Well argued. A message (and debate) that needs to get greater attention in Australia.

The same old song.

>>But that reality does not give Beijing license to throw its weight around with impunity, even if other nations have done so in the past.<<

This is the attitude that emerging economies have come to expect of us: do as I say now, not as I did then.

The "Western" world has spent the last several hundred years exploiting the crap out of undeveloped countries, and now expects to be given license to wag its finger at anyone who aspires to a similar lifestyle.

The fortunate part is that economic power no longer necessarily comes from the barrel of a gun, as it has most often in the past. So - good news - fewer people are likely to die during the regime change.

But the genie is well out of the bottle, ladies and gentlemen. It would be a far more profitable exercise to take a good hard look at our own overblown expectations, than try to put a lid upon the ambitions of a country like China.

What comes around, goes around. Just because we don't feel any responsibility for our predecessors' actions (East India Company, Cecil Rhodes, the Opium Wars, Francisco Pizarro etc.) doesn't mean that those affected (India, Africa, China, South America etc.) have forgotten how they were treated.

We should wake up, and learn to live with the new economic power structures - and China is just the first of this millennium's global shifts - or we will make ourselves deeply unhappy.

"But that reality does not give Beijing license to throw its weight around with impunity, even if other nations have done so in the past."

This is certainly US recognition of what America is doing NOW in Iraq and Afghanistan - with Australia's loyal assistance.

China externally has been very, very, clean compared to the US record in the last thirty years.

America demands Australia's loyalty in return for America's nuclear defence deal. Yet America refuses to sell us the nuclear weapons that we could use to defend ourselves independently.

America also refuses to sell us its most effective conventional weapon, the F-22. Instead Australia has been pressured by the US to be an early commercial booster and buyer of the inferior, underpowered F-35.

This is in the face of the development of the Indian-Russian PAK FA fighter in the next 8 years in our region and China's development of its own 5th generation fighter.

The Indian, Russian and Chinese fighters will be superior to our F-35. They may be exported to Indonesia and Malaysia. We will be again dependent on the conventional and nuclear defence shield that America intentionally imposes and rations to us.

The solution - go with China. Thats where the money is. It has exhibited more moderation than the US in the last 30 years. China is also less duplitious to its allies.

Having grown up with strong ties to the US national security establishment I can see now that the US should be sharing much more of its defensive technology. The US my well shrink in power in the Pacific to its Guam and Hawaiian possessions once Japan and Australia realise that their defensive future lies internally - and not with the US which has maintained its hold by withholding key weaponry.

Pete