Napoleon said: "Let China sleep; when she wakes she will shake the world."
China is awake.
Peace in the South China Sea is threatened by China's unprecedented demand to rule what have always been international waters. It is making its demand trenchant by building artificial islands where none has ever been since the breakup of the Pangea land mass into today's continents.
Recently, U.S. Navy ships sailed past one of these intrusions into settled law and practice to challenge China's ambitions.
And when President Obama recently met with the leaders of Southeast Asia and with China's president, one of the issues was China's claim to dominance over the South China Sea.
Claims to territory have a long history in human affairs as the prelude to war. China's unilateral demands are a step along that well-established road to tragedy.
China's demands for control of the South China Sea rest on a new assertion of national honor. The message being purveyed by the Chinese Communist Party is that the Americans in particular are imposing humiliation on China, a dishonor that must be resisted by patriotic citizens.
I recently participated in a conference in Beijing and experienced this turn of feeling about America and its roots in a new Communist Party line raising emotional stakes against foreigners. One speaker spoke of China as the world's "leading nation."