I'm very grateful, Mr. Chairman, that you brought up this issue of what I would call status. Status is back in international politics in a big way. Much of what Putin seems to be concerned about is status. For that reason, I would say it would be very wise for us not to stress that Russia is a regional power. It's a great power. It has a huge territory; it has enormous resources, and it has second-strike nuclear capability. That's enough for me. It's a great power, and let's treat it that way. But also let's urge that it assume its responsibilities in a serious way.
China is unfortunately, in my view, a country that is a growing or a nascent great power, but it has no region. It is in the centre of the new big power system, with Japan and Russia nearby and India coming up on the outskirts of the system. Half of the world's oil and so on is moving through those waters. All of us use those waters, and so the problem for China is it doesn't really have a region. It's in the centre of the system. It's going to have to adjust to that in some fashion. I noticed in the last week that its verbiage has changed—it has improved to my way of thinking—but we still don't know what that means for its actions in those areas.
One last thing, one of the problems for both of these states is that they would like to create spheres of influence. Spheres of influence are not compatible with the understanding of a liberal trade and political system. They're incompatible with it, so this issue of emerging spheres of influence is something that we have to discuss with them. We have to have a conversation about this and to make clear what our position is as democracies and defending the liberal and political trade order.