The Rise Of The Middle Kingdom
Reading reports of China's test of an anti-satellite missile system made me wonder out loud this morning whether we should really be concerned about China as a future military threat?

A standard answer to that question might be that war between America and China would seem a pretty far-fetched proposition given the mutual inter-dependence of their two economies - even allowing for the Taiwan issue.

However I was then reminded of my school days studying The Great Illusion (1910), a book by a leading pundit of the day, Sir Norman Angell, who went on to win the 1933 Nobel Peace Prize.

If my memory serves (and I've lost my copy or returned it to the library so can't quote) Angell postulated that war would become a thing of the past in a world where national economies had become inter-dependent.

Simply put, the price of fighting your neighbour wouldn't be worth paying.

As the subsequent two World Wars showed, Angell's theory grossly underestimated man's capacity for irrational behaviour, particularly when matters of national pride and centuries of historical resentment are at stake.

So, should we fear China? Are Rumsfeld and Cheney - who definitely don't take China's peaceful assurances at face value - just two deranged old hawks who can be safely ignored?

I suspect not. Historians out there will correct me, but I can't think of a major world power that has emerged without spilling blood along the way.

Why should China be any different? Because the world is different now? Because all our national fortunes are now bound up together in a web global trade?

Because we've learned our lessons from World Wars I & II? Because we have functioning supra-national institutions to prevent a repeat of the World Wars?

I'm not sure I find any of those reasons too comforting.

The competition for the world's resources - energy, water, food - is only going to grow more intense - a fact which China has made plain by a string of alliances in Asia and Africa designed to secure its own supplies for the future.

Also, China's own repeated assurances that its ambitions are wholly benign beg the greater question as to why China feels the need to give such reassurance in the first place.

Nationalism is also on the rise in China as that country emerges from its Communist shell to take its place in a new global economic order which, some of today's pundits see being christened at next year's Beijing Olympics.

This is not all meant to sound paranoid or potty - it's just a reminder that after the 1914-18 War everyone thought it couldn't happen again - and yet it did, just 20-odd years later.

I'm not sure the world - or the people who rule it - have changed so much these past 60 years.