China's deepening alignment with Russia, and the sales of advanced weapons that accompany it, risk fueling China's ambition of strategic dominance in East Asia. After the "recovery" of Taiwan, or so the scenario goes, China will concentrate on making the South China Sea a Chinese lake. In its path, however, stands the U.S. alliance system and Japan's refusal to kowtow to Beijing.

Now, having met bedrock in its probes toward the U.S.-Japan alliance, China appears to sense opportunities of outflanking the alliance, in both South Korea and Australia. Geography will constrain South Korea's willingness to offend Beijing, because after reunification Korea will share a border with China. But America's offshore allies are more likely to resist China and seek stronger alliances with the United States.

China's belligerence, like that of its quasi-ally North Korea, has backfired with respect to the U.S.-Japan alliance. By 1996, the alliance was drifting, partly because of tensions over U.S. military bases in Okinawa, but mostly because of the Clinton administration's perceived tilt toward China. Then China's saber-rattling in the Taiwan Strait helped persuade Japan to upgrade the alliance. Even so, Japan remained reluctant to anger China by implementing new defense guidelines with the U.S. or by agreeing to go beyond joint research into theater missile defenses. But North Korea's launch of a long-range missile over Japan in 1998 prompted Japan to pass the defense guidelines through the Diet, and sign up to TMD. China's efforts to manipulate the left wing of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party blew back when the Cabinet spokesman allowed that Taiwan was included in the new defense guidelines in the definition of "areas surrounding Japan."