The China that the U.S. will have to contain in the future, he wrote, will not just be a strong power, but “the most powerful nation on earth.” U.S. peripheral military measures, he predicted, would “be swept away in a matter of days.” U.S. peripheral military containment will not just be ineffective, he wrote, it will also be provocative. “[A] strong China,” he explained, “is not going to countenance a ring of American military bases from Taiwan to Thailand . . .”