Welcome to the next Cold War
By Joanne Gray, Washington
A high-level delegation of officials from the United States
will arrive in Beijing in a couple of weeks ready to hand
over information about how it mistakenly bombed the
Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the controversial
war with Yugoslavia.
afr.com.au
It may seem ridiculous that the US would want to reveal
even more US defence data in the midst of a furore over
allegations that over 20 years, China stole vital
information about nuclear weapons and missiles.
And yet this is the contorted position in which the US
finds itself in its fast deteriorating relationship with the
world's most populous country. The relationship is in
crisis, and the two countries seem destined to see each
other in increasingly adversarial terms.
"The Clinton administration and the Chinese
administration are on a downhill ride," said the former US
Ambassador to China, James Lilley. "You've got two
forces tearing at it. One of course is the Chinese
anti-Americanism stirred up after the bombing of their
embassy in Belgrade. Second is our whole fixation on this
espionage problem."
A year ago on a visit to China, President Bill Clinton
lauded the strengthened links between the two countries.
Japan worried that it was being replaced as the US's
most important ally in the region when Clinton, wanting
help in containing North Korea, described the
relationship with China as a "strategic partnership".
No-one is talking partnership now. The report of the
bipartisan Congressional committee chaired by
Republican Christopher Cox, which alleged the Chinese
espionage of US nuclear secrets, the humanitarian war in
Yugoslavia, and the abortive talks on World Trade
Organisation accession, have blown that nebulous idea
out of the water. During the week, a bipartisan group of
members of Congress demanded a "pause" in US
relations with China. Eighty members of Congress are
calling for the resignation of the National Security
Adviser, Sandy Berger, over the failure to deal more
aggressively with the security lapses in the weapons
laboratories. And the Republican presidential
front-runner, George W. Bush, described China as a
"nuclear competitor".
Clinton has refused to punish China by isolating it, and
has restated the engagement policy. His trade
representative, Charlene Barshefsky, has declared that
talks about China's accession to the WTO will go ahead.
But there is very little good to show for engagement.
Outside the White House, just about everyone believes
the time has come to at least reassess ties ~ diplomatic,
military and economic.
"The continued assertion by the administration that the
United States and China are strategic partners is naive
and misguided," said a Cox Committee member,
Congressman Ben Gilman. "Instead, it's obvious that
China views our nation as both a rival and a possible
threat to ... its place in the world.
"No threat to American national security ~ China or
otherwise ~ should be disregarded or downplayed. And
that includes the now clearly heightened threat that China
poses to our friends and allies in that region, including
Taiwan."
Every nation spies, and the US has the biggest
intelligence budget ~ over $US30 billion ($46 billion) a
year ~ of them all. Embarrassment over the lax security
that seems to have allowed major nuclear secrets to be
stolen from the US is one thing. Of far greater concern is
that as a result of US incompetence, China may have
jumped several generations in technology and is more
likely to emerge as a military threat in the Asia-Pacific
and towards the US.
China's real aspirations may not be benign, if the reports
of espionage are true, and that the worst-case scenario, a
nuclear breakout, cannot be dismissed. Americans are
also shocked at the reminder that China has a dozen
long-range missiles trained on US cities.
"We have been acting until now based on the expectation
that China would evolve in the direction of democracy
and human rights and that time was on our side," said a
moderate Republican on the Cox Committee, Doug
Bereuter. "But it's now clear that the weapons technology
gap has been reduced so much ... [that] we can no longer
act based on that expectation."
The US Congress has responded to the Cox report with
lightning speed. The US Senate moved to curb
high-technology exports, and wants to revert to a Cold
War era system that require licences for sales of dual use
technologies, like telecommunications, computer chips
and networking products, aircraft and satellites. Congress
is expected to give the FBI greater power over security
checks at national weapons labs like Los Alamos, the
target of the alleged espionage.
Beyond that the US will likely stay "engaged" with China,
but at the same time it will probably lunge towards a
more sceptical policy of containment, analysts say.
China clearly has territorial ambitions in Taiwan and the
South China Sea. Beyond that, says David Shambaugh,
professor of politics and international relations at George
Washington University, China wants to be able to
conduct naval patrols stretching from the Persian Gulf in
the west, to Australia in the south and to Hawaii in the
east. "The problem is that they are not capable of it and
won't be for over 20 years."
The US began building up its alliances with China's
neighbours in the region when, in 1996, China conducted
live fire military exercises off Taiwan, prompting the swift
dispatch of two US aircraft carrier battle groups.
The alliances will be upgraded, says the head of Asian
Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, Bates Gill, as
a result of the Cox report. "Especially Japan is going to
increasingly see China as a bigger problem than before.
It's going to strengthen the sort of traditional balance of
power relationships in the region ~ the US and Japan, the
US and Taiwan ~ versus China." India too, may see
China as a larger threat.
But might the US fuel China's fears if it explicitly tries to
get closer to China's neighbours, in particular if it goes
ahead with a theatre missile defence system for the
region? By treating China as a Cold War enemy, the US
may encourage it to behave like one, says the director of
defence studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, Ivan
Eland.
He says deeper alliances with China's neighbours are
sure to enrage China. "We are kind of encircling them ~
with alliances with Japan, Taiwan and Thailand ... we
don't need to be as provocative."
And with a defence budget of around $US35 billion,
China will never challenge the US budget of 10 times that
amount, says Eland, who is in the minority in being only
mildly concerned about the implications of the alleged
Chinese espionage. China has a bad reputation for being
able to reproduce technology, he says. Data about the
W88 nuclear warhead was obtained in 1988 and tested
between 1992 and 1996 but still hasn't shown up in the
field.
Others are less sanguine. If the technology which was
allegedly stolen makes its way into Chinese designs and
deployments, "it is indeed extremely worrying, and very
dangerous for countries in the region and the US," said
Professor Shambaugh, because China will have leapt 20
years in development. Still, he acknowledges that while
the Chinese have achieved some miniaturisation of
warheads, they otherwise have a "pathetic" reputation for
integrating technology and reverse engineering.
The idea that China could turn into a Cold War security
threat akin to the former Soviet Union is overblown, says
Stephen Yates, a senior analyst at the Heritage
Foundation, a conservative think-tank. "There are some
very sophisticated people that I think are dumbing down
our population by perpetrating that notion."
While acknowledging that the Chinese military is
outdated, and that there are limits to how much China
can expand its annual defence budget, he and others say
the US needs a national missile defence system. The Cox
report has dealt this largely Republican group a much
stronger hand.
There are still some who believe talks on China's
accession to the WTO could be the bright spot that
rescues the Sino-US relationship from its crisis. There are
already signs that the Republicans who favour China's
WTO entry will not let this episode completely derail
accession, despite the aborted talks and their more
hawkish stance towards China on military and diplomatic
issues. The Republican senate leader, Trent Lott, has
already cautioned against over-reacting in the area of
trade.
Even Christopher Cox, the Republican from California
who chaired the committee that produced the report, is in
favour of WTO accession.
The perceived threat posed by China was propelled
beyond Washington and into the nation's consciousness
this week. The way the US public reacts to the Cox
report will dictate how the relationship develops from
here, says the Brookings Institution's Bates Gill.
Americans are being told on television talk shows that the
nation could be on the brink of a new Cold War with
China.
"Their views and the way the Congress has to react to
those perceptions is going to contribute to the inability of
the two sides to have any significant improvement in the
relationship probably throughout the rest of the Clinton
presidency," he said.
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