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Moreover, sometimes they say that they do not want to give away a 
bargaining chip prematurely. In 1995, and again in 2010, the US declared 
that the waters of the South China Sea should be governed by the 1982 
United Nations Law of the Seas Treaty (which, ironically, the US has not 
yet ratified), but that the US takes no position on the territorial claims. 
Instead, the US urged that competing claims be resolved through 
negotiation. 
In 2002, China and ASEAN agreed on a legally non-binding code of 
conduct for managing such disputes, but, as a large power, China believes 
that it will gain more in bilateral rather than multilateral negotiations with 
small countries. That belief was behind China's pressure on Cambodia to 
block ASEAN's final communiqué this summer. 
But this is a mistaken strategy. As a large power, China will have great 
weight in any circumstance, and it can reduce its self-inflicted damage by 
agreeing to a code of conduct. 
As for the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, the best proposal comes from The 
Economist. China should refrain from sending official vessels into 
Japanese waters, and use a hotline with Japan to manage crises generated 
by nationalist "cowboys." At the same time, the two countries should 
revive a 2008 framework for joint development of disputed gas fields in 
the East China Sea, and Japan's central government should purchase the 
barren islands from their private owner and declare them an international 
maritime protected area. 
It is time for all countries in East Asia to remember Winston Churchill's 
famous advice: "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war." 
Joseph S. Nye, a former US assistant secretary of defense and chairman of 
the US National Intelligence Council, is University Professor at Harvard 
University and one of the world's foremost scholars of international 
relations. He co-founded the important liberal institutionalist approach to 
international relations, and introduced the idea that states and other 
international actors possess more or less "soft power." 
Artick 7. 
NYT 
It's Mitt's World 
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Thomas L. Friedman 
September 4, 2012 -- Mitt Romney has been criticized for not discussing 
foreign policy. Give him a break. He probably figures he's already said all 
that he needs to say during the primaries: He has a big stick, and he is 
going to use it on Day 1. Or as he put it: "If. 
president of the United 
States ... on Day 1, I will declare China a currency manipulator, allowing 
me to put tariffs on products where they are stealing American jobs 
unfairly." 
That is really cool. Smack China on Day 1. I just wonder what happens on 
Day 2 when China, the biggest foreign buyer of U.S. debt securities, 
announces that it will not participate in the next Treasury auction, sending 
our interest rates soaring. That will make Day 3 really, really cool. 
Welcome to the Romney foreign policy, which 
call: "George W. Bush 
abroad — the cartoon version." 
I know Romney doesn't believe a word he's saying on foreign policy and 
that its all aimed at ginning up votes: there's some China-bashing to help in 
the Midwest, some Arab-bashing to win over the Jews, some Russia-
bashing (our "No. 1 geopolitical foe") to bring in the Polish vote, plus a 
dash of testosterone to keep the neocons off his back. 
What's odd is that Romney was in a position to sound smart on foreign 
policy, not like a knee-jerk hawk. He just needed to explain what every 
global business leader learned long before governments did — that, since 
the end of the cold war, the world has become not just more interconnected 
but more interdependent, and this new structural reality requires a new 
kind of American leadership. Why? 
In this increasingly interdependent world, your "allies" can hurt you as 
much as your "enemies." After all, the biggest threats to President Obama's 
re-election are whether little Greece pulls out of the euro zone and triggers 
a global economic meltdown or whether Israel attacks Iran and does the 
same. 
In this increasingly interdependent world, your rivals can threaten you as 
much by collapsing as by rising. Think of what would happen to U.S. 
markets and jobs if China's growth slowed to a crawl and there was 
internal instability there? 
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In this increasingly interdependent world, we have few pure "enemies" 
anymore: Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Al Qaeda, the Taliban. But we have 
many "frenemies," or half friends/half foes. While the Pentagon worries 
about a war with China, the Commerce Department is trying to get China 
to buy more Boeing planes and every American university worth its salt is 
opening a campus in Beijing; meanwhile, the Chinese are investing in 
American companies left and right. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is 
the biggest thorn in America's side in Latin America and a vital source of 
our imported oil. The U.S. and Russia are on opposing sides in Syria, but 
the U.S. supported Russia joining the World Trade Organization and 
American businesses are lobbying Congress to lift cold war trade 
restrictions on Russia so they can take advantage of its more open market. 
Think of Egypt. I was critical of Egypt's new president, Mohamed Morsi, 
from the Muslim Brotherhood, for attending the Nonaligned Movement 
summit meeting in Iran. I argued that he was giving legitimacy to an 
Iranian regime that had crushed the very kind of democratic movement that 
brought Morsi to power. But Morsi surprised me, for the better, by using 
his visit to Tehran to call out the Iranian leadership for supporting Syria's 
"oppressive" regime. The Iranians were livid. You can be sure that, on 
other days, Morsi will say and do things that will give us indigestion. We 
still need Egypt's strategic support in the region. It still needs our economic 
aid. But a more democratic, Muslim Brotherhood-led Egypt will not 
behave like the automatic ally it was before. We'll need a new kind of 
relationship. It will be complicated. 
But that's today's world, and the leadership challenge it poses is easy to 
describe but hard to pull off. If the world is more interdependent, how do 
we create healthy interdependencies so we rise together, rather than 
unhealthy interdependencies so we fall together? The 2008 global 
economic crisis was an example of an unhealthy interdependency. So is the 
failure to reach any kind of global climate agreement. When we bring 
Russia into the World Trade Organization, we're creating a healthy 
interdependency. When Russia protects Syria's dictator, even when he's 
crushing his own people, it's creating an unhealthy interdependency. 
The best way for an American president to forge healthy interdependencies 
is, first, to get our own house in order and gain the leverage — in terms of 
resources and moral authority — that come from leading by example. For 
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instance, Romney is right: there are unhealthy aspects to the U.S.-China 
interdependency that need working on, but they are not all China's fault. 
We would have more leverage to build a more healthy relationship if we 
saved more, consumed less, studied harder and got our own banks to 
behave less recklessly. 
Republicans love to criticize Obama for "leading from behind." But if 
you're not leading by example in an interdependent world, you can lead 
from the front or behind — no one will follow you for long. 
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