LOS ANGELES — In the United States we refer to it as the Powell Doctrine. And it helps unravel a bit of mystery about what China is up to these days. Remember Colin Powell? Before Barack Obama rode into the U.S. scene on his white horse, Powell was America's most admired black public political figure. As fate would have it, he never made it to the presidency, though he would have been a good one, for sure.

So it may be that this career army officer and former secretary of state will be mainly remembered for advancing the military doctrine now identified with his name: the Powell Doctrine. It seeks to limit the occasions when a nation might choose to go to war by defining with clarity the conditions under which the war option might make sense.

This notable intellectual framework, planked together after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, emphasized, among a list of criteria, the need for both overwhelming domestic support for any proposed war effort and the accumulation of overwhelming superior force over the opponent or opponents prior to attack. This was a key point: The buildup of force had to be so overwhelming that the outcome could not be in doubt, especially if it prompted the enemy to size up its chances, realize it had none, and pursue a settlement of the issues before suffering military humiliation.