I hope by the time you read this, the strategy will have worked and our people will be on their way home. But this incident should force the president to rethink whether he can have it both ways. China's rulers, at least, don't seem to think that trade and security issues are as separable as we do. If Bush didn't want this confrontation, he could have sent the Chinese a message on Day One that this was an accident and we needed to work it out fast. Ultimately, it's China's leadership that has to decide.
China can become rich, or it can be confrontational.
It can accept that innovation requires real freedom, or try to limit freedom to a narrow economic sphere. These are the contradictions that China's bosses must resolve.