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LAND IN THE
MIDDLE
Part 4: Managing the US-China-Russia
triangle
By Ted Galen Carpenter
Part
1: Another China: The awakened giant
Part
2: America's journey to holy war
Part
3: The false triangle
 Three powers stand out as
the leading political and military players in the
international system during the initial decades of the
21st century: the United States, Russia, and China. A
revitalized Japan, a rising India and a cohesive
European Union might also join those ranks, but that
result is far from certain. For the moment, relations
between Washington, Moscow and Beijing are of critical
importance. How that "strategic triangle" is managed
will go a long way toward determining whether the world
avoids major war. At the present time, there is cause
for cautious optimism, but there are also a few warning
signals of potential trouble.
A delicate
US-China relationship
The relationship between
the United States and China has been turbulent in recent
years. The US bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade
during the Kosovo war in May 1999 brought relations to a
crisis point, as did the collision between a US spy
plane and a Chinese fighter plane in April 2001. The
increasingly important trade and investment relationship
between the two countries weathered those incidents, but
tensions were visible in other arenas.
The
initial characterization of China as a "strategic
competitor" by officials in the new administration of
President George W Bush also produced a wariness on both
sides. The administration dropped that characterization
after the April spy-plane incident, however, and
relations seemed to improve steadily thereafter. Ties
were strengthened further after the September 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks, when China diplomatically supported
the US war against terrorism and the United States came
to regard China as an ally in that effort. By the time
Bush visited China in February 2002, tensions between
the two countries had eased considerably since the
initial period of the Bush presidency.
There
were several signs of improved relations. Various
commentators around the world had noted Beijing's
surprisingly mild reaction in early 2002 to revelations
that electronic listening devices had been planted on
President Jiang Zemin's US-built airplane. Even though
Chinese officials implied that the bugging was a US
intelligence operation, there were no official charges
of spying nor did the state-controlled media launch an
anti-US propaganda campaign. Indeed, the media virtually
ignored the incident.
That reaction was in sharp
contrast to the shrill statements from Chinese leaders
and the massive propaganda offensive that followed the
spy plane incident in April 2001. The reasons for that
difference suggest a number of things about China's
internal politics and foreign policy.
Indeed,
the April 2001 episode was the last time that Beijing
adopted an openly confrontational policy toward
Washington. Even before the bugging incident, Chinese
leaders had responded with surprising restraint to
several US actions that might have been expected to
provoke harsh responses. When the Bush administration
announced the most extensive arms sale package in years
to Taiwan in the spring of 2001, Beijing expressed
bland, perfunctory protests. The Chinese government
actually worked with the United States to gain
cooperation from Beijing's longtime ally, Pakistan, in
the war against Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist
network and the Taliban government in Afghanistan -
despite the possibility of a long-term US military
presence in Pakistan. And when the United States
announced its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile
(ABM) Treaty in late 2001, Beijing's protests were
muted, even though a US missile defense system would
erode the credibility of China's small nuclear
deterrent.
It is inherently difficult to
speculate about the motives for policy initiatives in a
secretive, authoritarian political system like that of
China. Nevertheless, several factors appeared to account
for Beijing's unusual restraint.
First, the
Chinese Communist Party elite wanted to avoid any
international controversy before the upcoming party
congress and the formal transfer of power from Jiang to
heir apparent (and current vice president) Hu Jintao. It
is reasonable to assume that members of the elite were
preoccupied with maneuvering for advantage during the
leadership transition.
Second, China's leaders
desperately needed to preserve and expand the economic
relationship with the United States. The global economic
slowdown, and especially the deepening recession in East
Asia, has made the US market more crucial than ever.
China felt that it could not let quarrels over other
matters jeopardize access to that market. Without a
continued expansion of trade with the United States, it
would be difficult for Beijing to sustain economic
growth rates in the high single digits. Yet if that
growth rate declines, the already alarming number of
unemployed Chinese in the major cities could burgeon
rapidly and pose a danger to the regime.
Finally, Chinese leaders were increasingly
alarmed at the signs of a growing rapprochement between
the United States and China's traditional rival, India.
Beijing worries (with good reason) about the possible
emergence of a US-Indian "strategic partnership"
directed against China. The Chinese response to the
warming relations between Washington and New Delhi has
been to try to improve China's own relations with both
capitals. At the height of the Cold War, US secretary of
state Henry Kissinger said that it always ought to be an
objective of the United States to have closer relations
with both Moscow and Beijing than they had with each
other. China's leaders seem to have made it their goal
to have closer relations with both the United States and
India than those two countries have with each other.
The trend toward improved US-Chinese relations
seemed to experience an abrupt interruption last March,
however. The Beijing government lodged a vigorous
protest concerning a visit by Taiwan's defense minister,
Tang Yiau-ming, to the United States. That in itself was
nothing new. Beijing routinely objects to visits by
current or former officials of the Taipei government and
has always urged Washington to deny visas to such
individuals. All of the previous protests were without
merit, and the United States was right to reject them.
This time, though, the People's Republic of China (PRC)
had a valid point.
Tang's visit was different in
one crucial respect from the previous episodes. Those
earlier trips involved either "transit stops" in the
United States by Taiwanese officials who were on their
way to other destinations or involved private activities
by those officials. The stopovers by Taiwan's leader
Chen Shui-bian in 2000 and 2001 were examples of the
former. The visit by then president Lee Teng-hui to
attend a reunion of his graduating class at Cornell
University in 1995 was an example of the latter.
On the surface, Tang's trip was also private. He
was in Florida to attend a conference on East Asian
security issues sponsored by a private organization.
During the course of that gathering, however, he held
discussions with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz was, by far, the highest-level US
official to meet with a Taiwanese defense minister since
the United States switched its diplomatic recognition
from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. PRC leaders suspected -
with some justification - that the Tang-Wolfowitz
meeting was an example of rapidly increasing military
cooperation between Taiwan and the United States.
Beijing responded sharply to the US action and
PRC officials were quick to show their displeasure.
Barely a week after Tang's visit, the PRC denied a US
naval vessel permission to pay a port call to Hong Kong.
Chinese officials also began to hint darkly that Hu's
scheduled visit to the United States might have to be
postponed.
The turbulent US relationship with
Russia
The relationship between Russia and the
United States under the Bush administration got off to a
very rocky start. Just weeks after Bush took office, the
United States expelled more than 50 Russian diplomats on
charges of espionage. Moscow responded by expelling an
equal number of US diplomats. Tensions over such issues
as the further expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) and US withdrawal from the ABM
Treaty also fueled tensions.
Gradually, though,
the relationship seemed to improve. In marked contrast
to some of his earlier rhetoric, Bush increasingly
insisted that he wanted a new, cooperative relationship
with Russia. The Cold War has been over for a decade, he
emphasized, and the United States no longer regards
Russia as an adversary. Those are noble words, but some
of the Bush administration's actions in recent months
belie such sentiments. As a result, the United States
may be squandering a historic opportunity for an
improvement in US-Russian relations. Moscow's reaction
to the September 2001 terrorist attacks appeared to
create such an opportunity. Not only did Russian
President Vladimir Putin vehemently denounce the
attacks, but he gave the United States substantive
assistance in a variety of ways. Most crucially, Putin
made it clear to the governments of the Central Asian
republics that Russia did not object to a temporary US
military presence in the region to wage the war in
Afghanistan. Without Russia's approval, the United
States would have found it far more difficult to gain
the cooperation of those governments, since they would
not have wished to incur Moscow's displeasure.
In essence, Putin was countenancing US intrusion
into a region that had been a long-standing Russian
sphere of influence (indeed, had been part of both the
czarist empire and the Soviet Union). And without the
use of the former Soviet military bases in the Central
Asian republics, the United States would have had a much
more difficult time prosecuting the war in Afghanistan.
Russia helped the United States in other ways.
For example, Moscow resisted the urging of the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to
cut its oil output to revive sagging global oil prices.
As the world's second-largest oil producer, Russia had a
crucial role to play. Instead of responding favorably to
OPEC's requests, Moscow maintained production at high
levels - a position favored by the United States. Among
other benefits, the Russian decision reduced the danger
of an oil-price spike as the United States waged war in
Afghanistan and hinted darkly of possible future
operations against Iraq - developments that would
normally have caused jitters in world oil markets.
How did the Bush administration reward Russia
for its cooperation? One of the administration's first
initiatives was to announce America's withdrawal from
the ABM Treaty, which Moscow had long regarded as the
centerpiece of its relationship with the United States
on arms-control issues. The timing of that announcement
could hardly have been worse, and the decision gave new
ammunition to elements in Russia's political elite who
argue that the United States seizes every opportunity to
exploit and humiliate Russia in its weakened condition.
As if the withdrawal from the ABM Treaty weren't
enough, the administration took two other provocative
actions in rapid succession. First, US officials let it
be known that the United States intended to maintain a
long-term military presence in the Central Asian
republics. This was a classic double-cross, and Russian
officials made it clear that they were none too happy
about Washington's action. Second, the Bush
administration played a duplicitous game with regard to
agreed-upon reductions in offensive nuclear weapons. At
their most recent summit meeting, Bush and Putin had
agreed to cut the number of warheads gradually to a
level between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads for each country.
But US officials soon announced that most of the
reduction would not come from actually destroying
surplus warheads. Instead, the excess warheads would
simply be put in storage. Russian leaders reacted
angrily to this gambit, arguing that all cuts in
offensive arsenals must be "irreversible", and that
means destroying, not storing, warheads.
Such
insensitive US actions have revived Russian suspicions
about Washington's global ambitions. The danger is not
that Russia will launch a new offensive arms race or
plunge relations between the two countries into a new
cold war. Thus far, Moscow's response has been
surprisingly restrained. Russia clearly prefers a close,
cooperative relationship with the United States and is
not willing to close the door on that possibility by
resorting to intemperate outbursts or crude retaliatory
measures.
But if Washington continues to take
unfair advantage, Russia can and probably will pursue
other options. Serious long-term damage will occur if
the Russian people begin to see the United States as a
hostile power that always attempts to take advantage of
their country. An unparalleled opportunity finally to
heal the wounds of the Cold War will then have been
missed.
Indeed, the greatest danger may be that
US officials are becoming too complacent regarding
relations with both China and Russia. Those officials
seem to forget that there is a third side to the
strategic triangle: the relationship between Moscow and
Beijing. Even as China and Russia have both sought to
improve their ties with the United States, they have not
neglected their own bilateral relationship. The reality
is that the political and military ties between China
and Russia have continued to grow in recent years,
albeit in a relatively quiet fashion. Moreover, there
are aspects to the Sino-Russian strategic relationship
that ought to worry US leaders.
The third
side of the strategic triangle
Cooperation
between Russia and China has been building for several
years. The bitter rivalry between Moscow and Beijing
eased rapidly with the end of the Cold War, and by the
mid-1990s China had become Russia's largest arms
customer. By 1996, the leaders of the two countries were
describing their relationship as a "strategic
partnership", and it became routine for Russia and the
PRC to issue joint statements criticizing US policy on
such issues as NATO expansion, the US-led military
intervention in the Balkans, and the development of
ballistic-missile defenses.
That cooperation has
deepened on several levels. Politically, it is
symbolized by the creation last year of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization. The SCO, whose membership
consists of Russia, China, and four Central Asian
countries, has as its primary focus combating Islamic
extremism. But an important secondary motive - as
various SCO statements and communiques make clear - is
to contain America's increasingly dominant position in
Asia.
Continuing Russian-Chinese cooperation is
even more evident on the military front. China's air
force has been acquiring Su-27 and Su-30 aircraft - some
of the best planes in Russia's inventory - as well as
S-300 anti-aircraft missiles. Even more important,
perhaps, is China's acquisition of advanced submarines
and destroyers for its navy. The Sovremenny destroyers
are equipped with sophisticated Sunburn anti-ship
missiles. China had purchased two of those destroyers in
the late 1990s. In early January 2002, just weeks after
Bush announced the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty,
the Russian news agency Itar-Tass reported the sale of
two more of the destroyers to China. That report
indicated further that China might eventually buy as
many as 11 of the ships.
Those arms sales are
significant for two reasons. First, they indicate that
Russia does not fear a military threat to its own
interests from China - at least in the near term.
Second, the bulk of the arms sales has involved weapons
that would not be terribly helpful to China in a
Russo-Chinese war but would be highly relevant in any
clash between China and the United States over Taiwan or
some other issue. The Sovremenny destroyers, in
particular, could pose a serious threat to America's
vaunted aircraft carriers should the United States
decide to intervene in a conflict between the PRC and
Taiwan. At the very least, this development raises the
risk level to the United States and complicates
Washington's military calculations. Consequently,
Russia's sales of advanced arms to China must be
considered as something less than a friendly act from
the standpoint of America's interests.
Until
recently, most US foreign-policy experts seemed
oblivious to the growing political and military ties
between Russia and China. Although those experts have
paid more attention to the development in the past year
or so, they still generally react with complacency. The
conventional wisdom is that Russia's arms sales are
motivated purely by financial considerations. The
prospect of serious Russo-Chinese strategic cooperation
is dismissed as improbable because the two countries
would supposedly be too suspicious of each other given
their long-standing border disputes and other quarrels.
That reaction is entirely too sanguine. On the
arms-sale issue, financial motives may theoretically
explain why the Russians are selling, but they do not
explain why the Chinese are buying. As for the
supposedly insurmountable obstacles to strategic
cooperation, history is replete with alliances between
countries that had very little in common and even had a
history of mutual enmity. Democratic France and
reactionary czarist Russia had little in common during
the early years of the 20th century. Yet a common fear
of Germany's ambitions led them to create an alliance.
Similarly, ancient adversaries Britain and France buried
their disputes during the same era to cooperate against
a rising Germany. If Russian and Chinese apprehension
about US power and intentions reach a high enough level,
a Russo-Chinese alliance to balance against the United
States is not unthinkable. US policy-makers would be
wise to remember that the strategic triangle of the
early 21st century has a third side.
Managing
the strategic triangle
Wise policies on
Washington's part can lead to an era of good relations
with both Moscow and Beijing. Russia and China clearly
wish to avoid a confrontational relationship with the
United States, if that is possible. Russia has been
surprisingly accommodating, supporting most aspects of
the US war against terrorism, responding mildly to US
withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, and even indicating that
a second round of NATO expansion will not prove fatal to
US-Russian relations. China, too, has sought to minimize
frictions, even though it views some US policies with
apprehension. The United States also enjoys extremely
powerful leverage. Both Russia and China regard their
economic links to the US-led West as vital, and they do
not want to jeopardize them. If used subtly, that
leverage can be highly beneficial to the United States.
But Washington must learn to exploit its
dominant global position with finesse. Showing more
understanding for Russia's campaign against the radical
Islamic separatists in Chechnya is a good start. But the
United States would be wise to show greater sensitivity
toward Russia on other issues as well. Moscow's position
that surplus nuclear warheads should be destroyed, not
merely put into storage, is perfectly reasonable, and
Washington ought to give in on that point. The United
States would also be wise to abandon its drive for
additional NATO expansion. The US-Russian relationship
will probably survive NATO's intrusion into the Baltic
region, but it's almost certain to become a sore point
in the coming years. And one cannot be confident that
Vladimir Putin's successors will be as understanding as
he has been about a NATO presence in Russia's
geostrategic back yard. Most of all, US leaders need to
go out of their way to show that they regard Russia as a
great power in the international system and to treat
Moscow with the respect that status deserves.
Likewise, the United States must become more
attuned to China's concerns. The Taiwan issue is a
tremendously emotional subject for most Chinese, and it
is caught up in the larger issue of national pride and
dignity. Such actions as approving high-level meetings
between US and Taiwanese officials are provocative and
potentially very damaging to US-Chinese relations. US
officials also need to be more aware of the unintended
effects of withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. Chinese
leaders fret that a comprehensive US missile defense
system could neutralize Beijing's small, antiquated
strategic deterrent. The PRC's likely response will be
both to modernize and significantly expand its nuclear
arsenal. That outcome should have been given greater
consideration when US leaders decided to withdraw from
the treaty. Finally, China, like Russia, wants and
expects to receive the respect due a great power.
Washington needs to be careful to convey that respect in
all its dealings with Beijing.
The triangular
relationship involving Russia, China and the United
States is critically important. If the strategic
triangle is managed properly, the danger of a
great-power war in the coming decades will be virtually
eliminated. If managed improperly, the 21st century
could proceed down the same violent path as the 20th
century. Much will depend on the wisdom of US policy.
(© Heartland. This version has been edited by
Asia Times Online.
To subscribe to Heartland, please
e-mail cassanpress@sina.com.)
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