As Europe struggles with its unassimilated immigrants, let us not choose to go down the same path. As Robert Samuelson points out, assimilation is the key. A guest worker program, by its very nature, does not give the immigrant any incentive to assimilate into the mainstream of our country. Only a clear path to citizenship will do that. Each wave of immigrants to this country came here to make a new life. Almost all of them knew they would never return to their native lands, except as visitors. They came here and earned a stake in the great American experiment. Mexican immigrants are, by and large, no different. Let us reform our system by building a more secure border to control the flow, and bring the 11 million illegals into the mainstream. It's the only way.

In all the excitement surrounding the story of retired generals calling for the Defense Secretary's scalp, Richard Brookhiser wonders about their lack of alternatives. To say that Rumsfeld messed up is all well and good. The more important question is, what do we do now? It could be, as Ralph Peters writes, that democracy is much more difficult to practice than we thought. If so, the basis of the enterprise, which is the democratization of the Middle East, through the forceful interjection of American power when necessary, may require more time than an impatient American public will be willing to wait.

Meanwhile, President Hu of China is visiting the U.S., which leads to the inevitable speculation about China surpassing America in global power by mid-century. Of course, a lot can happen between now and 2045 (when an extrapolation of current trends indicates the Chinese economy will surpass the U.S.). Imagine what the world looked like in 1906, and then what it looked like in 1945, for instance, and you get the picture. Joseph Nye thinks some people are overstating China's power.

Measured by official exchange rates, China is the fourth largest economy in the world and is growing at 9 percent annually, but its income per capita is only $1,700, or one-twenty-fifth that of the United States. China's research and development is only 10 percent of the American level.

If both the United States and China continue to grow at their current rates, it is possible that China's total economy could be larger than ours in 30 years, but American per capita income will remain four times greater. In addition, China's military power is far behind, and it lacks the soft power resources such as Hollywood and world-class universities that America enjoys. In contrast, the Kaiser's Germany had already passed Great Britain in industrial production by 1900, and launched a serious military challenge to Britain's naval supremacy.

I, for one, am not willing to concede that the 21st Century will be the "Chinese Century" as the 20th was the "American Century". In 1900, while Germany was passing Great Britain, America was already passing them both. By 1945 Germany was in ruins and Great Britain was financially prostrate and on the verge of losing her empire, while the U.S. was by far the greatest economic and military power in the world. Depending on what happens in the next forty years, we could be prostrate and headed for permanent weakness, or China could be smoldering in the ruins of war or revolution, or the reverse, or neither. Rather than make a lot of airy predictions while President Hu has tea with Bill Gates, I think I'll just watch what happens.