The U.S. Moves To Contain China

U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands with China's President Xi Jinping during a joint news conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing November 12, 2014. Petar Kujundzic/Reuters

Bill Powell, Newsweek: In Washington, a Strategic Shift on China—Toward Containment

"China represents and will remain the most significant competitor to the United States for decades to come. As such, the need for a more coherent U.S. response to increasing Chinese power is long overdue.”

The words are dispassionate: “significant competitor”; not "enemy.’’ They are careful: "A more coherent response." That suggests that heretofore the U.S. response to increasing Chinese power has been at least somewhat coherent. But there should be no mistaking the significance of the above sentences. They are the first of many in a lengthy new report issued by the Council on Foreign Relations. For decades, the “council,” as the cognoscenti call it, has been the core of the American foreign policy establishment. When it comes to foreign affairs, it doesn't just regurgitate the conventional wisdom, it creates it.

WNU Editor: The Soviet Union was primarily a military power ... and they were "contained" in that matter. China is an economic power and a growing military one .... this puts them in a totally different category.