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US
split on China, but realists hold the reins
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - The major new player on the National Security Council (NSC),
Robert Blackwill, attended, as did the chief Asia specialist at the State
Department, assistant secretary James Kelly. But when it came time at the
Chinese Embassy's dinner last week to lift glasses in honor of the visiting
guest, Beijing's defense minister, General Cao Gangchuan, his official host in
Washington, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, was nowhere to be found.
Instead, it was the deputy under secretary of defense for policy, Christopher
"Ryan" Henry - not exactly a household name in Washington - who rose,
apologized for his boss's absence and proffered the traditional toast for good
wishes and enduring friendship.
Perhaps it was a way for Rumsfeld, long a leader of the anti-China faction
within the administration of President George W Bush - and who in any event
disdains diplomatic niceties - to convey his resentment about having to upgrade
military relations with Beijing.
Despite the warming in bilateral ties that followed the September 11, 2001,
attacks on New York and the Pentagon, in Rumsfeld's eyes, China remains
Washington's long-term "strategic rival" in Asia and on the global stage.
But while he and Vice President Dick Cheney, another China hawk, have been
preoccupied with Iraq and the larger "war on terror", China's position as a
major player - and one on which Washington must increasingly depend - has
become ever more secure.
For example, despite lobbying from the hawks, even Bush "dropped by" to say
hello during Cao's White House meetings. It appears that Beijing could teach
Bush hardliners a good deal about the uses of "soft power".
"During the 1990s, much of US strategic thinking focused on ... the process of
China's emergence as a great power in East Asia," James Przystup, a veteran
China-watcher now with the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the
National Defense University, wrote in a much-circulated review of Beijing's
recent performance.
"That thinking is now passe. Today, China is East Asia's great power," he
argued, adding that Beijing is becoming the "go-to guy" in East Asia after 50
years of US dominance, whether the hawks like it or not.
In just the past few weeks, Beijing has moved deftly in the international arena
in ways that have clearly undermined the hardliners.
It played a critical - albeit relatively unnoticed - role in securing approval
of the US-proposed United Nations Security Council resolution on Iraq, for
example, by announcing its support before Russia, France and Germany were
prepared to do so. That it did so "in order to maintain this multinational
collective security system" was particularly telling.
In a curious role reversal from the 1990s, when the administration of US
president Bill Clinton defended its engagement with China by citing the
importance of integrating the nation into an international system that would
constrain any destabilizing behavior, Beijing now appears determined to use
multilateral forums to restrain the unilateralist impulses of the Bush
administration.
"China sees its interests are much more embedded in the international system,"
said Banning Garrett, a China specialist at the Atlantic Council, a mainstream
think-tank in Washington. "If the system goes down, they go down, and the
leader of the system, like it or not, is the US, so they need to work closely
with Washington to survive, especially with global problems."
In addition to the Iraq resolution, China has emerged as the main repository of
Bush's hopes for reaching a peaceful settlement to the ongoing nuclear crisis
over North Korea, a resolution that the president, increasingly desperate over
Iraq, now appears much more attracted to than ever before.
Beijing has also taken major steps toward improving relations with Japan, and
has even persuaded visiting Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to
recognize China's sovereignty over Tibet and to launch a program of
unprecedented joint military exercises.
By all accounts, Chinese President Hu Jintao thoroughly upstaged Bush in
Australia - where the Pentagon hawks hope to establish military bases as part
of their "forward-leaning" posture against "you know who" in East Asia - in
back-to-back appearances after the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
forum last month.
The bottom line, according to Przystup: "While the countries of the region are
undoubtedly looking to the US to balance, or at least leaven China's growing
influence, they are unlikely to be interested in getting caught up in what
Beijing may perceive as a sub rosa containment strategy."
That spells a major problem for the Bush administration's hawks, who have wooed
India, Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia, for example, with containment
very much in mind.
Indeed, it now appears that, despite rising tensions over the bilateral trade
balance and the value of the Chinese currency, the realists centered in the
State Department have decisively wrested control over US China policy, thanks
largely to Beijing's own behavior and rapidly growing influence.
"The administration has come to the conclusion that strategic engagement is the
only viable option on relations with China," said Garrett.
That Washington's major problem today is over currency, he said, illustrates
the degree to which Sino-US relations have stabilized. "This is the kind of
problem we have with Japan," Garrett said. "We're at the point where we can
have differences in one area without it threatening other aspects of the
relationship."
Alan Romberg, a retired State Department Asia expert now with the Henry Stimson
Center, a think-tank that focuses mainly on arms issues, agreed.
"China seems to have made a strategic decision early in this administration to
avoid confrontation with the US on any major issue, if that is at all
possible." The Iraq vote, he said, has served the purpose not only of ensuring
the UN's relevance but also of cementing the relationship with Washington.
None of this is good news to the hardliners who see Beijing's recent moves as
tactical rather that strategic and thus designed precisely to constrain US
freedom of action in webs of multilateral agreements and forums. But they are
clearly losing the argument within the Bush administration.
Rumsfeld ostentatiously dragged his feet on restoring military ties that were
suspended in the spring of 2001, when Beijing held a US surveillance aircraft
and its crew for two weeks after they made an emergency landing on Hainan
Island following a collision with a Chinese fighter jet.
Despite a White House decision to begin normalizing those ties after September
11 in the greater interest of the "war on terrorism", Rumsfeld did what he
could to slow the process, even refusing to permit the military attache posted
to the Chinese Embassy to enter the Pentagon for 16 months.
In recent months, the normalization process, including port visits by two US
navy vessels, has picked up speed. And, in what were described in the
Pentagon's laconic lexicon as "productive and constructive talks", Rumsfeld and
Cao agreed to further exchanges during 2004.
Significantly, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher was more enthusiastic
about Cao's meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell, even taking a dig at
the Pentagon.
Not only did the two men have a "very friendly meeting [and] a very
broad-ranging discussion", he said, but Powell expressed his "strong support
for the progress that's been made in the relationship, and the hope that we can
see even more progress, including on the military-to-military relationship".
(Inter Press Service)
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