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I found one of my old Atlantic Monthlys next to the bed yesterday and, flipping through it found this very interesting article, "The Man Who Would be Khan":

Last year I traveled to Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia, to meet Colonel Tom Wilhelm, one of the best of this new breed of American soldier-diplomats. Wilhelm's official roles at the time of my visit included serving at the U.S. embassy as the defense attaché, as the security-assistance officer, and as the liaison for the military's Pacific Command (PACOM).

That sounds somewhat boring, but it's actually a very engrossing article about American "imperialism" (or whatever you want to call "protecting our interests abroad," I'm not intending to use snippy-speak) in Asia and, of course, more generally the world. Of particular interest is the background given to China's own imperialist desires in the region, e.g.,

Wilhelm's assignment to Ulan Bator occurred against the following backdrop: Mongolia, with one of the world's lowest population densities, is being threatened demographically by the latest of Eurasia's great historical migrations--an urban Chinese civilization is determined to move north. China--which ruled much of Mongolia from the end of the seventeenth century until the early twentieth century, during the Manchu period--covets the oil, coal, uranium, and empty grasslands of its former possession. Given that a resurgent China has already absorbed Tibet, Macao, and Hong Kong, reabsorbing Mongolia--a country that on the map looks like a big piece of territory bitten away from China--seems almost irresistibly a part of China's geopolitical intentions.