezinski. Like Nixon, Brzezinski, national security adviser in the Carter administration, thought that America's strategic pursuit in the post-Cold War era had not essentially changed; what should be changed was the specific direction and the local aim, some of the specific strategic moves should be adjusted, while the global strategic layout was still the same. His conceptions were comprehensively reflected in his 1996 book, The Grand Chessboard, in which he stressed that the post-Cold War United States should reset the geopolitical compass, while continuing to maintain its established positions in terms of sea power, seize the time to set the grand Eurasian chessboard, establish the strategic sustaining point and control or guide the Eurasian geostrategic chess players and embrace them into the control of the strategic conceptions of the United States.

Samuel Huntington. This well-known professor of politics at Harvard University put forth in 1993 and refined in 1996 his theory of civilization clashes. He pointed out that in the world after the Cold War the major civilizations might undergo severe clashes due to differences in cultures and values. To deal with this, the United States should give up the cultural tradition of universalism, and make efforts to unite the civilized Western nations to fortify the defensive capability of Western civilization against the other civilizations.

Joseph Nye. Nye served as assistant secretary of the Department of Defense in the first administration of president Bill Clinton. He strongly maintained that the United States was destined to lead the world. Regarding specific courses of action, he thought that the United States should use both hard and soft tactics; while reinforcing the "hard forces" in military affairs and economy, "soft power" should also be stressed, ie, to make use of and spread democracy, freedom, human rights and other values. Like Huntington, he attached great importance to the roles played by cultural elements (including religion) in international politics. However, contrary to Huntington, his propositions are still presented in terms of universalism.

While the authors just mentioned mostly blend traditional liberalism with the realist principles of strength, neo-conservatism, which advocates the realization of the national interest in carrying out "moral politics", has been gaining ground in American society since the 1980s and its influence on actual politics is becoming stronger. According to an analysis by Zhang Ruizhuang of Tianjin University, its characteristics are as follows: it aims to enlarge America's predominance and establish a US-led world order; it aims to spread American culture and values to all human beings, with anyone who refuses America's "kindness" becoming the target of American "morality"; in order to achieve America's national interests and spread American civilization, military forces may be deployed if necessary, and so on.

These are the designs of the strategists, but what have the politicians done? It might be easily found that America's global strategy in the past decade since the end of the Cold War has been essentially deployed following these schemes. Under the two Clinton administrations, Nixon's and Brzezinski's geopolitical propositions were nearly put into effect, and not only were NATO and the US-Japan alliance not put offstage by the end of the Cold War, they were reinforced in their functions; control over Eurasia was not eased, but bridled even more tightly; in addition, the Clinton administration enthusiastically used every opportunity to propagandize American culture and values. In his visit to China in 1998, Clinton showed great patience in indoctrinating students with the superiority of US democracy, human rights and freedom of religious beliefs in his speech at Beijing University.

Bush, in a speech at Qinghua University during his visit to China last February, exuberantly talked about the superiority of the American culture and religion. Huntington's "clashes of civilization", from the opposite direction, has solidified the American nation's determination to carry out cultural assimilation. Moreover, the Clinton administration embarked on the program to establish national missile defense (NMD) and theater missile defense (TMD) systems, expecting to set up a strong encirclement over the United States, attempting to pursue its absolute security. After Bush took office and before September 11, 2001, his administration brewed the abolition of the ABM Treaty, from which it can be seen that its strategic intention to pursue the absolute security of the United States is no different from that of the Clinton administration.

Attention should be especially paid to the important position of the cultural and ideological elements in the foreign policies of the post-Cold War era. Nixon considered all his schemes to be derived from God's guidance; Brzezinski was on tenterhooks over the weakening of Americans' beliefs; Nye's "soft power" cannot be cleared from the suspicion of a cultural holy war; while Huntington's counteraction to the holy war seems to have a negative effect.

Consequently, the global order the United States aims to establish is in fact a cultural unipolar order, ie, what it means to establish is a world in which American culture takes the absolutely dominant position, which very much resembles the holy-war complex of the religious expansions of Christianity and Islam. In the light of this, the unipolar order that the United States seeks to establish is not only a military and political unipolar world, but also a cultural unipolar world, so that in fact it is a multidimensional complex. As a result, America's unipolar pursuit is the integration of the national interests and ideology: the construction of the cultural unipolar order conduces to the solidification of political and military predominance, which, in turn, conduces to the realization of the unipolar cultural order.

So we should not be deluded by the neo-conservatives' alleged interest in human rights and morality and justice. Though America's global pursuit contains considerations of the interests of all the human beings, this is not its main strategic pursuit. The critical concerns of its "morality politics" or "ideology" are its own national interests, for it is a natural tendency under the anarchic state of the international community for a state to pursue its absolute security and predominance. For any state the pursuit of its own security is primary and absolute; behind the eloquence about civilization, progress, morality and justice is concealed the instinct of self-protection - the only difference is that different means are used by different countries.

Strategic orientation after September 11

The events of September 11, 2001, no doubt have had a momentous influence on the whole world. The ensuing anti-terrorism operations, the readjustments of all countries' focus and the frequently talked-about terrorist threat suddenly made people and even the most experienced experts on international political issues feel as if they were "in a new world". Nevertheless, has the collapse of the World Trade Center really resulted in the reconfiguration of international relations and a new political era?

No doubt, the September 11 disaster abruptly swerved the US government's and public's attention, and to strike back at the terrorists who conspired the attack and organize a worldwide anti-terrorist alliance became the main task of the United States. The sudden shift in focus of the only global superpower naturally affected other countries and organizations in a world rapidly moving toward globalization. Therefore, it indeed resulted in a reconfiguration of international relations on the basis of whether one chooses to support America's anti-terrorism actively or just passively deal with it. Those nations such as China, Russia and so on that formerly were not on good terms with the United States became its "friends" during the anti-terrorist period, and relations of the major powers in the world seemed to be on "honeymoon". From an instant view, the world seemed changed. But have a look at America's strategic decision after September 11, and everything will be clear.

Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration's key strategic decisions and actions have been the following:

1) In early October 2001, the US launched a large-scale anti-terrorism operation in Afghanistan; on January 29 Bush officially declared the Afghan anti-terrorism operation temporarily over, but that at the same time the worldwide anti-terrorism operation of the United States had just begun, and that it was still on the verge of war.

2) On December 13, Bush declared unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty.

3) From July 2001 to March 2002, the United States undertook six flight interception experiments for its NMD system, with four successes and two failures, and this year engineering and construction of the first anti-missile positions was started in Alaska.

4) On January 30, Bush averred that North Korea, Iran, Iraq and their allies were an "axis of evil", and later repeatedly alleged that necessary operations would be undertaken against those that make and use weapons of mass destruction.

5) In March, despite China's strong opposition, the Bush administration allowed Tang Yaoming, the defense minister of Taiwan, to visit the United States and held high-level meetings with him; at the same time, in the Nuclear Posture Review submitted by the US Department of Defense to Congress, China, Russia and a few other countries were listed as targets.

All of the above-mentioned strategic measures, except the first, have kept a close continuity to US foreign policies before September 2001, and neither do they differ greatly from the global strategy in the Clinton administration. Even the expression "axis of evil", having appeared in an article by now National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice before Bush's inauguration, is but a copy of the "rogue states" notion adopted by the Clinton administration.

In addition, some recent trends are worth noting. For instance, after a short warming, US-Russian relations chilled again after the end of Afghan anti-terrorism operation. America's abandonment of the ABM Treaty was against the will of Russia, its anti-terrorist friend. In fact the move was completely different from many people's expectation that the United States would change its unilateralism after the September 11 incident. In terms of US-Israel relations, strong pressure on Israel has slackened to the present indifference to Israel's incursions into Palestine; and the slightly eased US-Europe relations again stuck into a stalemate after the anti-terrorism operation due to America's declaration of its intention to attack Iraq, and the US-European strategic conflict was again ignited; finally, the temporary mitigation in Sino-US relations fell back to the level of the air-collision incident due to America's permission to Tang Yaoming's visit and the publication of the Nuclear Posture Review, intentionally or unintentionally. During Bush's visit to China in February, he did not even mention the three Sino-US joint communiques or the "one China" principle, and what is more, even during the military strike against the al-Qaeda organization and the Taliban regime, the United States did not relent even a little on the Taiwan issue. All of these remind us of Mahan's "short-term view" and "long-term view".

A popular explanation of September 11 is that this horrifying disaster again strikingly revealed the conflicts between non-religious and religious civilizations. Bin Laden and the Taliban represent the old religious culture, while the United States and the West represent the new burgeoning non-religious culture. It appears reasonable prima facie; on second thoughts, however, can it make a cogent explanation of the religious implications in what Bush blurted out after the September 11 incident, to launch a "crusade" against Islamic anti-terrorism, and what the Pentagon initially called the operation, "Infinite Justice"? We cannot say September 11 and the subsequent anti-terrorism operation are clashes between religious civilizations, neither can we say that, as far as the United States is concerned, the religious mentality has not functioned in its actions.

Under the US-style holy-war mentality, it should have surprised none when Bush declared last December that the ABM Treaty would be officially abolished six months later. Special attention should be paid to the continuity of the Bush administration's foreign policies before and after September 2001. In fact, its intention to abolish the ABM Treaty and set up the NMD system, its inclination toward Taiwan, the upgrading of its strategic cooperation with India, and other major moves had been put into action before September 11. Though interrupted, once the "short-term exigent need" was dissolved, the "long-term views" immediately were revived.

In fact, withdrawal from the ABM Treaty is an organic part and a natural step in the integral and continuous arrangements of America's global strategy after the Cold War. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union signed and abided by the ABM Treaty, the main reason being the balance in their nuclear weapons and armed forces. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc more than a decade ago, Russia has become a country that badly needs America's help, and thus, making use of the advantageous situation, "seizing the moment" as Nixon put it, the United States was determined to withdraw from the ABM Treaty to enlarge and consolidate its strategic position as the only superpower.

September 11 did not and could not completely change the tradition of America's strategic culture and its established global strategy; on the contrary, as one of the historical tributaries, it has blended into the "historical structure" and reinforced the downward historical trend, which is collectively embodied in the "axis of evil". This was further defined by Bush, but does not belong to him alone. What it reflects is the basic view of the American public. The vicious terrorist incident on America's mainland not only changed the public's knowledge about their own safety and caused their unprecedented emphasis on internal security, but also resulted in an overflow effect, intensified the holy-war complex to carry out a global anti-terrorism operation. As far as the US government is concerned, the pathos awareness of its people after September 11 has also created conditions for achieving its global strategic goal through anti-terrorism. The United States may still use the just pretext of anti-terrorism to carry forward its global strategic arrangement.

The Bush administration's global strategy has been licked into shape after wavering, stumbling and adjustment. The main strategic considerations are as follows:

1) To ensure the absolute security of the US mainland, and prevent new incidents similar to the September 11 terrorist attack; at the same time establish the US-centered unipolar world and never allow any challenges to the leading position of the United States.

2) To carry out unswervingly the NMD program to set a tight encirclement over the US mainland; to abolish the ABM Treaty to clear ways for carrying out the NMD program; to take the time to control the geostrategic hub in Eurasia and further encroach on the strategic space of China and Russia, which may pose challenges to US hegemony; to put heavy military and political pressure on those countries that are against America's will but hold important strategic positions. Through these actions, America's strategic predominance among the main powers in the world will be enlarged.

3) By virtue of the powerful propaganda media and other means, to produce cultural and moral pressures on the part of the world beyond the United States and the West, continuously publicize American democracy, freedom and values of human rights, demonize the countries that resist American culture and values, and reduce their moral space for survival, especially Islamic countries such as Iran, Iraq, and so on.

4) To put into use all forces, including nuclear weapons, in order to maintain national security and interests of the United States and carry forward its global strategic aims.

5) To continue maintaining the policy of war marginalization, and take the moral and just pretext of anti-terrorism and anti-dissemination of weapons of mass destruction to clear out worldwide strategic barriers and firmly carry out containment of or military strikes against those who oppose America's will.

Except for the last, all of these aims are the same as before September 11, and thus the integrity of the "short-term consideration" and "long-term view" has been achieved.

The world, more peaceful or not?

There are many uncertain elements in the world. It is hard to tell definitely where the American nation's holy-war mentality and its efforts to establish the unipolar order on the globe bode well or ill for humankind in the future.

What should be realized regarding America's withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and its strategic pursuit is that, for a big world power with a certain historical tradition, its determination and will to carry forward its established strategic intention must not be underestimated. Since Truman established the strategic mentality of global holy war more than 50 years ago, the American nation has put into effect its long-established holy-war tradition by applying it to the whole world. This strategic cultural tradition has successively been embodied in Eisenhowerism, Nixonism, Fordism, Reaganism, Bushism (senior), Clintonism, and now in Bushism (junior). The strategic experiences and strategic pursuit accumulated in the past 200 years and especially the past half-century by the American nation cannot be forfeited in President Bush's hands and he surely will make use of all usable chances and times to carry on the new "Christian expedition" and the modern holy war.

The abolition of the ABM Treaty, the balancer of global strategies, naturally means a new shuffle in the world strategic situation, and the balance of the main forces in the world will inevitably change. For the United States, this means attaining absolute security and predominance, with an advanced and powerful nuclear arsenal, to establish the unparalleled NMD system through the abolition of the ABM Treaty. Thus on the one hand, it retains its nuclear deterrence, while on the other it dramatically reduces the deterrent capability of other nuclear countries, which also means the enlargement of America's strategic predominance and that the strategic gap since the end of the Cold War has been further widened between the United States and other main powers in the world.

The upset of the global strategic balance propped up previously by the ABM Treaty will certainly exacerbate the contradictions and conflicts between the United States and other main powers in the world. When a state alleges that it may attain "absolute security" or is likely to attain "absolute security", it inevitably means that other countries will be in a situation of "absolute insecurity". Obsessed with their pessimistic illusion about their own security, the countries that have strategic contradictions will be gripped by a taut uneasiness due to the complete loss of their capability to counterbalance the United States. How to resist and counteract US hegemony will become their major concern.

Up to now, in the wrestling between absolute security and insecurity, unilateralism and multilateralism, signs of cooperation between the weak sides have not been noticed. The possibility, however, cannot be excluded. If cooperation were achieved among the European Union, China and Russia and other nations that are suffering from America's pressure, doubtlessly the global order would be repositioned. During this process if the United States failed to show tolerance or effectively split such alliances, the whole world would inevitably go through a period of disorder. In terms of state relations, the conflicts between the major powers in the world - the US and Europe, China and the United States, Russia and the United States - would probably be aggravated. Of course, even as other powers united to deal with the US hegemony, the United States would still adhere to its established strategic arrangements and would never try to resume the ABM Treaty.

The ABM Treaty has been torn into shreds, nuclear predominance enlarged, and the world strategic balance broken. Other foreseeable possible occurrences are:

1) Clashes between cultures (civilizations) could be aggravated. September 11 may be taken as a verification of Huntington's prediction, ie, the implacable clashes between the global universalism of Western culture and the native trends of thought of Islamic culture. It has to be pointed out that the pressure against the non-Western culture that resulted from the universalism of Western culture is rooted in the military and economic predominance of the United States and the Western world. Universal culture requires a universal power and universal power requires a universal culture. The intensification of bloody clashes between Hindus and Muslims in India explicitly remind us of the prospects of US-style military and cultural holy war.

2) The speed and extent of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction could accelerate and deepen. While maintaining the most powerful weapons of mass destruction itself, the United States lists others who attempt to make and store weapons of mass destruction as the "axis of evil", and endeavors to launch a global modern-style holy war that not only will ignite the defiant sentiments of those on the list and cause them to improve their weaponry to resist America's blackmail, but will also worsen the sense of insecurity of those who are on bad terms with the United States.

3) Terrorist activities might escalate globally. Not all terrorist activities can be wiped out by force; they might increase because of the intensified sense of despair of the states of non-Western civilization resulting from the absolute strength of the United States, and at the same time, those countries that adopt a cooperative stance with the United States might also become the targets of terrorist attacks.

It is still hard to foretell whether the above occurrences will have an impact on the future predominance and national security of the United States. The abolition of the ABM Treaty is either Prometheus' fire or Pandora's box.

Sino-US relations: A gloomy future

The core contradiction that restricts the progress of Sino-US relations is generally considered to be the Taiwan issue. This writer does not quite agree with this. The structural elements that prevent major breakthroughs are, on the one hand, the conflicts between the two countries' major national interests and, on the other, American ideology and its obsession with morality and justice.

Since the Chinese Communist Party's taking power half a century ago, the American nation has been clamoring about the "China threat". The Cold War between the capitalist and socialist camps from the end of the 1940s to the early 1970s stirred an intensive imagination about the "evil" of communist China, which drove the United States to hysteria to the point of launching an ideological and even military holy war against China and communism. In the grip of this mentality, the Korean and Vietnam Wars successively broke out in the early 1950s and the mid-1960s. Though the "evil" myth about China had changed a little since the establishment of Sino-US relations in the late 1970s, the collapse of the Soviet Union and China's Tiananmen incident in the late 1980s brought America's view about China back to where it had been 50 years before. Given the human-rights diplomacy of the United States since the 1990s, the insinuation toward China in Bush's "axis of evil", together with the forceful development of neo-conservative trends, whether the United States wants to launch a new holy war against China is no longer a question worth discussing.

Gripped by the holy-war mentality, the Taiwan issue has become a crucial one in Sino-US relations. The American nation, treating Taiwan as an actual and even nominal state, takes it as an extremely important strategic move to prevent mainland Chinese from recapturing Taiwan by force to restrict the expansion of the "evil" non-Western cultural power of the Communist Party. In the Clinton administration, though the United States had basically completed its military deployment in Asia by elevating military cooperative relations with the peripheral states around China, it had explicitly adhered to the "one China" principle, posing an "obscure" strategy on the Taiwan issue. After Bush took power, however, this situation greatly changed. The words and actions before September 11 and after the anti-terrorism operation, such as declaring the intention to protect Taiwan by force, improving the scale and level of arms sales to Taiwan, allowing its defense minister to visit the United States and holding senior meetings with him, have evidently been favorable to Taiwan. In China's view, these greatly raise the costs and complexity of any future solution to the Taiwan issue, and also mean that Taiwan might be likely to separate from "one China", actually or nominally, which goes far beyond the bottom line of China's national security.

In working to solve the Taiwan issue, China has sensed hopelessness in obtaining America's support and understanding. Moreover, Bush explicitly or implicitly listed China as one of the allies of the "axis of evil" countries, the new Nuclear Posture Review listed China as one of the countries that could be struck by nuclear weapons in an emergency, and the abolition of the ABM Treaty and the establishment of NMD and TMD systems will raise America's strategic deterrence against China and weaken its strategic deterrence against the United States, all of which will be likely to be interpreted by China as the widening of the Sino-US strategic imbalance, the deterioration of China's national-security environment and a challenge posed against China's national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

In the increasingly grim situation of America's strategic attack, the broken bottom line of national security and the loss of a sense of security, it will be difficult for China not to switch back to conservative politics and be forced to become an actual "strategic rival" of the United States in East Asia. In that case, considering China's strength, a global arms race might be possible between China and the United States.

As far as the East Asia is concerned, however, China will certainly try to build up its predominant force in this region and start a desperate struggle against the United States when the bottom line of national security is broken. If this should happen, not only will Taiwan and the Chinese mainland be damaged, but the whole of East Asia will also be in danger. As for the United States, it is doubtful whether it can achieve its strategic goal as imagined. There will no winner in the nuclear time, which is still true up to now.

Note:
1. Manicheism, or Manichaeism, is a syncretistic, dualistic religious system originated in the 3rd century by the Persian prophet Mani (c 216-c 276), aka Manicheus, combining Zoroastrian, Gnostic and other elements.

Translated by Yao Ximing

http://www.ykien.net