This is far more complex than an agreement to set principles for the future of US-China relations. Such a piece of paper, like many that have gone before it between many other countries in the past who had the potential to be rivals and partners, will prove to be as weak or as strong as the conditions in which it exists.

The future of US-China relations are wrought with potential tensions. They extend from resource and energy competition to potential outright trade and currency conflicts that could prove to be either the seeds of cooperation or the seeds of larger conflict. There are also many questions about the future formations and fluctuations of zones of influence globally, and how these zones of influence may determine relations between the two countries, and the relations amongst many others.

Africa is an instance where the US is far behind the power curve and China shows great skill in developing relations, investments, trade, commerce, investments, and even potential ports for various applications. Pakistan and China are getting closer by the day. As the US tries to cajole and pressure the Pakistanis to "play the game" in Afghanistan, where the US is stuck in a morbid, expensive and likely less than useful conflict, the Chinese build ports, like Ghwadar, roads, pipelines, hydropower dams and more. The Chinese don't have much of a problem with the people of Pakistan like we do.

The Chinese are relatively quietly developing their relations in similar ways in Latin America (look to the massive oil and tanker deals with Venezuela, for example), Southeast Asia, and more. Particularly interesting are the moves that China has been making in the bond and other investment markets in the EU. As the EU financial markets have shown weakness the Chinese have quietly and smartly begun to purchase influence in Greece and Portugal, for just two examples.

Our growing relations with India may be a clue to what we should be doing at the economic and diplomatic, as well as technical levels. However, Chinese-Indian trade has been growing quickly. China has growing energy and economic relations with Russia as the recent opening of an oil pipeline from the fields of Eastern Siberia into Western China has shown. There are too many examples of such long term strategic thinking of the Chinese that seem so starkly forward leaning and future thinking when compared to our own clearly more short term and sometimes even self-defeating policies.

Being involved in multi-trillion dollar wars to nowhere has not helped. As we spent $3 trillion on wars, while contemporaneously falling into the worst recession in many decades, the Chinese have invested in the equivalent of one New York City each year, 19 major power plants each year, massive road works, the beginnings of a smart grid, fast trains, and increasingly improving educational and inventive infrastructure of thought and applied engineering. They have also been investing to produce 20 plus million jobs per year. We have more than that many wallowing in unemployment, if we include those who have given up, and we can't seem to get the economy moving for these folks.

We could learn from the Chinese as they have clearly been learning from us. Our people should be studying the successes and failures of China as much as the Chinese are clearly doing the same about us. Indeed, much could be learned from each other. However, we need to be careful not to give away the farm as we admire the growing power on the other side of the Pacific.

Indeed, it is important for the US to get along better with China in a long term strategic manner, but at the same time remain vigilant, careful and look to the constant verification of what is accepted as given principles of that relationship. This relationship will have a complex future. Whatever papers are to be drawn up should have many clauses that allow for flexibility and development of purpose, to put it in diplomatic terms. We should consider the documents as just one of the stones in a many years game of Go.

It is not necessarily the case that this is a zero-sum game, although it could easily end up to be that if we and the Chinese are not as clever as possible about our relations with each other and with the rest of the world, especially on resource and trade issues. These issues could prove to be the spark for much more dangerous things in the future. None of us needs that.

My sense is, however, that our relations with the Chinese are beginning a new phase. China is a very big player on the world scene. We should not think that we should in any way think we can talk down to it. This should be considered a much more equal partnership and rivalry than in the past. And as the Chinese defense expenditures increase as ours decline we need to look in the long run. We may have the defense expenditures equal to all other countries combined, but we also are facing massive fiscal problems and could face worse in the future.

We have the most powerful military in the world now. But that is now and we need to think about what the future will look like with relative powers changing. The Chinese have a very big war chest of foreign exchange, foreign assets, and cash. We have the most powerful economy on earth but, at the moment, we are having a difficult time of it.

Who is to know how this will play out over the next 50 years? Goldman Sachs thinks China will overtake the US in GDP terms by 2037 or so. In per capita terms they will not. But, still, relative economic power can lead into military and diplomatic power, and in the development of relative hegemonic strengths in various quarters. We have our baby boom Medicare, Social Security and other entitlements problems in the future, and closer in the future than some might think. The Chinese have their aging issues, but without the social safety nets that we have. These are just some of the many "common" issues that we face.

Should we be competitors or partners? Answer: yes. All strategic decisions should be considered conditional and in the viewpoints of not just the short run, the usual manner in this city, but also in the long and the very long run.

A piece of paper is not a strategic thinking hologram that develops over time, but a mostly a two-dimensional document that , if not written properly, could remain in stasis as the world changes in complex and unexpected ways – as it always does. Such a document could be a start to what will likely prove to be one of the most complex and changeable relations our lifetimes and, possibly, beyond.

This strategic question is the most important external issue that the United States faces this century; although it is sometimes understandable that we get caught up in the operational issue of terrorism.

Before discussing the question, however, we should assume that: 1) the current systems of governance remain in each country; 2) each system believes it is better than the other and works with the other out of self-interest; 3) irrespective of political systems, each country has a very different culture, which means, simply, that people think differently about the issues; and, 4) there are isolationist trends in both countries that consciously or subconsciously work against the global responsibilities of the U.S. and China.

In this context, these countries are neither partners nor rivals. They are competitive colleagues who also happen to be common shareholders in a global civilization undergirded by that advance guard of globalization: contract law. Contract law, at its essence, demands that both parties respect each other another enough to guarantee their bottom line behavior when it comes to money—that there will be a return on investment—aware that each could be hurt if that basic behavior is not guaranteed.

Any “declaration” therefore should be thought of as a contract that provides guidance about basic behavior regarding issues of common interest and disagreement. The cornerstone of the contract is the agreement that both parties will be mature in their words and actions with each other as they work toward some kind of “win-win” on each issue (especially the ones we disagree about most).

Foremost is the need to stop demonizing the other. Demonization comes from poor leaders unable to bring no solutions to the table. Demonization also enhances stereotypes among policy-makers and the public alike, preventing much needed solutions in the near- and long-term.

Second, the contract should establish some priority areas of coordination based on the urgency of reality as well as the need to establish the habits required of mature discussions. Such areas include Pakistan-Afghanistan and North Korea, as well as education, science, and technology. Other areas in need of habitual discussion are Africa and human rights.

A contract is a starting point conceived out of naked self-interest. By definition, such an agreement is brittle, shallow, and short-term. But a contract can also mature into a relationship and even partnership as both parties consider the opportunity cost of what could be through greater, intentional cooperation.

China and the United States, regrettably, are 80 percent rivals and only 20 percent partners. But rivalry in and of itself is not necessarily dangerous. What is deeply dangerous is rivalry without rules.

I agree with Michael Vlahos’s argument that arch-rivals can also be partners to their mutual benefit, although I’m not so cynical about it: Mixed rivalry and partnership is a hell of a lot better than unrestricted and unregulated enmity. The US and USSR spent at least the first two decades of the Cold War in a push me-pull you dance that eventually settled on such things as spheres of influence – we won’t put our nuclear missiles in Cuba if you don’t put yours in Turkey, for example. The US and Britain, by contrast, evolved from armed conflict – the Revolution and the War of 1812 – to a nonlethal rivalry – although Britain toyed with the idea of aiding the Confederates in the Civil War – to an abiding, if occasionally strained, alliance. Germany and its neighbors, especially Britain, France, and Russia, took the two deadliest wars in history to figure out an accommodation, namely the partition of Germany (since undone, obviously) and the binding of each half in both an international military alliance (NATO and the Warsaw Pact) and an economic bloc (the EU and Comecon).

No historical analogy is anything other than rough, but of those three examples, I’m afraid that China and the US today look most like Germany and Britain circa 1900, and we all know how that turned out. There are plenty of points of upsetting historical similarity. Like late medieval Germany, imperial China dominated its region politically, economically, and culturally, only to decline, fragment, and suffer invasion and domination. Like Germany post-1848, China post-1945 reunited politically and boomed economically – but both remained deeply insecure about their place in the world and expressed that insecurity in prickly nationalism. Germany then was, and China is now, in a distinctly uneasy transition from authoritarianism to limited democracy, a phase which historical studies suggest is more volatile and prone to starting wars than either stable authoritarianism or mature democracy. Germany faced, and China faces, a global naval power with strong democratic institutions and an equally strong sense of being entitled to world dominance. Thriving trade and economic interdependence between Germany and Britain did not ensure peace then; by themselves, they will not ensure peace between the US and China now.

But analogy is not destiny, history is not prophecy, and there is no fate but what we make. The US can deal with China’s rise better than Britain handled Germany’s, and I am optimistic that we will. If we go into this relationship with our eyes wide open to both the dangers and the potential benefits, we can work out a set of rules for the competition without having to go through a Cuban Missile Crisis to get it. The cultural winds are favorable too: After Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, American jingoism is distinctly subdued, and even at its most imperial, China was never particularly imperialistic. For all the aggravations over maritime sovereignty, access to oil, and the trade deficit, all our differences are negotiable – except one: Taiwan.

For most Chinese patriots, keeping Taiwan in some sense part of China is a matter of national identity and personal pride. For most Americans who are not isolationists, letting an authoritarian regime bully a democratic one into subservience is intolerable. It’s best to keep Taiwan’s status in limbo indefinitely.

There are delicate balances to strike. Being too rigid over arms sales to Taiwan, bilateral trade, or the Spratly Islands, or just spending too heavily on our Navy and Air Force, will frustrate Chinese aspirations, lead to trade wars and arms races, and likely spark a deadly crisis. Being too accommodating, or just cutting too deeply into Navy and Air Force budgets, would encourage China’s jingoists to play for domestic political points by launching foreign adventures – bullying the ASEAN nations over the Spratlys, for example – until they hit some nerve the U.S. cannot tolerate, and then we’re in crisis again. Setting the rules for this rivalry won’t be easy. But it is doable.

That said, it will remain a rivalry, not a partnership. The US and China are just too far apart on basic values – democracy, transparency, freedom of expression – to be natural allies. We won’t become natural allies until China becomes a democracy like us or until we become a corrupt oligarchy like them. Tiananmen Square and Enron aside, I don’t see either happening anytime soon, as in the next twenty years.

By contrast, I do see the US and India as natural partners, as I wrote in November. And however fast and far that China rises, however little and slowly it reforms, it will remain one power center in a multipolar world in which at least three other blocs – the US, the European Union, and India – are committed to democracy. That’s a world we can work with.

History tells us rivals often make the most productive partners. Here’s why:

· It’s just you and me, Baby. If the rivals happen to be the two biggest states, societies, and enterprises in the system, then everyone else has to scramble to choose sides — and become sidekicks. A big positive for the PARVALS (Must I spell this out?). Just look at the early Cold War: Great powers like Britain and France and China reduced to supporting actors.

· How do they become supporting actors? Simple: They are outmatched by the primary reality set up by the parvals. The parvals, you see, are not equal. One is clearly the senior, and one the junior. This apparent status differential is important, because it establishes a condition of competition without argument. The surface vitality of there-could-be-conflict forces all others to deal with this, and presto! It becomes the predominant new system dynamic. How well this worked for both Americans and Soviets!

· Not only do former powers have to choose sides and willingly subordinate themselves (de Gaulle’s obdurate choice for France, and its ultimate failure, proving the rule!). Both senior and junior parvals benefit as the other works to firm up their respective gaggles of clients, err, allies.

· The junior parval might also enjoy being relieved of certain senior responsibilities in exchange for slightly lesser status. Fewer upfront investment, fewer risks: Let the big guy carry the water while we get equal effect with probing low-cost initiatives, like fomenting insurgencies. The senior parvel enjoys the status of, well, being senior. Worth the cost (which by the way we can afford).

· Here is how rivalry becomes so productive to the two parvals: It lays down, gives authority to, and absolutely reifies in the world’s mind’s eye the essential order of things. This shortly becomes a True Order of the Ages. Who really questioned the Cold War? Answer: The marginalized and the foolish and the powerless. Everyone else kowtowed (except of course de Gaulle!).

· A final bonus: Both can instantly gang up to throttle 3rd Party upstarts, those would-be equals. But here is where a good thing can begin to go wrong, like Nixon going to China, instead of Moscow. Keeping China under Soviet thumb was essential to keeping our co-dependent Virginia Wolf relationship going. We took our eye off the ball. We really blew it.

So now we have China as our prospective parval of opportunity. Let’s keep our head clear on this one. Let’s try not to blow the big one again.

So let’s review the bidding of what it takes to recreate the Cold War, the most productive parval relationship of all time (or at least since the Roman-Sassanian cohabitation!).

1. There needs to be two clearly top dogs. US and China: Check. But with a caution. EU and India and maybe even Russia and Brazil need to be kept in check too. A no-brainer. Just ratchet up parval defense spending. Europe will not compete, nor Brazil, while India and Russia will try and fail. The gun is the best talisman of world status.

2. Both parvals must be “satisfied” powers. I hate ascribing states of the human mind to nation-states, but here it actually fits. The US — as in the Cold War — is the perfect senior parval while China could be an even better junior parval than the USSR. Its Commie-Confusionism (sic!) eschews the head-to-head but relishes the competition with a Sun-Tzu wink. We are strategically well met.

3. Both must be acutely aware that the stability of a Big Two parval world requires — requires — a well-rehearsed and convincingly sincere rivalry. The jockeying for advantage must keep the world’s conviction that this is truly serious stuff: It must at all costs keep the tension alive …

4. Or everything gained might be lost.

5. The Cold War should have taught us that the greatest bonus of “strategic competition” is that its reality transforms actual strategic objectives in the arena of mere bragging rights. There is no real competition. This is no high stakes game: Winner-takes-all. That would equal defeat for both parvals. The real stakes are keeping the grand deception alive, keeping the partnership dimension real and true for the parvels own societies and indeed the whole of humankind.

So here are the words of warning. Parval condominia fall apart when:

· A persistent 3rd Party emerges (look in the index under Mao)

· One of the parvals declines big-time or falls apart (the citation for Yeltsin)

· A true alternative coalition-vision rises to challenge (fat chance, try the footnotes for de Gaulle and the Bandung Conference)

· The worst: Irrevocable and existential differences emerge. The parvals leave their Golden Age and come to blows.

This is where the sure-thing bid for a US-PRC parval could fall apart. Consider this scenario:

2020: Going great guns, thank you very much. There is a carrier-competition, bringing procurement bounty and blissful memories to a US Navy suddenly restored and beloved by nation; while Zheng He pride sells the collective Chinese bosom as their new armadas fleet to Africa!

2030: Undone, undone! The slow-fuse intersection of energy need and peak oil finally hits a humanity lulled for two decades by the depressed demand of The Endless Recession (Hey it happened to Japan, why not us and Europe?). Peak oil is 20 years in the past, while the new price peaks under surging China-India demand. Much is about to crash. China sends out Zheng Hua to save the day! The USN mobilizes.

2040: Undone, undone! Climate change hits China harder than North America. China becomes the first “rogue climate state.” Desertification is ruining the North, while the water crisis of subsiding Himalayan glaciers, plus the Monsoon shift, is literally ravaging the heart of Han. Something has to be done — now. So the never-discarded artillery parks are put to salvational use: Not in war but rather to hold back the heat. Billions of pellets in the stratosphere: Cooling, cooling — but also bringing unpredictable and massive distortions to global climate. A provocation in this future, for us, might be worse than war.

China is desperate and under siege. It is willing to risk the parval relationship with America. The US for its part needs those precious liquid fuels too, and China’s torquing of global climate rings the dread tocsin in the American bell tower.

Da Capo al fine: We are into another historical rerun.

When parval relationships end, the system itself (or in our case today, the whole world) can suffer severely. Thing might seem different at first, like the gushing pronouncements that attended the end of the Cold War, once known as

The End of History

But the Apocalypse did not dock; instead within just a few years now, it is clear that the ship that came in was a return to a balance of power world, more instability, a seriously declining hegemon shorn of ideas, and looming earth-shocks for which we are all determined to assign rhetoric in place of action.

So a US-China parval might give the world coherence again — and who knows? If we really understand the complex sublimities and nuances of this relationship, we might together help the world — and ourselves — skirt the foundering rocks of the negative outcome, the bad scenario, above.

Think about it, parvals.

The adage "actions speaks louder than words' can be amended to "thoughts count more than words" when it comes to serious diplomacy. Frankly, whatever is written into the Communique or a Declaration of Principles means little in itself. It is the understandings between the two leaders that is of the utmost importance. That is to say, agreed understandings as to how they view the shape and structure of world affairs, where their interests clash or converge, and how to meet the dual challenge of 1) handling those points of friction, and 2) working together to perform 'system maintenance' functions in both the economic and security realms.

i have no confident comprehension of Chinese perceptions on these matters. As to our own, Washington does not seem prepared to engage in this exercise. It's world view is still that framed by post-Cold War triumphalism. Our mind has been fixed on the policies for maintaining or extending American dominance. That is why we have committed ourselves to a military security doctrine of dominance at all levels in all regions. That is why we are building a base network across Southwestern and Central Asia while working feverishly to suppress any forces hostile to us.

We are psychologically and intellectually unprepared to think about the terms for sharing power with China and developing mechanisms for doing so over different time-frames. Washington is too comfortable with parsing the naval balance in East Asia to reflect seriously about broad strategies. We are too complacent about the gross faults in our economic structures, and too wasteful in dissipating trillions on chimerical ventures aimed at exorcising a mythical enemy to position ourselves for a diplomatic undertaking of the sort that a self-centered American has never before faced.

Beijing leaders must be shocked by the accelerated pace of our relative decline. They probably are unprepared for addressing the consequences. China's traditional goal always has been to exact deference from other countries while bolstering their own strength - not to mpose an imperium on them. Much less do they share our impulse to arrange the affairs of the entire world. Therein lies an opportunity to avoid a 'war of transition.' It don't see anyone in the Obama administration - or for that matter outside it - appreciating this overarching reality.

I was in China in November and surprised at the level of antagonism of Chinese officials and academics toward the United States. With President Obama in Asia at the same time and the Fed having just announced the QE2, the commentary I heard from Chinese observers was pointed and aggressive toward the United States. There was real anger and frustration at US actions, which were perceived as an effort to bottle up China and limit its ambitions. The efforts of the US Congress late last year to target China as a currency manipulator did not help. A meeting of the US and Chinese leaders will be timely. They are walking a tightrope and I suspect they know it. Realistically, both parties need each other in order to cooperate across a range of issues including the ones James Kitfield lists, but China's growing ambitions and existing US interests mean that both countries will continue to run into each other on issue after issue unless more appropriate cooperative mechanisms can be developed. A joint statement would be fine, so long as it can lay out the sort of roadmap that the former national security advisor has called for, although I'm skeptical. Nonetheless, the issues are increasingly urgent; history is replete with examples of conflict between a rising power and an established power, and we need to ensure that, together, we are working to manage these issues before they take on a momentum of their own that becomes difficult to control. As the Fram auto parts commercial from the 1970's had it, you can pay me now, when the costs of maintenance are lower, or pay me later, when the costs of fixing a problem that has emerged are much higher. Better to concentrate now on the former.