In order to meet demands from the old world, tobacco was grown in succession, quickly depleting the land.

Exhausted, the Polish Communist regime agreed to sit down to talks with Solidarity.

The permanent danger of overstretching the country s internal political structures is unlikely to permit any imperial foreign policy role.

There, capital inflows create asset bubbles that tend to overheat the domestic economy and drive up wages and consumer prices inordinately.

In Germany, which largely owes its reunification to its firm roots in the EU and NATO, Europe weariness is palpable.

This would not be achieved, however, through an inevitably imperfect sanctions regime, or by America s resort to Cold War logic aimed at breaking Iran s backbone by drawing it into a ruinous arms race.

But actions speak louder than words and the message that China s behavior is sending is far from peaceful. Indeed, Chinese leaders seem to be taking advantage of the opening provided by an overstretched United States to assert control over a broad expanse of Asia s oceans.

Today, however, the catalytic power of Deng s initial changes has waned, with rising wages, weakening external demand, and increasing competition from other emerging economies indicating the exhaustion of a growth model premised on exports and investment.

Nonetheless, with Syria consumed in civil war and the wider Middle East already unsteady, a ceasefire is essential both for saving lives and preserving today s uneasy regional peace.

Even the proliferation of China s economic ties in Africa, the Middle East, and South America may reflect vulnerability rather than imperial ambition. China s voracious quest for new energy sources has already caused it to overstretch its limited ability to protect its sea lanes.