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Global issues make next president a 'lame duck'
Dan Rather

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote in this space about the near certainty that the next president will, along with the Oval Office, inherit from President Bush the war in Iraq, more or less as we have known it all along.

Many political observers saw the president's most recent national address on Iraq as a "farewell speech" of sorts, as it effectively handed over Iraq to his successor.

Indeed, the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue increasingly looks like a lame duck, constrained by political realities at home and abroad.

With so many pressing international issues facing America, one begins to look more and more toward the next presidency, though it is still well more than a year away.

And in so doing it becomes increasingly clear to your reporter that the next occupant of the White House should put a major summit with China at the top of his or her foreign-policy priority list.

The reasons why are numerous and can be found in abundance on just about any front page on any given day. You can take your pick from those below.

President Bush's global-climatechange summitry fails to impress world leaders:

It's becoming ever clearer that any U.S. president will be unable to surmount domestic political hurdles on greenhouse emissions without first reaching a compromise solution with China, which has similarly refused to mandate curbs on greenhouse gases and is poised to overtake the United States as the biggest greenhouse polluter by 2025.

The situation in Pakistan becomes increasingly murky: Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, whom the Bush administration had hoped would ease a transition back to democracy in this key strategic ally (and avert a feared coup by Islamic extremists), is now saying that power-sharing talks with President Pervez Musharraf have stalled.

China also has tremendous strategic interest and investment in Pakistan, as it serves as a counterweight to India, with whom China has a number of long-standing disputes.

Getting - at the least - a read on China's views and intentions regarding Pakistan could go a long way toward developing contingencies for the worst-case scenario of al-Qaida's allies getting their hands on Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declares the nuclear dispute between his country and the U.N. "closed": China may be, at this moment in history, the nation with the most potential leverage with Tehran. China imports massive quantities of oil and gas from Iran, which has stated its hope that China will become its biggest customer for these energy sources.

The outlook in Sudan's Darfur region remains bleak: Once again, a closer look reveals yet another road leading to China, which gets 10 percent of its imported oil from Sudan and has, in turn, become that nation's largest supplier of weapons.

China's economy has grown tremendously in the past decade, unleashing a corresponding drive by China to secure energy resources wherever it can find them.

This has led to deep ties between China and some of the world's most unsavory regimes.

Taken in combination with a more outward-looking Chinese foreign policy and the ongoing modernization and growth of the Chinese military, it seems the answers to certain foreign-policy problems will only come with China at the table.

President Bush, who met briefly with Chinese President Hu Jintao last month, has said he will attend the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

By then, though, he will be a president on his way out the door; and on the way in that door, the next president needs to make his or her own passage to China a top priority.

Dan Rather, a native of Wharton, was the anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News for 24 years. His column appears by arrangement with King Features Syndicate.