WALTER RUSSELL MEAD on America, China, and Asia. “China isn’t rising in a vacuum; the rise of China, while significant, is less threatening to U.S. interests than either the appeasers or the containers think. If you think about the question regionally, the option of a middle course emerges with greater plausibility: we can promote a regional environment that makes a Chinese bid for regional hegemony impossible without embracing a policy of containment. Especially given India’s rise, but also taking account of the growing power and capabilities of countries like Vietnam, Asia is just too big and too complicated for China to hope to dominate its hood the way that other powers have tried to dominate strategic geopolitical theaters.”