Xi Jinping, the heir apparent to the leadership of the Chinese Communist regime, came to America to meet the president, dine with the vice president, visit a farm in Iowa—following in the 1959 footsteps of Nikita Khrushchev—and attend a basketball game in Los Angeles. The Iowa visit was designed to remind Americans that Xi, who visited Iowa 27 years ago, has a long-standing attachment to America, reinforced by the fact that his daughter is attending Harvard, and that Iowa’s farmers rely heavily on income from exporting their agricultural products.

In Washington the talk was about trade, giving the campaigning president and vice president an opportunity to demonstrate their undying loyalty to American workers by loudly reminding China’s vice president that trade can “only be mutually beneficial if the game is fair.” But for President Obama, who only recently had recommended that serious students of international affairs read Robert Kagan’s latest book, The World America Made, trade was the least of the issues confronting the two nations, the proverbial tip of a rather large iceberg capable of doing considerable damage to the America.