It follows also that increasing U.S.-Japan security cooperation in the Far East should be designed in a manner that does not mimic NATO's originally overt focus on the Soviet Union's aggressive intentions. For the present, China does not have the capacity for genuinely serious regional aggression. Accordingly, ongoing U.S.-Japan-South Korea defense planning as well as joint exercises should avoid an overtly anti-Chinese cast. In addition, China should be included, as much as possible, in the emerging multilateral dialogue regarding regional security. It has taken years, and much American effort, to precipitate serious three-way U.S.-Japan-South Korea military discussions. Some four-way U.S.-Japan-China-South Korea defense consultations have also been initiated, and these may become gradually more formal. The key point to bear in mind here is that regional security in Northeast Asia is not a zero-sum game; how China is treated might well become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

The politically sensitive issue of Theater Missile Defense (TMD) is very germane to the above comments. Handled well, a TMD system could be regionally stabilizing; handled badly, it could spark intense U.S.-China hostility while setting off in Japan a polarizing and destabilizing debate over Japan's relations with the United States and with China. Accordingly, two important precautions are in order. The first is that no regional U.S.-Japan-South Korea TMD should include Taiwan either formally or through direct deployment. Taiwan can be de facto covered by a TMD located on U.S. naval platforms, thereby avoiding the Chinese charge that the United States is reverting by the back door to a formal defense arrangement with Taiwan. Secondly, consultations with the Chinese regarding any eventual missile system should be held on the same basis as proposed to Russia. There is no compelling reason to treat China differently.

More generally, it is also important to make the utmost effort to stimulate a comprehensive strategic dialogue with China regarding not only the security of Northeast Asia but of Eurasia more generally. Whenever possible, it should be a triangular dialogue, involving also the Japanese. Appropriate subjects should include the future of Russia (a topic rarely discussed in depth with the Chinese--yet of vital importance to China, given its far larger population, rapidly growing economy, and the emptiness of the neighboring Russian Far East), the status of the Central Asian states (with their energy resources being of great interest to both China and Japan), stability in Southeast Asia, and the unstable relationship between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. Developing and institutionalizing such a dialogue, and especially making it truly trilateral, will require a major effort and much time, but promoting it should be viewed as a high U.S. strategic priority.

A three-way strategic dialogue could in turn pave the way for a broader Eurasian security forum, spanning America, Europe, Russia, China and Japan. The west of the Eurasian continent is already highly organized through NATO and the EU, and these integrated structures overlap with Eurasia's volatile "middle zone through the fifty-four member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which includes Russia and the Central Asian states. In the east, institutionalized security cooperation involves only the formal U.S.-Japan and U.S.-South Korea treaties as well as the informal Japan-South Korea consultations. China is not formally engaged, and there is no equivalent to the loosely cooperative OSCE. At the very least, a serious five-way strategic dialogue might prompt the redefinition of the letter E in OSCE from "European" to "Eurasian" through the inclusion in an expanded and redefined OSCE of a dozen or so Asian states.

Dealing China In

THE TASK OF assimilating China into a wider Eurasian equilibrium has to be pursued on other fronts as well. In addition to shaping a more sustained triangular relationship with China and Japan, China's accession to the WTO and the regularization of normal trade relations between the United States and China would be significant steps in the gradual integration of China into the world economy. Much the same applies to the question of China's inclusion in the G-8 (which I have been advocating for more than three years). The G-8 summit has become a hybrid, neither a forum for the democracies nor a conclave of the most advanced economies. That dual formula was compromised by the politically expedient decision to include Russia, hardly an advanced economy and questionably a democracy. Similar political expediency, therefore, should dictate the inclusion of the economically much more dynamic China, with the G-9 thereby becoming a more genuine global power forum. That would propitiate China's quest for status while also enhancing its stake in the emerging global system.

In some respects, China's international behavior is already no worse, and may be even better, than India's. New Delhi over the years backed various forms of Soviet aggression, went to war with its neighbors more often than China, flaunted its disregard for nuclear non-proliferation, used force to resolve some colonial legacies such as Goa, has been careless of human rights in Kashmir, and has proved no less obstreperous than China in the WTO negotiations. Yet no leading presidential candidate in America has labeled India as America's major "competitor", as was the case with China in late 1999. Obviously, India's democratic credentials give its external ambitions a more benign cast, but the comparison with India--like China a very poor, developing, but also politically aspiring power--should help to place in perspective the somewhat overheated fears of China.

Still, it is important to reiterate that China is unlikely to become America's strategic partner again in the manner that it was during the decade starting with the late 1970s. The most that can reasonably be expected, barring a serious domestic or international crisis, is that China will gradually become an increasingly cooperative player in the international "game", in which the major participants play according to shared rules even while each keeps his own score. As a major regional player, China will occasionally collide with the United States, but it is also likely to find that its long-run interests are better served by observing common standards. China may thus become neither a formal ally nor a declared enemy of America but an important participant in the evolving international system, increasingly meeting and grudgingly accepting more and more of that system's conventions.

Such an internationally more cooperative China will have an important geostrategic effect on Eurasia. Given Russia's evident fears of China's larger economy and population, such a China will be much more likely to push Moscow toward the Atlanticist Europe than a China that is antagonistic toward the United States. At the same time, such a China will reinforce Japan's stake in a stable alliance with America without frightening Tokyo either into rapid rearmament or into divisive tensions with the United States.

It follows that the central strategic task of U.S. policy toward China should be nothing less than the attainment of a fundamental, truly historic shift in the mindset of the Chinese elite: to view China no longer as the self-isolated Middle Kingdom, or as the Celestial Empire, or as the aggrieved victim, or as the world's revolutionary center--but, more prosaically, as a vested partner in Eurasian stability and as a key player in the global system.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to the president, is author of The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives (Basic Books, 1997).