THE main element in the American hegemon’s response to the rising power China is becoming clear. It is to be a variety of “containment”—the grand strategy of the western alliance to keep Soviet control and influence within limits during the “Cold War” of 1947-1989.

Its architect—the diplomat George F. Kennan—summed up the strategy as “a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies, through the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy.”