The way countries deal with us depends also on what the record has led them to believe is our nature: Chinahas carefully cultivated an image of being a porcupine—one that will brook no nonsense, one that will useforce to wrest what it feels it should have. Perception about us is ambiguous, at best, given events such asGoa, Sikkim, atomic weaponry, the 1971 war that broke Pakistan. But if 61,000 had been killed in the US, Chinaor Russia by terrorists trained, equipped, armed by a country, what would they have not done to take out thesource of the assault on them?