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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (95196)	4/20/2003 1:08:58 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Thanks for answering my post. With regards to "complaining to foreigners" not solving anything, let me say that for the most parts our complaining about US policies does not change anything either. Forums like SI are so that people can educate themselves and understand the big picture. If the goal is to "solve" problems, you should run for an office. So I think it is helpful and appreciated if you can bring about an understanding of Chinese issues and Chinese way of thinking. As to your list of what you do not like about China's policies, I have some comments on them later on, but most of what you said is really internal social policies which have nothing to do with foreign policy. I have a lot respect for what China has accomplished, but I am not sure how they have done it. This is something that I really like to study. It is easy to see what you call consistent and pragmatic approach of the government and its "non-interference" doctrine. What is not so easy to see is how this is being accomplished. Many countries in the world would love to be left alone. But so far this has alluded all, even the former USSR, and China stands alone in this regards (actually Israel is another example but that is too special a case). It seems that China has found a set of mechanisms that prevents outside influence on internal dissent while at the same time manages to ease internal tensions and bring about progress. The details of what motivates the government and how they shape these movements is a mystery to me and I am hoping you can shed some light on this. As to your list of dislikes, let me just say that those who come to China from outside, be it foreigners or the Chinese graduates of foreign universities, would not be in China if they did not have the privileges that they have. The real issue is can China provide the same privileges to its local population? And my guess is it cannot. ST

To: RealMuLan who wrote (95196)	4/20/2003 1:37:39 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Thanks, Yiwu, for being open with us about your feelings toward China. All the issues you name are ones I think are important. Francis Fukuyama has a good column today about another country that we have tied to the whipping post here. I don't know how he feels about "The End of History" these days, but he would like to see the end of our troops in Saudi Arabia. Guest column in "WSJ.com " AFTER THE WAR Housekeeping, Post-Saddam It's time to get U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia. BY FRANCIS FUKUYAMA Sunday, April 20, 2003 12:01 a.m. After enduring criticism from much of the world for embarking on Operation Iraqi Freedom, Americans have been justly celebrating the downfall of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship and the fact that the war was neither as protracted nor as morally ambiguous as many had feared. Once again the U.S. military has shown itself to be the best in the world by any conceivable measure. But we need to keep in mind the fact that this is likely to mark the zenith, for a while, of our perceived strength, both in a military and a political sense. As the hard work of reconstructing Iraq begins, images of the lightning maneuver war will fade into new ones of American soldiers as policemen; cheering, liberated Iraqis will turn into quarrelsome and demanding subjects. We need to exploit this moment of strength. There has been a lot of speculation as to "where next," whether Syria, Iran, or North Korea. But the best way to take advantage of our current position may be to contract our empire, rather than expand it. We should use our victory in Iraq as the occasion to withdraw all of our military forces from Saudi Arabia. Prior to the current conflict, the U.S. maintained about 4,000 people in the kingdom, mostly Air Force personnel connected with the 363rd Air Expeditionary Wing who are mostly at the Prince Sultan Air Base near al-Kharj, south of Riyadh. Withdrawing would mean closing down the Combined Aerospace Operations Center there, a state-of-the-art command-and-control facility that opened in 2001. The U.S. began basing forces in Saudi Arabia during its buildup to the 1991 Gulf War. At the time, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney was reported to have promised King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah that U.S. forces would be withdrawn after the war. But the continuing threat from Saddam Hussein and the need to maintain a no-fly zone over southern Iraq as part of Operation Southern Watch induced the U.S. to reverse course and ask for permanent basing. These bases were always a source of instability. One of Osama bin Laden's early terrorist moves was the bombing of the Khobar Towers barracks in Dhahran in 1996, which killed 19 U.S. airmen. That plus another bombing in Riyadh induced the U.S. to move its forces from Dhahran to the more secluded Prince Sultan facility. There are many good reasons to announce an intention to withdraw as soon as possible. The Saudi bases were useless to us during Operation Iraqi Freedom since the Saudis did not permit us to operate out of them. They have now become redundant with the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime and the end of the no-fly-zone requirement. But the most powerful reasons are political. U.S. forces are today welcomed in Baghdad as liberators. But there is great suspicion throughout the Arab world--unfounded--that we secretly plan to occupy the country. Announcing a withdrawal from Saudi Arabia will underline the point that our military deployments in the Gulf are not ends in themselves, but serve specific and limited political objectives. Beyond that, our relationship with Saudi Arabia has become highly problematic since the Sept. 11 attacks, which were perpetrated by a group dominated by Saudi nationals. Saudi Arabia has not become an "enemy," as some would have it, but it is clear that many people in the kingdom are not our friends. This is a country that has seen per capita income fall by two-thirds in recent years as a result of mismanagement and corruption, one that is home to a virulent anti-Western ideology. We are blamed for the hypocrisy and opportunism of our close relationship with this dictatorship even as we justified our invasion of Iraq as a fight for Arab freedom. So it would be entirely appropriate, as part of a broader shift in U.S. foreign policy in support of Middle Eastern democracy, to put some distance between us and the Saudis. Indeed, the Saudi government itself would welcome this distance. When told by Mr. Cheney back in 1990 that U.S. forces would leave after the war, Crown Prince Abdullah was reported to have muttered in Arabic under his breath, "I would hope so." In the buildup to the current war, the Saudis hinted that once it was over, they themselves would demand a U.S. withdrawal, and begin democratic reforms in their own country. We need to beat them to the punch. One of Osama bin Laden's demands was that the U.S. leave the "holy soil" of Arabia, and a withdrawal in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11 would have been perceived as capitulation. But today we are viewed throughout the region as 800-pound gorillas, and a withdrawal will be perceived not as weakness but as an act of magnanimity and common sense. We need to do this now, from a position of strength, rather than waiting some months when our presence in Iraq may seem less commanding. The U.S. has no business stationing its forces permanently in a country that will not let our women soldiers walk the streets freely. Mr. Fukuyama is the Bernard Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author, most recently, of "Our Posthuman Future" (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2002).