America and the World

DAVID IGNATIUS: It’s a truism, for those of us who think about foreign policy, that the great challenge of the twenty-first century is to find a way to bring a rising China into the global community of nations in a way that is stabilizing, that adds to the integrity of the system instead of weakening it. There’s no question that China will get bigger militarily and stronger economically and generally become a more dynamic player in the system. Many people feel that that will threaten the United States. Zbig, how do we turn China’s growth into something that’s in our interest?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Well, let me confess to being somewhat optimistic. First of all, the United States’ concerns about some aspects of the Chinese rivalry, for example in trade, in business, or potentially in the military area, are quite legitimate. And there is a bipartisan desire to assimilate China into the international system.

That, of course, implies an American willingness to adjust to reality. Assimilating China into the international system is not like absorbing some small country. It requires gradually changing the international system and redefining the meaning of American pre-eminence. In that regard, I think America’s attitude is much more farsighted than the attitude of the major imperial powers in 1914, when Germany was using its elbows and trying to become a major world power with serious imperial and colonial aspirations. We are acting much more intelligently.

Secondly, part of my reason for optimism is my sense that the Chinese leadership is not guided by some Manichaean ideology in which their future depends on the imposition of their value system on the world like, for example, Stalinist Russia or Hitler’s Germany. They’re guided much more by the thought that they have to be part of the world and are trying, within reason, to figure out how to do it. I think if both sides remain reasonably sensible and nothing very disruptive happens, this process will go on.

BRENT SCOWCROFT: I, too, am optimistic. From the U.S. side, the process started back in the early 70s when we reached out to China at the heart of the cold war—and we reached an understanding with China that we would join together to oppose Soviet hegemony. That put a different coloration, in the eyes of the American people, on China and what it was about.

We also established, mostly after World War II, a kind of new world order governed by open systems. We did that in part as a reflection of the mistakes of the world between the wars, though we required Germany and Japan to democratize before we let them back into the world order. So we constructed a kind of open system. For example, we let the communist Chinese assume the China seat in the UN, despite the nature of its system. It was a welcoming environment from our perspective.

On the Chinese side, after 1949 they became a hermit nation. They didn’t really seek relations with anybody except the Soviet Union, and even that grew pretty acrimonious. Only gradually have they come out of their isolationist shell. In their economic development, they are now realizing that they need the world. First of all, they’re becoming increasingly dependent on imports of raw materials. Secondly, they’re very dependent on foreign markets for their manufacturing. That means they need a stable international structure to assure reliable access both to raw materials and to market output.

Unlike Germany before World War I, they don’t want to overturn the system. They want to join the system, and it just happens to be a system that’s pretty open and congenial, so while there’s a lot of nervousness around, and you can read negative statements from either side, I think we have a better chance than the world has seen in a long time to incorporate China into the system.

IGNATIUS: But in a world where a rising China wants access to raw materials to maintain its economic growth, and wants to be assured of a stable environment, why isn’t it a natural rival of the United States? Raw materials are in finite supply. There will be competition for them. We see the Chinese pursuing their self-interest rather ruthlessly in their trade dealings with Iran and other countries, contrary to U.S. foreign policy interests. Why aren’t we on a collision course?

SCOWCROFT: That’s a very good point. Our desired structure is a trading system that is open to everybody. If the Chinese seek exclusive relationships, that’s a problem. But so far, they’ve been prepared to enter an open system.

Now there are some troubling notions. If the United States insists on a formal position of primacy—that we are the number one and everybody else is insignificant—as we sometimes hear nowadays, then that’s a real danger signal. But so far, we haven’t acted that way. On energy, for example, we’ve taken the position that there’s x amount of supply in the world, y demand in the world, and we’re prepared to support an allocation system which is open to all.

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah, potential rival, ruthless in the pursuit of their interest. When you say the Chinese are ruthless in the pursuit of their interest, aren’t you also describing the United States? Our business operations internationally are very energetic, to put it euphemistically. And we are not disinclined to promote our interest to the maximum.

But inherently the notion of a rival, business rival, includes the notion of restraint. It’s not the same thing as ruthless imperial military competition, which ends up in a collision. And I think that thought, that realization, guides both us and the Chinese. We both realize that we will not benefit by a collision that approximates the great collisions of the twentieth century.

There is a second point. We know more or less how our leadership operates. We know much less about their leadership. But my own experience in dealing with their leadership is that it is remarkably sophisticated, eager to learn, and quite deliberate in its effort to understand realities. That was my first impression when I met Deng Xiaoping. At the time we were able to develop a quasi-secret alliance against the Soviet Union which involved joint intelligence operations and joint assistance to the resistance in Afghanistan.

And while generally I’m impressed by the very deliberate nature of the Chinese leadership’s efforts to educate themselves, let me cite you one specific example that has been intriguing me. For about five years now, the Chinese leadership has held, at the highest level, a seminar for the top leaders. Just for the top leaders like our national security council.

It’s a full-day session led by some specialists. All the top leaders have to attend, and here are some of the topics they have addressed: One session is called “The Importance of the Constitution and Understanding the Rule of Law”—something very alien to their communist dictatorship. Another session: “Better Understanding of the World Economy and Particularly of Globalization Trends.” “Trends in Military Technology,” another session. “Overview of World History with an Emphasis on the Rise and Fall of Imperial Powers.” I wish our president had spent some time in sessions like that.

Another one, “International Trade, Investment, and the Importance of China Going Global.” “Urbanization and Economic Inequality,” “Intellectual Property Rights,” “Governing through Science,” “Democracy and the Rule of Law,” “How to Democratize a One-Party System.”

This kind of leadership means that the Chinese understand both the potential of their power and also the dangers of exceeding its limits. And, therefore, unless there is some domestic upheaval in China, I rather think that the adjustment is not going to be all that difficult, even if it’s occasionally painful to us because China is being more competitive. If there is a domestic upheaval, all bets are off.

IGNATIUS: Let’s examine that in a little more detail. The Chinese leadership does have this Confucian element—wise men meeting together, seeking to inform themselves in the way you described—as the leadership of this modern mandarin elite. But out in the countryside, there is increasing ferment.

We’ve just lived through a few weeks of serious unrest in Tibet that spread to some other Chinese cities that have Tibetan minorities. My friends who study China carefully tell me that there’s a growing problem with people who come to the cities from the provinces who can’t find work or can’t find work with which they can support themselves. They’re either living in poverty in these cities or going back home angry and unhappy.

Brent, there are people who look at that kind of evidence and say, “China just isn’t going to be able to hold together. The autocratic, Confucian elite is not going to be able to impose its will on the country, and this China is just going to break up.” And that’s the danger. It’d be nice if it would hold together, but it won’t.

SCOWCROFT: If you look back at Chinese history, you find recurring periods of going from a highly centralized, very tightly knit country to chaos. My sense is that the Chinese leadership is deeply fearful of instability. I think that fear is one of their driving motives. It’s behind their fears, for example, of opening up the system politically: they’re afraid of instability. And I understand why instability is a specter they are concerned about.

There’s tension between the countryside and the cities, and tension between rapidly growing wealth in the country as a whole and extreme poverty at the lower end. Increasingly, there is the question of how to deal with the rape of the environment that has accompanied their remarkable economic growth. These are huge problems. They almost certainly will concern the leadership more than they have before. I don’t want to predict what might happen, but they have tremendous problems.

But I think one of the least likely directions for any instability is outward aggression. Chinese history indicates that the Han Chinese have not been unusually aggressive. When China has been aggressive, it’s usually after they’ve been conquered from the outside and are run by “outsiders.”

SCOWCROFT: Yes, or humiliated. One of the things for which they really do bear a grudge against the West is the humiliation of the nineteenth century. That’s deeply burned into their historical consciousness.

IGNATIUS: So how do we play that card, if you will, Zbig? Should we be gentle with this Chinese leadership and not exacerbate its problems by encouraging the kinds of things that would lead to unrest and, over the long run, change, such as more democracy? Or do we keep the pressure on, saying to the Chinese, “This system you have, this wooden Communist Party-based autocracy is not going to work in the modern world”? What’s the right line for us to take?

BRZEZINSKI: Just a footnote to what Brent said, and then an answer to your question. When I was last in China a couple of months ago, a dinner was given for me by Jiang Zemin, the former president. I asked him, “What is the biggest problem you face in China?” And he said, “Too many Chinese.”

In a way, that’s a good answer. The floating unemployed population now is about two hundred million, except that it floats from place to place because there’s all this going on. New cities growing, huge interstate highway system, fantastic, like ours.

BRZEZINSKI: No cars on it, that’s right. But a system already of about forty thousand miles. Ours, built in the 1950s and 60s, is sixty-five thousand miles. The Russians are building their first superhighway from Moscow to St. Petersburg right now, their very first. And you still drive on gravel when you try to drive from Moscow to Vladivostok.

But on this larger issue of how we deal with the Chinese. First of all, with respect. This is not a civilization that’s going to accommodate easily to hectoring or lecturing from us. The Chinese are profoundly conscious of their history and culture, and with justification. It is one of the great histories and cultures of the world. If we’re going to lecture them on how to conduct themselves, I don’t think they’re going to be responsive.

Secondly, they are intelligent. The leadership is very intelligent. One of the things the leadership is conducting right now is a public discussion on how to infuse “more democracy,” whatever that means, into a nondemocratic system. They know they have to accommodate the popular desire for a more open government. I think at the margins, we can discuss this with them as friends. But if we do it arrogantly, we’re just going to get rebuffed and nothing we say is going to be considered.

The last time I was in China, they were terribly worried that Taiwan was going to be the source of disruption for the Olympics. I said, “I don’t think that Taiwan will be but Tibet could be.” And I said to them, “Look, you know I’m a friend of China. You should talk about this with the Dalai Lama. He accepts Chinese sovereignty over Tibet, and he’s against the boycott on the Olympics.” And they said, “No, no, he’s an enemy of China.”

Right now, as we talk, the situation has gotten out of hand, and perhaps it is wiser to talk to others. But if we lecture the Chinese about the Tibetans and tell them what to do, they’re likely to say to us, if they respond, “What about your problem with the blacks? What about the injustice in America? What about the disparities in income which are so fantastic and getting wider?”

I don’t think we can teach the Chinese how to conduct themselves. But we can find ways of living together, if we have a foreign policy that doesn’t intensify economic and social frictions into geopolitical collisions, and if at the same time we try to create a framework of stability that pertains not only to our relationship with China but also to some of China’s neighbors: Japan, South Korea, perhaps India, and the countries in the Pacific ranging from Australia to Indonesia. A diversified American policy of creating a web of relationships and of preventing the Chinese from excluding us from the mainland is a policy we can very successfully pursue. This is why, again, I’m a cautious optimist.

IGNATIUS: Brent, do you think that, say, ten years from now, China will be more democratic, that the party will gradually loosen its control? Or should we look forward to pretty much a continuation of what we see now?

SCOWCROFT: I think there’s a growing struggle. As they started on their economic development program around 1978, Deng Xiaoping said, “To get rich is glorious” and “I don’t care whether a cat’s black or white as long as it catches mice.” I think they started it because they thought the key to stability was a steady increase in the Chinese people’s standard of living. If they could deliver that, then they would have security.

They delivered quite brilliantly on their economic program. Their political structure has not kept pace. My sense is they know it hasn’t kept pace, but they’re not sure what to do about it. They’re toying with rudimentary democracy in some of the villages. Some are saying that democracy should perhaps exist inside the Communist Party. In the election to the central committee last fall, I think they had some 29 more candidates than the 371 seats being contested. So there was a slight—

SCOWCROFT: I don’t think so, because as we just said, they’re facing enormous problems. If there’s a great eruption of unrest, if riots break out, if there’s lawlessness, they could easily turn sharply right and crack down very, very hard and say, “Look, this happened because we loosened up.”

IGNATIUS: Zbig, you could argue that the cold war really turned on the alliance with China that was begun by Henry Kissinger, and on the joint effort that you helped structure as we and the Chinese tried to stop the Russians in Afghanistan. Through that whole period, the flashpoint has remained Taiwan.

In the last few months, there has opened up the possibility of resolution of that source of tension, with the election of a nationalist government in Taiwan and a new president, who says he wants to negotiate with Beijing on normalization of relations. Do you think that’s realistic? How can the United States help that process?

BRZEZINSKI: I think the new leadership in Taiwan recognizes the subtle nature of their relationship to China. Taiwan is both part of a broadly defined China and yet separate, and they are prepared to increase the connection between Taiwan and China, to encourage family and social contacts, facilitate investment across the Taiwan Strait, increase air travel—in brief, to promote normalization.

On one of my visits to China, Deng Xiaoping used the occasion to use me almost as a prop for this notion of “one China, two systems.” In one China there would be diversity in the sense that Hong Kong would have one system of government and of course the mainland has another. I have repeatedly suggested to the Chinese that the time has come to revise that, and it should be “one China, several systems.” Because Taiwan again has a different system. Taiwan is a democracy, for example. I don’t expect the mainland to be a democracy like Taiwan in the near future, for the reasons Brent described, and I don’t expect Taiwan to regress into an authoritarian system. But it can have increasingly close contacts with China, Cross-Strait’s investment, and movement of people and students and businessmen, much of which is already happening. And in effect, create a situation in which a growing China is a patron for several systems.

Tibet is a more difficult problem, because Tibet has a really distinctive ethnic culture. It is the cradle of Chinese Buddhism. The problem is not so much that China controls Tibet, since even the Dalai Lama is prepared to accept Chinese sovereignty. But the Chinese are beginning to swamp the Tibetans by development and settlement. Maybe the development is well-intentioned and the swamping is not deliberate. Probably it is partially deliberate. But in any case it happens, and that is where the friction arises. The Chinese still have to work out a real accommodation with a significantly different ethnic and religious entity that has to be respected if it is not to be rebellious. That is an important, difficult challenge.

IGNATIUS: Brent, if the Taiwanese government does succeed in normalizing relations, the flashpoint we’ve all worried about for a couple of generations would be effectively gone. Wouldn’t that open the door to a quite different way of thinking about China and the threat it poses?

SCOWCROFT: It might. But Taiwan has already gone from being the most likely flashpoint for a conflict to something less than that. Instead, rising in the background is this growing power rivalry. Taiwan might occasion a conflict, but it wouldn’t necessarily be the cause.

I don’t think there’s going to be a resolution of the Taiwan issue in the near future. But it may diminish substantially as a possible flashpoint. There was a real danger that the outgoing president, Chen Shui-bian, who tried very hard to move toward independence, might do something that would bring us into direct confrontation with Beijing. That is much less likely now.

SCOWCROFT: And that’s an interesting thought. Ten years ago, the Chinese believed that, with respect to Taiwan, time was not on their side. They feared that the Taiwanese would grow more and more independent as the mainlander Chinese died off. So there was a big effort in the 90s to push reunification while Jiang Zemin was still in office. Gradually they have come to realize that time is probably on their side. The economy of Taiwan, the major industries, were moving wholesale over to the mainland, and cultural ties were developing very strongly. The Taiwanese became the ones who began to think time was not on their side. I think we may be heading toward a peculiarly Chinese solution to the problem. There could be something like what Zbig mentioned, a greater China of which the mainland is a part, Taiwan is a part, Hong Kong, Tibet, and so on.

IGNATIUS: For some, that raises the specter of a new Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, to use the term the Japanese coined for their Asian imperialism. And that does frighten people. Even as China solves its problems with its neighbors, it becomes more of a regional superpower. Should we worry about that?

BRZEZINSKI: We should worry about it because it implies, if not exclusion, then a significantly diminished American role on the mainland of the Far East. And we have, in a way, stood up to the Chinese in the debate over what should be the free-trade area in the Far East. Should it be Asia and China, or should it be Asia, China, Japan, and the United States?

But what is important about that kind of discourse is that it’s not likely to lead to anything remotely similar to a politically motivated war. It’s more an ongoing bargaining and adjustment as China fits itself into the new system while hopefully we respond intelligently, protecting our interests as we engage others subtly in helping us to maintain a more polycentric Far East. This is where our relations with Japan are still very important.

This is also where India can play a role. India is not quite Far Eastern, but it is certainly on the margins. It will be a challenge to our diplomacy and our business to make this complex game work in our interest, without the apocalyptic, almost Manichaean views that are a legacy of the twentieth century.

SCOWCROFT: We do have to be concerned about it. I don’t think we have to be fearful, but we have to watch. There are several things, like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization grouping of Asian states, which the United States has not been invited to join, that we should keep an eye on.

The Chinese reaching out to the ethnic Chinese community in other states could be a danger. But it would also be a danger for the Chinese, because it could increase anti-Chinese sentiment in those states. They might fear the indigenous Chinese as a possibly subversive element in their populations, or as provoking a reaction like the one in Tibet, where the protests seem to have been directed against Han Chinese. This is a complex situation of concern for both China and the United States.

IGNATIUS: Each of you has said in different ways that this is, as an economist would say, a positive-sum game, a situation where each side really will benefit substantially from cooperation with the other. If they fail to cooperate, it’s bad for both. The question then becomes, how do these two superpowers, the United States already dominant, China rising, find a way to cooperate with each other on issues that matter?

Let’s take the most difficult regional challenge at present, which is North Korea, a country that has recklessly moved to become a nuclear state, despite repeated warnings, and has actually tested a nuclear weapon. Through the six-party talks created by the Bush administration, the United States and China have been struggling to find a diplomatic solution to the North Korean nuclear problem. How successful has that effort been? Perhaps more important, what does it tell us about China’s ability to be an effective partner to the United States on security issues? It’s seemed to me, as an observer, that the Chinese are not willing to risk that much to solve this problem. Zbig, am I wrong?

BRZEZINSKI: I think you’re partially wrong, at least in your wording. I’m sure the Chinese haven’t done everything we would like them to do. They have not joined us in making explicit threats to the North Koreans in order to obtain their compliance. But the fact of the matter is, without the Chinese we wouldn’t have made the progress we have. They have been the critical player in getting the North Koreans at least partially to comply, even though we haven’t had full compliance.

BRZEZINSKI: Basically they have told the North Koreans they cannot count on Chinese protection if push comes to shove, and that’s terribly important. Besides, the North Koreans have a very serious domestic economic problem. Their trade window to the world is China. So the Chinese have been very helpful. They were the ones, more than anybody else, who made the difference. The Japanese have been with us, but their leverage with the North Koreans is limited. The Russians have been going along, but not decisively. It’s the Chinese.

Whether we’ll get the full accommodation we seek is still uncertain. We are dealing with an unpredictable regime that shifts its mood dramatically. As we talk, they’ve just made a scorching threat against South Korea. So the North Koreans are difficult customers. But we and the Chinese are the ones who have moved them to make the concessions they have.

Now, why did the Chinese do that? I think largely because they don’t want a flare-up right next to them. And probably because, as Brent said, they feel that time is on their side. If there is ever a unified Korea, it probably will eventually gravitate towards China rather than towards Japan and us. From that standpoint, the Chinese have a long-range interest in the outcome being both constructive and peaceful.

SCOWCROFT: There has been an evolution on both sides. I don’t think the Chinese want the North Koreans to have a nuclear capability any more than we do. A decade ago, if you asked the Chinese—and I have—about North Korea, they would say that they had gone their separate ways and no longer had much in common. As a result, they had few dealings with the North Koreans anymore.

SCOWCROFT: And say that it was not their problem. Then, gradually, they said that they would agree to the six-party talks, furnish the meeting room, provide the tea. But we would have to do the negotiating. But as we on our side have moderated our position from regime change to discussion of the whole strategic framework, they have become more forthcoming. For them, regime change meant chaos on their border, the last thing they want. Now they’ve become engaged in the negotiations.

Could they do more? Of course they could, because they are North Korea’s lifeline, in general trade and certainly in energy resources. But I think we’re working quite well together. The North Koreans are still the North Koreans. And we still haven’t uncovered their bottom line.

Do they think they have to have nuclear weapons in order to defend their independence? Or are they prepared to trade those weapons for a security system in which they would feel comfortable? We’re close to finding out. Right now, we’re demanding that the North confess all their sins, and they’re saying, “We won’t confess our sins, but we promise not to do it anymore.” So there’s still some tough negotiating to do. But we and the Chinese are fairly close to a common path on North Korea.

IGNATIUS: I’m reminded of one of Zeno’s Paradoxes, where you keep getting halfway to your goal, but never get there. North Korea has tested nuclear weapons, retains nuclear weapons, retains an estimated thirty to forty kilograms of fissile material. Should Americans just accustom themselves to the idea that North Korea’s going to have one or several nuclear weapons for the foreseeable future? Is getting them to relinquish those weapons just an unrealistic goal?

SCOWCROFT: No, I don’t think so. First of all, the kind of nuclear weapons they have—I’m getting out of my depth now—but the kind they have are from reprocessed fuel. That’s plutonium. They’re much more difficult weapons to manage, to make explode, than weapons made from enriched uranium. Making a uranium bomb is pretty simple stuff. This is not. And their test was—

BRZEZINSKI: I think it should persist in the effort. But it depends a great deal on how well not only the Chinese work with us, but also the South Koreans. There is a new South Korean government that is far less inclined to accommodate the North Koreans than its predecessor.

If intra-Korean relationships deteriorate, it may be more difficult to get the compliance you’re talking about. But certainly the next administration, whatever it is, ought to keep this process going, because it’s better than the alternative. Unless we are prepared to go to war with North Korea, it’s better to have this partial arrangement whereby they have some weapons, but they are so unreliable that it would be crazy to start a war with them. They may be usable as their last defense. But it certainly doesn’t give them much to work with if they’re planning an attack.

In these circumstances, being patient is going to be more productive than anything else. Before too long, there’s going to be some change of leadership in North Korea. It’s kind of a curious hereditary regime, but I doubt it can go on to the third generation. Therefore, there’s got to be some sea change in North Korea, probably within the next decade.

IGNATIUS: Let me pull the camera back a bit further and bring in Japan, the existing economic superpower of Asia, recovering from its long slump. You could argue that the Bush administration’s greatest foreign policy success has been managing to improve relations simultaneously with both China and Japan. The Japanese were feeling unloved and excluded. They were worried that we were so dependent on making an accommodation with this rising China that they’d be left out. Now they feel much more reassured.

Brent, you’ve watched this process closely. The effort began under Secretary of State Colin Powell and Richard Armitage, who made it a key issue during President Bush’s first term, and it’s continued. How can it be sustained? Can America manage that juggling act so that we have good relations with Japan and with China, without the whole structure breaking down?

SCOWCROFT: I think it can be sustained because we have reassured the Chinese that the Japanese aren’t a threat, because our security treaty with Japan means that Japan does not have to develop the military strength to defend itself against outside threats. For the Chinese, that’s reassurance. For the Japanese, we’ve given them the confidence that we’re with them, that we have not shifted our partnership across the straits, and that Japan is part of the bulwark of our presence in Asia.

It’s a balancing act, and we could fall off one side or another without too much trouble. But if we can maintain it, it not only reassures China against Japan, and Japan that we are still there when they need us, it also gives breathing room to the rest of Asia. Without that U.S. presence and the balance it provides, they might feel as though they have to choose between Japan and China. That’s a choice none of them wants to make.

This was all carefully deliberated. Some of it might have been accidental as we stepped along near the end of the cold war. Nonetheless, it’s a carefully balanced system, and it’s working very well. I don’t see any reason it can’t continue. The security alliance is a great deal for both China and Japan.

IGNATIUS: Zbig, you’ve written in at least two books that you worried we weren’t paying enough attention to Japan. That we were sort of letting Japan go. Do you still have that worry?

BRZEZINSKI: No, I think that has altered in recent years. Under the present administration there has been a kind of reawakening of the American-Japanese connection in relation to global security, which has compensated for some of the lapses earlier on. I subscribe very much to the view Brent just expressed, that we don’t need to choose between China and Japan as our principal anchor point in the Far East.

China is clearly our most important mainland Asia partner. Japan is our most important Pacific Ocean partner. Japan is more involved with us in international security, but it is carefully expanding that scope of activity, not rushing headlong. The Chinese are beginning to do the same. There are now Chinese forces serving in UN peacekeeping missions in Africa and other places. Beyond that, and to me this is interesting from a historical perspective, both China and Japan are avoiding what drove European powers to self-destruction during the twentieth century, which was a political competition reinforced by an arms race, leading to eventual collision.

China has had nuclear capability now for forty-four years. To this day, it practices minimal nuclear deterrence. We have thousands of weapons aimed at China. It has only a handful targeted on us—and implicitly also against Japan.

The Chinese at the same time have tolerated a Japanese military posture that is deliberately undefined. The Japanese have a limited military capability in terms of conventional forces, and they are a cryptonuclear power in the sense that they have the capability to weaponize extremely quickly, and they have delivery systems and guidance systems already.

So both powers are acting intelligently in terms of assuring their security but very deliberately avoiding outright provocation to the other. That provides a context in which we can further an Asia mainland-oriented partnership with China and a more global partnership with Japan. It gives us the opportunity to start revising the arrangements within the international system so that both countries get greater recognition: China in terms of voting rights and leadership in a variety of economic and financial institutions; Japan, hopefully, in the UN Security Council.

This still leaves one very major issue wide open, and that’s how the Chinese-Russian relationship will develop. If our relationship with China were to deteriorate, there could be a temptation to revive the old Sino-Soviet alliance. I personally think that’s not overly likely. But the other alternative is one we should think about hard, namely, is the Chinese-Russian relationship going to be stable over time? When you look at the border between China and Russia, the demographics and the demands on natural resources are such that there’s something almost unnatural about the map of that part of the world. On one side of the border is a huge space, as large as the rest of Asia, inhabited by thirty-five million people. On the other side, the rest of Asia, inhabited by three and a half billion people, one and a half billion of whom are expanding dramatically, getting wealthier, richer, more powerful, more modern. Is that an enduring situation?

I’m struck that each of you, in talking about Asia, has described an American policy that, to use Brent’s phrase, is open, an open world. And to use Zbig’s formulation, we’ve tried to avoid tight linkages in terms of security. We’ve tried to avoid either-or choices, such as either Japan or China. I’m struck by that because it contrasts so sharply with the American policy in the Middle East, where we’re always making either-or choices, and where an open system seems intolerable to us.

BRZEZINSKI: Well, let me jump in here because you touch a sore point. The marvelous thing about the Far East is that we have been able to shape our policy in terms of a broad analysis of our national interest. In the Middle East, our policy is very vulnerable to domestic pressures and divisions. Look at the policy prescriptions that got us into the trouble we’re in in the Middle East today.

BRZEZINSKI: It will be interesting if there develops a huge China lobby in this country, representing not Taiwan but the mainland. For some reason, the Japanese lobby doesn’t seem to be in the making. But there is already an incipient China lobby. There is also, incidentally, a growing Russia lobby, which operates not on the basis of traditional voting strengths but entirely on the basis of money.

SCOWCROFT: Yes, I am. We’ve talked about China and Japan, but there are other players in Asia. ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] values its independence, its bargaining position with the others. Farther south you’ve got Australia, which is a close ally of the United States. To the west you’ve got India, which is sort of a new player in East Asia. But all of these—China, Japan, India, Australia, and ASEAN—are amenable to open and flexible relationships with each other.

There’s a great deal of suspicion among them. But it can be tempered, again, by our presence, because in Asia, unlike in other parts of the world, we’re not seen as having narrowly nationalistic objectives. We’re a stabilizing presence in the region. And I think that is more the direction the world is going in, rather than the old, narrow alliances for and against particular countries.

BRZEZINSKI: That’s a very important point. And it seems to me it might be useful even to sharpen it. In Asia, we have the interplay essentially of three dominant powers, the United States, Japan, and China. Peculiar to all three powers is a stabilizing orientation. If you go back to our discussion in the previous chapter, in the area we called the global Balkans, the United States is playing a destabilizing role. India is preoccupied with its conflict with Pakistan and is certainly not capable of playing a stabilizing role, even if it is not actively destabilizing. You have Iran, which is a disruptive force. It’s a totally different configuration.

This is why I think the Far East Pacific area is, on the whole, promising. We can play a constructive role and others can interact with us. Whereas the other part of the world is the fulcrum of potentially disruptive global conflicts. It is the one area in the world where, if we make a major mistake, we could pay a huge historic price for it—as we have already, to some extent, paid in Iraq.

IGNATIUS: We assume the Chinese will change in our direction—become more democratic. But much of the world looks at China and concludes that there’s a lot to be said for authoritarianism. The Russian embrace of democracy produced chaos and near economic ruin in the 1990s under Yeltsin, and the world doesn’t want any part of that. When I travel to Iran I find Iranians saying, “We’d like to be like China. We want that stability. We want our economy to grow.” And there’s a suspicion of democracy. What’s the danger that the world will look at China and say, “We think a healthy dose of authoritarianism makes sense”?

SCOWCROFT: I don’t worry about that. First of all, I don’t think any democracy is going to turn itself into a dictatorship for the economic benefits. There’s no doubt, if you look at the development of China, that they have had a strong authoritarian government and have done a great job modernizing their economy.

Conversely, the Russians first modernized their political system, made it more democratic, and as a result they had insufficient central power to force transformation of the economy. India is another interesting case. India is becoming an economic powerhouse, but they’re doing it almost in spite of themselves. In its early years, many of the Indian governing elite were educated in England in Marxist economics. They had a socialist orientation. As a result, the government still continues some residual suspicion of entrepreneur-ship. And yet they’re doing reasonably well. And the China model hasn’t finished working itself out, as we have discussed. One of the advantages of an authoritarian system is that you can move at a breakneck pace. But it might be into some directions that turn out to be very harmful.

BRZEZINSKI: That’s a key point. I have no particular sense of anxiety about countries deciding to emulate the Chinese model. If one looks at the collective experience of countries in which intelligent economic development originated from the top in a highly authoritarian setting, it is striking to note that once the economy becomes successful it creates pressures for democratization. Look at the South Korean experience. It was hardly a democracy until about twenty years ago. And yet its economic success paved the way for an established democracy.

In a different way, that is even the Japanese experience. The Meiji Restoration was a highly mobilized system of economic and technological innovation organized from the top down. It created the preconditions for what we did in Japan after the war, and then produced a democracy that’s now constitutionally entrenched.

Taiwan also started as an authoritarian system—not very different, actually, from the Chinese in terms of economic development. The government promoted a fair amount of free enterprise in rural areas, low-scale business, then liberalization. Economic development took off and democracy followed.

And look at China itself. The big debates in the communist leadership today are less about fundamental economic choices and increasingly about how you democratize the system without an explosion. You don’t compress it too much, but you also don’t release too much pressure too quickly. I don’t know whether China will avoid an explosion, but there’s no doubt that economic development, which has been very successful for most Chinese, nonetheless creates increasing pressures for democratization. And in an interactive world I think that pressure is also reinforced by outside forces.

IGNATIUS: Do you think we’ll be comfortable as Americans living in a world where other countries, notably China but also many of the countries that look admiringly at China’s success, choose a different balance between freedom and order? The Chinese have tilted that balance significantly more toward order than we would.

And the Chinese people seem to go along with it. When I travel in China and ask them about the knockoff version of Google they have, which filters out things that are politically unacceptable, the Chinese attitude is, “What’s the big deal?” They’re willing to accept a restricted universe of Google searches if it comes with a nice apartment and maybe a new car. That’s a fundamentally different way of ordering the world than what we as Americans tend to think is the natural and appropriate way. Can we live with it?

SCOWCROFT: What direction does this represent for the average Chinese? I would argue that it’s in the right direction. Twenty years ago there’d have been no Googling even if Google existed. I think this is a question that is academically fascinating, but there’s very little that we’re going to be able to do about it. You can think of a model of any kind. Singapore is a very unusual model. Zimbabwe is a very different model. Nations and cultures are going to find their own way and take advantage of their particular talents. But as they look around the world for examples, I don’t think many of them would say, right now, “I’d rather live in China than the United States.”

IGNATIUS: So we shouldn’t regard the Chinese model tilted more toward authority and order as threatening to us? Or as an example that may divert the world’s aspirations away from what we’d like to see?

BRZEZINSKI: Well, if China stimulates the appearance of mini-Chinas in other countries, it doesn’t follow that these countries emulating the Chinese will necessarily be more antagonistic towards us than those following the American model. I don’t think that follows.

Second, in a lot of countries, the choice is not authoritarianism versus democracy. It is stable development with control from the top down versus chaotic freedom that’s economically totally disruptive. And I’m not sure it’s such a good choice.

Look at Egypt and its population, and the Muslim Brotherhood. If Egypt were to plunge headlong right now into American-style democracy, would it be politically stable? Would it be stable economically?

IGNATIUS: I think anyone who knows Egypt would say no, it would be chaotic. There’s a wonderful essay I read years ago called “The Hydropolitics of the Nile,” which said that a society based on the annual flooding of rivers has to be extremely well-organized; it demands central authority, and what are we doing pushing a model of a society built on endless wilderness and fertile land everywhere you look. So I’m sure Egypt isn’t going to look like America.

SCOWCROFT: One of the ways we could make this a bigger problem than I think it’s going to be naturally is to try to develop this notion of a community of democracies and divide the world into democracies and nondemocracies. I think that would be a very dangerous direction to take.

IGNATIUS: But, Brent, isn’t that precisely the course President Bush has been following? Some of his rhetoric about democracy makes Woodrow Wilson sound like a cynic. And it sort of universalizes our particular form of democracy. I take it that you both would feel quite strongly that that kind of rhetoric—as Brent put it, dividing the world into democracies and nondemocracies—is a mistake.

SCOWCROFT: I think we should make clear to the world that we believe democracy is the way to go, and we’re prepared to help anybody who wants to go in that direction. But we should not seek to impose it. We should encourage it and help others who seek to emulate the best parts of our democracy.

When we have tried to export it, sometimes it’s been successful. In the Philippines it’s been successful. In Iraq, so far, it certainly hasn’t been. And that was one of the announced reasons for going in. I think we should stand for democracy. We should not try to impose democracy.

IGNATIUS: The Chinese do share the dream for more openness. And many are frustrated and angry that they aren’t getting a piece of this fabulous pie that everybody else is eating. What do we do in that inevitable moment when they come into the streets, as they did in Tiananmen Square in 1989, by the tens of thousands, or maybe by the millions? And the Chinese government panics as it did in Tiananmen Square and sends out the troops, and the kids in the streets are determined to provoke a confrontation, and the troops open fire? There will be a lot of dead kids. The question will surely be, what is America going to do about this? What’s the answer?

SCOWCROFT: It would be a terrible crisis, and a terrible human problem. It’s very difficult to know how to steer a course through a crisis like that. I was around during Tiananmen Square. We did put sanctions on the Chinese, especially the military. But we reached out quickly to the Chinese and said, “Look, we don’t like what you did. We don’t agree with what you did. But our relationship is so important for both of us that we must see our way through this.” It took some time, but we salvaged the relationship at some measure of cost to our human rights image.

IGNATIUS: Did you ever think, Brent, that if you’d made a different choice, you might have cracked the communist system to the point that it couldn’t repair itself? And that we might see a transformation like what we saw in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe?

SCOWCROFT: No, I didn’t think that would have happened. What happened in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was not a revolution, but more an evolution which we supported at a pace that didn’t bring about a crackdown this time from the Soviet Union.

BRZEZINSKI: My judgment would be very much affected by what I discerned about the people on the street. I think the key to success for a prodemocracy movement is, to some extent, a single word that was once very well-known globally.

The word is solidarity. What was unique about the Polish anti-communist movement Solidarity is that it was not just university kids in the streets. University kids have been on the streets many times. In Mexico City in 68, they got mowed down. They were on the streets in Tiananmen Square and they got mowed down. But where was the rest of society? Some were empathetic. Some were indifferent. Some were hostile.

The key to the success of democracy in Poland was solidarity of intellectuals and the working class. All of them imbued with democratic ideals, which they had internalized. They were determined to create a democracy. And they wanted a peaceful transition, which, in different ways, was repeated in the Orange Revolution in Ukraine or the Revolution of the Roses in Georgia.

There is an important lesson here. Democracy is a nurturing process which cannot be institutionalized simply on the basis of a relatively isolated social force. It has to reflect a social maturity. Clearly, the people in the Polish Solidarity movement were not all on the same intellectual level. Lech Walesa was a very simple but intuitive leader. But you also had people like Professor Bronislaw Geremek who were sophisticated and understood democracies. There were former communists who realized Marxism was deceitful and had rethought their world view. And you had, literally, workers and intellectuals, peasants, working together.

That’s how democracy comes peacefully. If the students go out in the streets in Beijing, I will do whatever I can to convey to the Chinese my sense that they should be restrained in response. And that there should be an effort to avoid bloodshed.

BRZEZINSKI: Exactly. And I think that makes your point. They were opening fire on a whole society, and they won’t do that. Armies are drawn from the people as a whole and won’t attack people as a whole.

IGNATIUS: We haven’t talked much about India, and that’s typical of foreign policy discussions. This enormous, increasingly prosperous democracy in the heart of South Asia just doesn’t hit the American radar screen. We worry about the Middle East. We worry about China and Japan. We often forget about India.

The Bush administration has worked very hard to cement a new strategic relationship with India, to make real accommodations to India as a nuclear power, in effect to grandfather their breakout nuclear weapons program into the nonproliferation treaty. Do you both think that was wise? And do you think it was successful?

The Indians, to my surprise, at this writing seem unwilling to close the deal. It’s a very favorable deal for them. But something in their nationalist character keeps them from signing on the dotted line. Zbig, why is that? What’s going on with India?

BRZEZINSKI: Well, the Indians are very difficult customers. They have been that way for fifty years. They certainly were not helpful during the cold war. They weren’t helpful during the Afghan War. I’m not sure how helpful they are right now, because they’re obviously interested in limiting Pakistani influence in Afghanistan. And that’s driving the Pakistanis into some of their more rash actions. So that is worrisome.

Secondly, I feel very uncomfortable about the nuclear deal we signed with India. I think we are legalizing what might be called preferential and selective proliferation. The exclusion of their fourteen reactors from international control damages our credibility on the nonproliferation issue.

These fourteen reactors are producing weapons. Excluding them from international control has potentially significant implications, even in terms of the military balance in the Far East. If the Indians were to significantly increase their nuclear arsenal, would the Chinese stick to their minimum nuclear deterrence posture? I don’t think we have thought through the strategic implications of this.

IGNATIUS: It wasn’t against anybody. It was, again, a positive-sum game. It was premised on these two great democracies, the United States and India, making common cause and putting aside their differences. How well do you think that’s worked out? Zbig’s skeptical of it.

SCOWCROFT: I don’t think it has worked out. It was, at best, premature. I don’t know what deliberations went into this emotional surge toward India. Maybe because Russia was no longer a pillar for India, they were available. There may have been some calculation about needing a counter to growing Chinese strength. I don’t know. But obviously, we embraced India very strongly. As it turned out, that had negative implications for Pakistan. We’re paying for that right now.

SCOWCROFT: I don’t know. It’s possible. I’m puzzled by it. But from the Indian perspective, they obviously felt they needed partners other than Russia. But part of the reason they have not fully embraced a close relationship may be that the Indians don’t want to be a small boat floating in the wake of the great United States, because one of their other alternatives is to lead the developing world. And as we’ve seen in the Doha [Development] Round discussions, they have played that role quite seriously.

So we’ve got a whole situation in flux right now. My own sense is that it’s good that the nuclear deal is now on the shelf. I think it was premature at least. But what’s going on with India is a much deeper issue.

IGNATIUS: Do you both regard India as essentially a benign force? We focus on the Chinese economic miracle, but some people argue we’re looking in the wrong place. The country that will really be increasingly dominant in technology and will really compete with us is India, not China. Do you think there’s a malign underside to this story of India’s growth?

BRZEZINSKI: Maybe there’s a vulnerability rather than a malign reality. India is a remarkable success as a democracy, but it’s also a deceptive success. India’s social disparities are far more acute than China’s. The poverty, for the lower portion of the population, is far graver. That is something that still has to be overcome. The Indians are way behind the Chinese in developing a respectable modern urban sector and even in their transportation system.

The second problem is illiteracy, in which India is again way worse than China amongst women—somewhere near fifty percent. Among men it’s somewhat lower, but still staggeringly high for a country that aspires to be a technological pioneer.

And then there is a third aspect, which is again very different from China, and again to India’s disadvantage. China is ninety percent Han. India is really diverse ethnically—180 million Muslims. I think there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan.

Think what will happen when the masses get literate and politically activated. That hasn’t happened yet. The system works on the basis of dynastic political parties inherited from British colonial rule, with a democratic tradition but with the masses relatively easily molded in one direction or another. Once the masses begin to be motivated by their personal or group preferences, ethnic dislikes, religious phobias, and social resentments, India could be a very troubled place.

IGNATIUS: Let me turn the bright and generally optimistic light we’ve been shining on East Asia to a somewhat darker color. I base my argument on simple economics. Rising China and an already risen and very strong Japan have increasingly financed American consumption. We have been spending significantly more than we produce. The Chinese and Japanese have been writing IOUs to cover the ever-widening trade deficit that we run, and have now accumulated enormous amounts of U.S. debt that they hold. This makes us very vulnerable should the Chinese decide they have a fundamental conflict with us over some issue.

With a trillion dollars or more of our debt, they’re in a position to exert some leverage. And as the American economy enters what’s looking like several very difficult years, I do wonder if the American people won’t rudely discover the extent to which we’ve become indebted to these East Asian economic powers, and if there aren’t going to be greater frictions in this world as we make adjustments from our present unsustainable economic situation to some sort of rebalancing.

It wasn’t all that long ago that people were taking sledgehammers to Japanese automobiles in Michigan towns where big automaking facilities were suffering from foreign competition. Are we heading toward a period when America’s anger at our indebtedness and dependence upon this Chinese economic superpower is going to be a big, painful issue?

SCOWCROFT: I doubt that will happen, for a couple of reasons. First, while the Chinese have over a trillion dollars in U.S. Treasury notes, they can’t use them as a weapon against the United States without destroying their own wealth. In a sense, that makes us partners. We depend on each other.

Second, international business is moving from a vertical model, which it was when we were bashing Japanese cars, to a horizontal model in which so-called Japanese cars are built in South Carolina and there is coming to be no such thing as an American car or Japanese car.

We’re looking with some fear at sovereign wealth funds as well, but in a way, they’re a vehicle for rebalancing the world economy without the catastrophe of deep depression. They’re keeping the world economy liquid. I’m not sure we understand how to deal with all these new forces, but to me, they’re stabilizing forces that can even out the ups and downs in national economies. But I’m not an economist.

BRZEZINSKI: I suppose it could. On the symbolic level, the situation’s even worse because we are financing the war in Iraq by borrowing from the Asians. This is the first war we have financed by borrowing from foreign peoples rather than paying for it ourselves.

BRZEZINSKI: You created the coalition in which they were participants. Whereas now in Iraq, we’re alone. But a lot depends on how the next president plays this. I think one of the important roles of the next president will be to educate the American public about the new global realities.

My sense is that the public is living in some sort of nirvana. They don’t really understand what’s happening in the world. They don’t know how financial, economic, and political relationships have been shifting, and how much we now depend on a good, stable, intelligent relationship with the Far East, most notably China and Japan. I can understand the rage among workers who lose their jobs to foreign competitors. But that rage really is not anti-Asian. At one stage it also manifested itself against Mexicans.

But it is an understandable rage in part because we haven’t done enough, one, to prepare the country for these shifts, and two, to try to deal with the consequences of these shifts for specific sectors of our society through programs that would seriously attempt to upgrade the qualifications of our labor force for new enterprises. In other words, taking seriously the social consequences of technological innovation and the imperatives of making technology the trademark of the American global economic role.

That’s where the next president will have to really exercise the office’s influence. Today the logical allies of the United States are Europe, which is simultaneously a competitor, and several Far Eastern countries, notably Japan, China, South Korea, which is becoming a powerhouse economically, and some of the smaller ones. The new Korean president has started talking openly about South Korea’s global economic role. This is a country of fifty million people or so, and it’s really becoming significant. We now have a signed free trade arrangement with the Koreans. It’s important that these relationships have public support. We are a democracy, but domestic moods are driven by where the shoe pinches, and they can be exaggerated by fears and ignorance. That’s where leadership is needed.

SCOWCROFT: I must say there has not been much leadership in an instructive way, and the domestic reaction, for example, to hardship in the United States has been a demand for tariffs against Chinese and other goods. That compounds the problem.

SCOWCROFT: That’s what I mean. Zbig talked about educating the American people, and that is a real necessity. There has not been much effort toward educating people in this country to the current situation. Quite the contrary.

IGNATIUS: Let’s return to the theme with which we began, the consequences of this rising Asia, symbolized by a rising China. Is it fair to say that the adjustment to that fundamental change will necessarily change the United States? That we will end up being a different country in some ways? The shorthand people sometimes use is that the future speaks Chinese. That overstates it, but it’s a future in which our role will have to be a little different, won’t it, Zbig?

BRZEZINSKI: Yes, but in the past we have been capable of responding. We transformed ourselves from an industrial pioneer, industrial innovator, industrially dominant state into a service-providing state very successfully. I think the next question is whether we can become a technologically pioneering state. Can we build our economy around creating and innovating? If we can do that, we’ll be viable. If we don’t, we’ll become what Great Britain gradually became before its recent burst of innovation, precipitated by Thatcher. The alternative is to become a nation of decaying industrial wastelands.

SCOWCROFT: I think Zbig has put his finger on it. We have to realize that this is a much more interdependent world, and it’s going to get more so. We have to integrate our economy with others more closely. We’ll depend more on others for certain things. Our particular national skill is the ability to turn science and technology into engineering. As Zbig says, innovation. Right now our tendency is to try to hold on to things ourselves and impose export controls. We think we’re the center of everything, when what we need to do is stay ahead. If we release our energies, I think it’s our natural talent to take ideas and turn them into practical products. That’s where we’re good.

BRZEZINSKI: People who were condemned by lack of innovation to make defective cars, and who therefore couldn’t compete with a country that was making very good cars, took refuge in dislike of the other country for doing better. If you don’t do as well as someone in a field, you leapfrog them. We haven’t put enough emphasis on this, if we want to be number one.

IGNATIUS: Again, I’m struck by the consistent theme that emerges from our discussion of Asia, which is the need for openness, now the need for flexibility, for suppleness in the way we respond. Brent, are you confident that political leadership can keep America supple, flexible, open in what’s likely to be a pretty messy next few years, in which a lot of chickens will come home to roost and the country will feel under pressure? There’s going to be a natural impulse to ask who’s to blame. How can our leaders help us maintain that essential flexibility?

SCOWCROFT: I don’t think by any means that the United States has burned itself out or that we’re a declining power. We’re still full of energy and optimism, but leadership is key. The current debate focuses on the capillaries, not on the arteries. We need a more thorough and thoughtful discussion of the kinds of things we’ve been talking about. What is really going on in the world? And how do we react to it, stay ahead of it, cooperate with it, rather than resist or pretend it isn’t happening? That debate has not really taken place.

I believe the American people can respond. And I think our future should be bright. But we have to step forward to do what is necessary to take care of those whom technology and economic development have left behind. We have the resources to do that and we can preserve a leadership position. But if instead of embracing the change which is taking place we try to prevent it through tariffs and other restrictive measures, we will simply be left behind.

BRZEZINSKI: For us in the twentieth century, Europe presented the challenge of war or peace, and that’s what we had to concentrate on. For us in the twenty-first century, Asia presents the challenge of competition or decline. It’s a different challenge, and I think Brent and I agree that we will not get into some sort of twentieth century military collision with China. The problems nonetheless are massively complex, but they’re qualitatively different. If we’re intelligent in responding to the challenge of Asia, we’ll do all right. But if we go into a kind of xenophobic shelter, a gated community of fear, we lose.

IGNATIUS: You, Zbig, have written in your most recent book, Second Chance, your fear that the United States remains, in some ways, intellectually backward in a world that’s undergoing what you call a global awakening. It’s happening most noticeably in Asia, where there’s been just a stunning improvement in standards of living, in people’s opportunities and aspirations. You’ve expressed concern that in our education system and in the way our leaders talk to our people, that we are being left behind. I wonder if you’d speak directly to that—that in some ways the American people have to really lift their game. They have to embrace a changing, challenging world in a way they haven’t.

BRZEZINSKI: There’s a paradox here. We are the most globally involved country in the world, and yet we have one of the more parochial publics in the world. In part it’s because we’re large, in part because we’re confident, in part because we have been self-sustaining for such a long time, in part because we hadn’t been invaded by others until 9/11.

As a consequence, I think the American people have a better sense of what’s on TV than what’s happening of importance in the world. That’s not sustainable any longer. How can we undertake the necessary reforms domestically in response to the external challenge if we don’t have a clue to what that challenge is?

SCOWCROFT: I think it’s too early to say, but it doesn’t look good right now. We’ve had it easy for so long, and the average American hasn’t had to worry about these things except in time of great crisis. Right now there’s no great crisis, and he’s more worried about what’s going on in his particular city, county, state, than he is about what’s going on in Washington, let alone the outside world.

Many Americans spend their whole lives without having any real contact with a foreigner, somebody who thinks very differently from the way Americans think. We assume everybody thinks just like we do. That makes it very difficult to react in an enlightened way to this novel world where we’re being swamped with multiple waves that are generated elsewhere.

IGNATIUS: When I travel around the world, I’m struck by the American ability to live with and really harness diversity. Even the countries we’ve named as such great successes—China, Japan, other countries in Asia—have enormous difficulty bringing outsiders in and making them feel welcome and making them productive. In a way, that is the American genius.

And although we’ve mentioned some reasons for pessimism, I believe that as long as we remain open to our own diversity and retain that gift of making other people who come here looking for opportunity feel welcome, I can’t help but think that we will respond and change. Do you share that, Zbig?

BRZEZINSKI: Hopefully, yes. But—hopefully. There are a lot of people in this country who favor deporting eleven million people because they arrived here illegally. Even though many of them have been here for years and have their children here. Moreover, all the restrictions on access for foreigners, scientists, students, and so forth, how will that affect our intellectual life and our ability to innovate? The great burst in American innovation came significantly as a consequence of the massive immigration to America of intellectual talent from Europe in the 20s and 30s.

BRZEZINSKI: Let’s hope it continues. And, if it continues, yes, it will be one of the keys to America’s capability to keep up with growing economic competition from East Asia. But we have to be willing to make these people feel that they’re part of America. And that operates not only on the level of Silicon Valley but also on the level of the poor Hispanics in this country who are increasingly under attack.

SCOWCROFT: Our history is one of diversity. We’ve had influxes of people of different cultures, different ethnic groups, and we’ve always assimilated them. So we tend less to look askance at somebody whose skin’s a different color or who speaks with an accent than they do in Europe, for example.

It’s very hard, if you’re in France, Germany, Netherlands, to assimilate someone who’s different. Because everybody you know has been just like you in an ethnic and cultural sense. We’re much easier in that regard. But now we’ve developed this—it’s almost a fear of the outside. That is very alien to us, traditionally.

You can see it in our visa system. You can see it in the attitude toward immigration. We’re here now; let’s not let anybody else in. I hope it’s temporary. Basically, we’re not as reflexively ethnocentric as most cultures have been.

BRZEZINSKI: There are hardly any countries in the world where someone with a name as difficult as mine can sit at the same table as Brent Scowcroft. So I’m very aware of how good America has been to people like me. It’s important that we stay on course.