NOTES
1 For their many conversations and insights that have shaped these thoughts, I am grateful to Peter Harrell, Jake Sullivan, Les Gelb, Heidi Crebo-Rediker, and Fred Bergsten. Thanks to Willis Sparks for his excellent editing of this piece, and to my first and consummate editor, here and in all things, Karen Youngblood. All views and opinions contained here are purely my personal views, writing in a private capacity, and nothing in this piece should be construed to imply any view or position, informal or otherwise, of the U.S. government. All errors are my own.
2 Helene Cooper and Mark Landler, “Clinton Moves to Widen the Role of State Dept.,” New York Times, December 22, 2008. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/us/politics/23diplo.html.
3 Les Gelb, “GDP Now Matters More than Force,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2010.
4 Hillary Rodham Clinton, Remarks before the Economic Club of New York, October 14, 2011. Available online: http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2011/10/175552.htm.
5 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/06/14/fact-sheet-obama-administration-accomplishments-sub-saharan-africa.
6 In Saxe’s parable, six blind men approach a single elephant; touching a different part of the elephant’s body in isolation, each concludes that he has learned its true nature. One touches the animal’s leg and concludes the elephant is like a tree; another touches its trunk and decides that the elephant is like a snake; and so on. Each of them fundamentally fails to grasp the nature of the creature.
7 See, e.g., Clyde Prestowitz, “China’s Not Breaking the Rules. It’s Playing a Different Game,” Foreign Policy, February 17, 2012. Available online: http://prestowitz.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/02/17/chinas_not_breaking_the_rules_its_playing_a_different_game.
8 Ibid.
9 I am indebted to Doug Rediker for this point.
10 See, e.g., Robert Wright, “Is China Democratizing?” New York Times, April 17, 2009; Suisheng Zhao, ed., China and Democracy: The Prospect for a Democratic China (New York: Routledge, 2000); Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, “Accommodating ‘Democracy’ in a One-Party State: Introducing Village Elections in China,” in Elections and Democracy in Greater China, edited by Larry Diamond and Ramon H. Myers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). Compare: Mary Gallagher, Contagious Capitalism: Globalization and Labor Politics in China (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); James Mann, The China Fantasy: Why Capitalism Will Not Bring Democracy to China (New York: Viking, 2007).
11 C. Fred Bergsten, “The Dollar and the Deficits: How Washington Can Prevent the Next Crisis,” Foreign Affairs, Volume 88, No. 6, November/December 2009.
12 From NATO’s Chicago Summit Declaration on Afghanistan in May 2012: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_87595.htm.