It's Not Easy Being a Benevolent Hegemon

In an editorial about China today the Wall Street Journal says, "Managing the rise of any great power is an enormous foreign policy challenge that can easily go awry, as the world learned with Germany and Japan."

I tell ya, a world policeman's work is never done. You have to change regimes, watch out for weapons of mass destruction (while developing one's own killer "conventional" weapons), and manage the rise of great powers (so that they don't actually compete with you where it matters). That's a full plate by any standard. No doubt the busy president feels harried by all the criticism. Everyone's a critic.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.