In recent days, both Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski have written op-eds that call on the US and China to continue a cooperative relationship so as to avoid the potential of global instability, especially in the wake of the global financial crisis.

While both are rivals, they also played pivotal roles in the establishment of modern Sino-American relations.  Kissinger and the President he served, Richard Nixon, opened the door to China as a way to create diplomatic flexibility vis a vis the Soviet Union within the context of the Cold War.  Brzezinski, while serving as President Carter's National Security Advisor played a key role in normalizing diplomatic relations with China which, he asserts in his piece, enabled Mao's successor, Deng Xiaoping, to liberalize China's economy.

The combined result of these policies has been the extraordinary rise of China, an economic miracle of almost unprecedented proportions.  It also opened the door to the very strange and symbiotic relationship the US and China now have where the US needs China to buy our debt in order to fund our domestic spending habits while they have required us to purchase their exports to maintain high employment so as to avoid political unrest.

The recent financial crisis undounbtedly puts this relationship in question.  It is not surprising that China is beginning to focus more on its own domestic consumption as a way to maintain what it perceives to be an adequate growth.  However, as Kissinger points out, without a global infrastructure of governance, actions like this could well become harbingers of a new wave of mercantilism.  This, in his view, would lead not to stability, but to a new age of chaos as the integration that has led to vast wealth creation comes apart.

At that point, it is inevitable that inward looking nations and frusterated populations may fall prey to nasty ways of thinking that we only think have been relegated to the dust bins of history. 

Both Brzezinski and Kissinger are unambiguous in their support for a new global architecture that will keep economic integration from breaking apart due to political contingencies.  At the core of this is the Sino-American relationship.  Indeed, it is the most important bilateral relationship in the world. 

There are no guarantees.  I am skeptical that a new infrastructure will be found because man continues to be a parochial creature.  However, for those who seek peace, some form of architecture must be found.  As strong a proponent of American exceptionalism as I am, America alone is incapable of maintaining global stability.  America has already been Atlas for half a century.  I hope we do not shrug.  The consequences will be a new age of instability married with amazingly destructive technology.  That is not a world one would want to leave to their children.