With the state visit by Hu Jintao to the United States scheduled for this month, experts ad former officials are ‘coming out of the woodwork’ to give their evaluation of the US-China relationship and to declare what is necessary from the meeting of the leaders of these two key powers.

One of those experts and former officials is Zbigniew Brzezinski – formerly a national security adviser in the Carter administration.  In an op-ed in the NYT on Monday, Brzezinski in “How to Stay Friends with China” sets out his perspective.  What Brzezinski wants is a “joint charter”.  What he hopes this will lead to is to:

… set in motion a process for defining common political, economic and social goals.  It should acknowledge frankly the reality of some disagreements as well as register a shared determination to seek ways of narrowing the ranges of such disagreements.  It should also take note of potential threats to security in areas of mutual concern, and commit both sides to enhanced consultations and collaboration in coping with them.

For him the hope is that this joint declaration will:

… provide the framework not only for avoiding what under some circumstances could become a hostile rivalry but also for expanding a realistic collaboration between the United States and China.

It is an odd request – or maybe I’m just too far from diplomacy. But why spend effort on setting a broad declarative statement.  I t would seem to me that making some progress on key issues – bilateral to be sure – but also likely to have clear implications for multilateral policy – seems to me to be a far more useful effort and far less likely to be condemned for rhetorical overkill.

As I’ve expressed in earlier blogs starting with “Jumping to Conclusions“,  is that US-China relations swings from being a fried to being a foe.  What will advance global governance is for the US and China to take steps in global economic imbalances or climate change which points the way to a more collaborative policy that can foundation for collaborative multilateral policy.

Such steps move the yardsticks in global governance. Declarations are little more than rhetoric – and potentially wrong.