China In Obama's World (or call it TOTAL CAPITULATION TO CHINA)
(From THE FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW)
By Dan Blumenthal
In speeches and policy pronouncements over the course of this past year, President Barack Obama's team has offered hints of the new president's approach to international politics. During his trip to China, he began to convert rhetoric into policy.
What are those basic premises, and how will they translate into Mr. Obama's China policy?
First, as Mr. Obama stated last year at a European meeting of the G-20, there is nothing exceptional about America's role or duties in the world. Second, in a July speech in Washington at the start of a meeting between senior Chinese and American officials, the president made the case that the world has entered an era that transcends great power politics. Great powers must choose to cooperate; they have more in common than not.
Third, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Mr. Obama put forward his view that we are in an era of new partnerships and that "the alignments of nations rooted in the . . . Cold War" no longer "make sense." Fourth, while the U.N. Assembly's Charter commits each of us to "affirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women," America has been too "selective" in its application of these rights in the past. The United States is thus in no position to promote and defend them aggressively. Fifth, with the advent of the Obama presidency we are "in a new era of engagement." During the Bush years, America had become a rogue state, with the world's nations wary of both our policies and friendship. Now, under Mr. Obama, America will return to being a responsible power, promoting mutual respect and common interests.
With respect to China in particular, the Obama administration will follow an approach of "strategic reassurance." As articulated by Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, the basic ideas driving this China policy are that "no nation can meet the world's challenges alone" and that "most nations worry about the same global threats."
The administration has explained strategic reassurance as a basic bargain. We and our allies will not contain China; rather, we will welcome its rise as a prosperous power. But, in turn, China must reassure other nations that its new stature will not come at the expense or security of others. For this policy to work, each side must strive to allay each other's concerns and develop ways to work together on common objectives.
From Mr. Obama's perspective, strategic reassurance has gone rather well. China and the United States addressed the global financial crisis together by implementing the two largest stimulus packages in their respective histories. We are working together to forge a global climate change pact. We have a common approach toward North Korea, including the implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1784 which seeks to further punish Pyongyang for its last round of nuclear and missile tests. Washington and Beijing will work together to deal with Iran's nuclear programs. We have a common interest as well in the stability of Afghanistan and Pakistan and making sure that dangerous extremists are defeated.
The administration, however, has its concerns about China. These include questions about the China's strategic nuclear weapons modernization and its growing capabilities in space and cyberspace. The administration would also like to see more transparency by the pla when it comes to ensuring peace across the Taiwan Strait, and it wants Beijing to be more modest with its sweeping assertions of its rights in its Exclusive Economic Zones and their surrounding waters. Nevertheless, from the administration's perspective, the Sino-American relationship will be defined more by what we have in common than where we differ. At the end of the day, problems in the relationship can be alleviated through greater dialogue and communication.
In turn, China made clear its own priorities in the lead up to Mr. Obama's trip. Over the course of the past year, Chinese officials have lectured visiting Americans about the need to respect its "core interests." Most of these interests can be summed up in a single sentence: "Do not interfere in what we define as our internal affairs." America should not interfere in the "internal" matter of Tibet and, in particular, it should forego any relationship with the Dalai Lama, whom China regards as akin to a criminal.
Despite an unyielding military buildup across the Strait, Washington should also not interfere in the "internal" matter of Taiwan by selling it arms, nor get in the way of China's dealings with the "terrorist" problem in Xinjiang. Moreover, Washington must avoid providing succor to the "Uighur separatist," human-rights activist Rebiya Kadeer. Finally, Beijing believes that America should stay out of China's maritime Exclusive Economic Zone, which, as defined by China, includes territories and resources claimed by Japan and other South East Asian nations as well.
Other Chinese concerns are so enduring and obvious to the Chinese that they required no further elaboration. As always, China stands behind the position that its human-rights practices are none of Washington's business. And Washington must stop the quasicontainment policy it has been enacting since the end of the Cold War through its strong regional system of allies and new partnership with India.
So from each side's perspective, how does the relationship fare so far? How reassured should both sides be?
By any objective measure, on issues identified by Obama officials as common security concerns, China falls short.
Attempts by the administration to secure more Chinese help with "Af-Pak" have been gently rebuffed. China has accelerated its trade and energy relationship with Iran, undermining the threat of "P5 plus 1" efforts to sanction Iran. On North Korea, while China signed on to resolution 1784, Beijing then quickly set about building stronger economic and political ties with the North Korean regime.
In October, Premier Wen Jiabao became the highest level visitor to North Korea in decades. The objectives and results of his trip remain a mystery to the other parties in the nuclear disarmament talks.
Yet from China's perspective the relationship has gone quite well. The Obama administration has been happy to oblige China and respect its "core interests." Mr. Obama set a new precedent by refusing to meet the Dalai Lama when he was in Washington. Administration officials had not a word to say about the brutal crackdown of the Uighurs this year. To date it has not met with Rebiya Kadeer. As this magazine went to press, the administration has not sold a single weapons system to Taiwan.
With this record, Beijing must have had high expectations for Mr. Obama's visit. The new president's general foreign-policy approach must be quite popular within the Politburo. Mr. Obama has proclaimed an end to the era of great power competition. In his U.N. General Assembly speech, Mr. Obama deemed "Cold War" alliances (such as those we have with Japan and South Korea) "a legacy of the past." The administration appeared to view the past practice of meeting with Uighur and Tibetan leaders to promote their respective cultural autonomy as too large an obstacle for Sino-American relations.
During his trip to China, President Obama did not disappoint his hosts. On his way there, he made obligatory stops in Japan and South Korea. Nothing much was accomplished in either place. To be sure, it will be difficult to deal with the government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama as a new era in Japanese politics sorts itself through. But the day Mr. Obama left Tokyo, Mr. Hatoyama rebuffed his guest's attempts to solve military base issues on Okinawa. The bluntness and rapidity of the Japanese rebuke could have been avoided with better diplomatic preparation.
In South Korea, Mr. Obama's inability at home to ratify one of America's largest free trade agreements ever was an embarrassment. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak immediately rejected the notion that he would, for a third time, renegotiate the pact. The Chinese must be quite satisfied with the president's empty visits to America's key Northeast Asian allies.
In China itself the most Mr. Obama could bring himself to say about a regime that represses all political dissent is that he is for "noncensorship." The president gave in to the CCP's policy of keeping Chinese political dissenters at a safe distance. And the joint statement he issued together with President Hu Jintao reads like a series of concessions to the Chinese.
The most damage Mr. Obama did in the joint statement was his agreement to relegate India to junior power status. China has worked tirelessly to check India's great power ambitions, particularly its growing influence in Asia. Once again Mr. Obama obliged. Not once in his trip Asia did Mr. Obama speak of India's growing role in East Asia. In their joint statement, the two presidents agreed to "support the improvement and growth of relations between India and Pakistan." China and the United States," the statement says, "are ready to strengthen communication, dialogue and cooperation on issues related to South Asia and work together to promote peace, stability and development in that region." While this might sound like harmless diplomatic boilerplate, such words are a substantial diplomatic triumph for China.
For decades China has been trying to tie down Delhi in South Asia by supporting India's archrival Pakistan. The Bush administration helped India by negotiating a broad U.S.-India strategic framework, an approach that "de-hyphenated" America's India-Pakistan policy. India would be treated as a great power in its own right, with interests in South Asia, the Middle East and East Asia. Indeed, India was essential to Bush's Asia policy, which recognized America's need for strong relations with India to check growing Chinese power.
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December 18, 2009 20:09 ET (01:09 GMT) |
