Terry: On the possible exaggeration of the Chinese threat, it would be
helpful if we all qualified our reactions to such evaluations by
explicitly denoting temporal parameters. If we are talking about a
long-term threat that may be 30 or more years down the road, as some have
suggested, I would ask how plausible a French attempt at regional
hegemony might have appeared as late as the 1780s. There would also have
been people who would have scoffed at the likelihood of a second German
try from the vantage point of say the 1920s. I don't think that world
wars or even regional wars ensue from "1914 Balkan" scenarios in the
absence of the development of other factors besides a sub-regional
powderkeg. But this depends on what assumptions one employs in developing
future scenarios. Based on the variety and yet consistency of regional
hegemony efforts in Western Europe over the past 500 years, something
similar could emerge in East Asia and for that matter may already have
emerged depending on how one interprets Japanese behavior in the first
half of the 20th century. It might be interesting to compare the earlier
Japanese case re your assumption about core proximity status as a
pertinent parameter. WRT