The US would pay dearly if it tried to rein in China's rise, says an article on the website of Foreign Policy bimonthly magazine on Sept 2, 2011.

The article quotes "Asian Alliances in the 21st Century," a report published by the Project 2049 Institute, a conservative think tank that focuses on East Asia, as saying that Americans must regard China as a national security threat. The report believes that "China's military ambitions threaten America's Asian allies, raise questions about the credibility of US alliance pledges, and imperil the US military strategy that underpins its global primacy."

The authors of "Asian Alliances" tend to infer China's intentions from its capacities, says the article. They describe China using missiles and bombers to launch a devastating attack on Taiwan and the United States responding with a missile strike against the mainland. The only way to preclude such a cataclysm, the authors argue, is to adopt much tougher counter-measures: rollback, in Cold War terms.

The "Asian Alliances" report suggests that a military partnership should be established among the United States, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, and others. But it's hard to believe that these states would agree to join such an explicitly anti-Chinese coalition, says the article. And there's also the danger that China would react by concluding that time was no longer on its side, thus turning the coalition into a devastatingly self-fulfilling prophecy.

The costs for the United States would be greater, it cautions. Americans are too obsessed with the economy right now to spare a thought for national security, but the debate is waiting in the wings. "The threat of terrorist attack is very real, but diminishing. Al Qaeda is not the national nightmare it once was. Are Americans going to replace it with a new nightmare -- or rather, a recycled one from the depths of the Cold War? I certainly hope not. China's regional ambitions do need to be checked. But if America bankrupts itself in the process, we'll win the battle and lose the war."