India s sensitivity to potential Chinese encirclement is similar to China s fears of encirclement by the US and its allies. That is why China is unlikely to develop its relations with India and Pakistan (with which China still values its all weather partnership) on separate tracks, as the US did during the Bush administration.

Indeed, the idea that Asian countries must choose between a Chinese or American future is false. But can Asia s fear of hegemony and China s fear of military encirclement be reconciled?

After all, just as India recognizes China s vital interests in Tibet and Taiwan, there must be reciprocal recognition of India s national interests. China must fully accept that any effort at strategic encirclement of India will be countered.

China may reason that its naval build up in the Indian Ocean is only about protecting sea lanes vital to shipping the resources that its economy needs. But others, like India, are bound to see something more sinister afoot, an effort at encirclement.

Reflecting its fears about the potential for Chinese encirclement, democratic India, after early hiccups of doubt, set aside its scruples about Burma s military regime. India s cultural, economical, social, and sometimes military ties with Burma indeed, with the entire region are older than China s.

Its siege and encirclement by the separation wall, its isolation from its surroundings, the destruction of its livelihoods and the deprivation of its Palestinian citizens Muslim and Christian alike from access to their holy places can only destroy the foundations of peace.

Like Japan, the Bush administration s relatively moderate stance toward North Korea has changed since the talks broke down last year. The US seems to be tightening its diplomatic encirclement of North Korea with a view to shifting the nuclear discussion to the UN Security Council.

But it was, above all, the sense of encirclement and humiliation that united the deeply divided Japanese government. Feeling defeated by a series of failed approaches to the US, including an overture to hold direct talks with Roosevelt, Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe resigned on October 16, making hard line Army Minister Hideki Tōjō his successor.

International orders emerge either by consensus or through force. The great task for Obama, incoming Chinese President, Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the new Japanese and South Korean leaders who will come to power following elections in December, and all ASEAN members is to ensure that consensus prevails in Asia without stoking China s greatest strategic fear encirclement.

Encirclement by a foreign power that threatens to encroach on what it considers to be its inalienable sovereign rights is bound to drive it to become a revolutionary power bent on upending the status quo. Before China and the US overstep each other s boundaries, they should abandon the concepts of primacy and containment in favor of a concert of Asian powers capable of resolving their differences.

MADRID In his latest book, On China, Henry Kissinger uses the traditional intellectual games favored by China and the West weiqi and chess as a way to reveal their differing attitudes toward international power politics. Chess is about total victory, a Clausewitzian battle for the center of gravity and the eventual elimination of the enemy, whereas weiqi is a quest for relative advantage through a strategy of encirclement that avoids direct conflict.