VENICE - Differences in policy and strategy on issues of defense, the economy and trans-Atlantic relations are not merely differences in interests or agendas but have deep foundations in separate cultural traditions. If a consensus can ever be reached between Europeans, Americans, and Chinese, it must start with recognizing they have different approaches to problems.

This is perhaps one of the main emerging themes in the "Trialogue" a three-way conversation between China, Europe and the United States organized in Venice by the Aspen America, Aspen Italy and the Central Chinese Communist Party School.

The US is focused on a list of international issues to solve: Iran, North Korea, Myanmar. On each front, Washington is calling on Beijing to exert sanctions, support and various pressures - up to contemplating the possibility of the military option.

Each time, Beijing tries to avoid exercising these options by limiting penalties with vetoes, and certainly looks on the military option with extreme suspicion. The reasons are certainly differences in interests, but also a different view of the objective world - something that is very deeply embedded in the cultural psychology of the two countries.

The two perspectives seem to derive from two different visions of ancient medical traditions. American and Western thought springs from the Greek philosophical tradition of violent medical intervention to resolve a problem once and for all, through a surgical operation that involves the use of a knife and the shedding of a patient's blood. The tumor or even just the pimple, the sick part, is removed from the rest of the body, considered healthy, to heal the patient.

In China, the traditional medical philosophy is different: there is a belief in the long-term practice of minimal external applications of needles that do not cut or injure the patient. Acupuncture is used to restart the qi, the vital breath of the person, which will help to heal the whole body, not just the sick part. This is not something that requires shedding blood, which would hurt the qi and be counterproductive. Conversely, shedding blood hurts the body, which has to regain strength to heal the sickness affecting not just a part but the whole body.

Handling psychological problems seems similar. The West prefers to confess to a priest or a psychoanalyst and the painful process of confronting directly fears and faults believing that only this will rebuild the mutual trust. China prefers to seek common ground and shelve differences, confident that slowly being together, the natural affection, will create an osmosis of sentiments that will create a new mutual balance.

The contrast in approaches to foreign policy seems similar. America - and Western Europe along with it - believes that "surgical" military intervention can be decisive and uses the word proudly as if the country used anesthesia and cleared away the dirt of what was known in the past as a war. China believes instead that war does not solve anything - on the contrary, it is likely to aggravate the situation on the ground - and other countries should instead try to set in motion the internal forces that change the situation from the inside, with minimal external intervention. In other words, the choice is the scalpel or the needle.

There is no doubt that if the problem of mutual understanding in international collaboration is not discussed, the situation can become like a ping-pong match, where the ball passes from one side of the table to the other, with one hoping to score a point when the other isn't looking.

For decades now, medical experts from both traditions have been working on a reconciliation of the two systems. For chronic conditions that the Western tradition does not recognize as "diseases" and for which it has no intervention, the Chinese tradition - in which it is thought necessary to act before the outbreak of the illness - can be used. For extreme cases, however, where the Chinese tradition is ineffective, Western medicine can be used.

There are still many gray areas where the two traditions diverge, and many degrees of sickness where both traditions could be used. There are further differences between the systems, which have different definitions of what constitutes a successful intervention. The Western system, motivated by daily newspaper headlines and television "sound bites", wants clear results in the short term: regime change in Iraq, the death of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The Chinese system, not dogged by an aggressive press or competitive elections, can afford the luxury of thinking in the longer term.

China believes long-term answers should be all-inclusive. You should consider not merely the overthrow of Kim Jong-il in North Korea, but think about what is or should be the political geography of East Asia after Kim: Will there be a united Korea? Should American troops remain in the south? Will the new Korea be pro-or anti-Chinese? Pro or anti-Japanese?

The temporary solution may solve some problems, but other issues will expand. There is also a vision of history and line of thought that adheres to geography. The first history of Chinese philosophy, written by Fung You-lan in the 1930s, compared Greek and Chinese thought on the basis of geography. One springing from the mindset of city states sea merchants moving from coast to coast in the Mediterranean and the other coming from the mentality of advisers to princes of warring fortified continental states that were united by the same river flood plain.

Specifically, during the eight years of the George W Bush administration, the most successful foreign policy was possibly the non-action in North Korea - rather than the action in Iraq. East Asia has generally developed smoothly largely unaffected by the threatening postures of North Korea and beyond the clutches of the tiny area around Pyongyang.

In Iraq, the US has squandered hundreds of billions, possibly starting the present economic crisis, while the country is still fighting a bloody civil war that has claimed thousands of lives and allowed Iran, led by anti-Western fundamentalist clerics, to expand their power and influence in Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula, while rushing into a very real nuclear armament program.

Today after surgery to fix a mistake in Iraq, the United States wants to perform another operation in Iran. But from the Chinese point of view, this is simply not credible, and is not in the national interest of the US or China.

This space for cultural understanding also opens a political space for action in Europe, which is often skeptical of the American interventionist frenzy but almost certainly not supportive of the wu-wei "no-action" policy of China.

This space could provide a necessary role for Europe to mediate between the US and China. But instead, Europe is likely to be excluded from discussions between the US and China, countries increasingly attracted to each other across the Pacific Ocean. If the Europeans could dig into their cultural tradition and bring something out to help draw the two sides together then they could find a place in the new Pacific era.  (2011-11-03 Asia Times)