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Robert Zoellick for Secretary of State
November 5, 2012 | http://www.worldpolicy.org/
If Mitt Romney is elected president on November 6, what he should do on Day One is—no, not brand China a currency manipulator—make Robert Zoellick his Secretary of State and send him to China even before taking his oath of office.
Not just because Zoellick is a Republican who gets along well with both Democrats and Chinese. Not just because he knows all the top Chinese economists and snatched up one of them to be the World Bank's senior economist during his own term as the bank's president. Not just because he called China a "responsible stakeholder" in Asia last year and could discuss this trust collegially with the new leaders who will take office this week in the once-a-decade political succession in Beijing.
The main reason is that history buff Zoellick—like Henry Kissinger, who changed the course of cold war history when he and an earlier Republican president recognized Communist China in 1972—thinks strategically. Strategic planning, as Kissinger continues to preach tirelessly, is urgently needed to prevent the world's number-one and number-two powers from sliding into unintended confrontation that could escalate to war in the 21st century. The next four years will be crucial—and the frequency with which the collision between a rising great power and the dominant hegemon has led to war since Herodotus first noted the phenomen bodes ill in a globalized nuclear world unless both sides exercise prudence.
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