Incrementally, the pieces are falling into place for a continuing confrontation by the U.S. with a potential enemy, China. The differences are, as they always are in relating any historical analogy, enormous. Nor is the outcome any more predictable than when Churchill saw “the iron curtain” dividing Europe’s historic unity.

First and foremost, of course, Asia has always — and never more than today — been a geographical concept lacking cohesion and cultural continuity which the Roman Empire and Christianity gave the European continent. Sir George Samson, the great Japan scholar, even questioned whether there was, indeed, an historical and cultural “Asia” at all, but finally answered in the affirmative.

The fact the Untied States from across the Pacific is a major player in the ensuing struggle is proof of how far afield we must go to see the conflict for what it is. And as with the Cold War, other conflicts and contradictions will continue to play subsidiary roles — whether Beijing’s fear of and sometime collaboration against the Islamofascists, Pakistan’s simultaneous alliance with the U.S. and China, Singapore’s huge investment on the Mainland while simultaneously a U.S. base, Taiwan’s role as second largest investor in China and major technological agent of transfer but threatened for military takeover, etc., etc.

At the center of the new disequilibrium which dictates the confrontation is China’s growing power. “A rising China” — with its own scholars now debating its role despite the regime’s klutzy censorship and bloody repression — is generally considered certain. With the spectacular work ethic and abilities of its 1.3 billion, even the almost certain collapse of the current bubble economy will probably only temporarily impede China’s march toward a new world role.

Without the Communist dogma which held the Soviet empire together, Beijing nevertheless is rallying point for reactionaries everywhere, arguing only stability of tyranny can assure economic progress. It is no accident, as the Communists used to say, the most heinous regime on earth in North Korea has only China as its only ally.

When Beijing dropped its failed Marxist-Leninst-Maoist economics, Deng Xiaoping included the military in his modernization program. But he also warned China should play dead lest it antagonize other powers before it came into its own. But there are signs of intoxication in Beijing: over the success of Deng’s other three modernizations: the latest announced military budget which acknowledges large increases, although nothing like the real figures. Nor does it include a militarized space program and paramilitary police forces [which may, in time, as in the Soviet Union, play a far larger role].

President Hu Jintao also recently, perhaps for internal political maneuvering, went out of his way to endorse the naval aspects of China’s buildup. Even more than any non-apparent land threat is the maritime enemy for whom Beijing has laid out huge sums for Russian surface craft and submarines, its own warsghip uilding industry, and probably for renovation of a decrepit Soviet carrier.

China’s blue water navy is still a long way from challenging the U.S. — which recently moved permanently another aircraft carrier task force into the Pacific. But then Washington may not, as history has proved so often, overestimate lead times. Nor with the anecdotal evidence — the Hainan accident of an overly aggressive pilot in 2001 or the recent submarines incursions close to Japan — can U.S. strategists ignore the possibility rogue elements might one day snatch powering Beijing.

Because of China’s alliance with North Korea, that state’s aggressive rhetoric and its unannounced missile flight over Japan in 1998, Tokyo has left its pacifist moorings. The defense alliance with the U.S. is now mutual. Just now comes news of discussions between the two powers on collaboration should China attack Taiwan, with the U.S. pledged to its defense and Japanese strategists going back a century and a half believing the island is crucial to Japanese defense.

Nothing in history is, contrary to determinist theories such as Marxism which of late have taken setbacks, inevitable. Beijing has made pro forma excuses for its military budget, attempted to deflate speculation on its potential aggressiveness. Unlike the autarchial Soviet Union which stole but denied its long-term dependence on Western technology, China has welcomed foreign investment and technology, integral to the growing interdependence of the world economy. Its purchases of raw materials and components is an important part of the prosperity of its neighbors as far away as Australia and the London metals markets. But contrary to urban legend, economic interdependence has never been an absolute block to war just as it has not inevitably ushered in liberal politics.

Nor does China’s arming and the growing arrangements between the U.S. and Japan — with some collaboration with other regional powers friendly to Washington — necessarily lead to war. But what does seem certain is a continuing buildup of regional military strength, poised for a conflict, hopefully never to take place, but a characteristics of the immediate and probably the indefinite future — even as the world struggles with another hot war against Islamofascists which bears only tangentially on this New Cold War.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.net), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com and East-Asia-Intel.com.