Going Soft on Frenemies.

China, Stephen Colbert's famous "frenemy," poses an ethical conundrum. It's fascinating to think about what we would do if we were offered a mulligan on1936, as Jonathan notes.

China is mainly getting kid-glove treatment from America's hawks, because they've staked their identify on the notion that some jihadist hicks in the frontiers of the Iraq-Pakistan border (oops, I just had a McCain moment) are the chief issue facing humankind. Such would-be Churchills haven't spent much time seriously pondering what it means to deal with a well-nuked creditor that may have far more credible plans than Al Qaeda to be a rival of the "civilized West." Here, strangely, our hawks are being relatively dovish.