China, Israel march in step
again By Stephen Blank
China
and Israel are resuming a military relationship. From
the 1970s until both sides established diplomatic
relations with each other in 1992, Israel sold China an
estimated US$4 billion worth of arms. And once their
political relations were normalized, their arms sales
relationship become overt.
Indeed, that
relationship continued until 2000, when Israel attempted
to sell China an Airborne Warning and Control System
(AWACS), only to run afoul of the United States, which
blocked the deal, saying it would give Beijing a
strategic edge in any Taiwan conflict. As a result,
Israel ultimately had to pay China $350 million in
compensation, and there were no known arms sales through
2003.
However, now a top-level delegation led by
the director general of the Israeli Defense Ministry,
General Amos Yaron, Major General (Ret) Yossi Ben-Hanan,
head of Sibat, the Foreign Defense and Assistance Export
Organization, and Yehiel Horev, the ministry's chief
security officer, visited Beijing this week. It was the
first time the two nations held high-level military
talks in three years.
Although this meeting is
described as a confidence-building measure to reopen the
way to a lucrative defense relationship with Beijing, it
has not happened out of the blue. The meet follows hard
on the heels of Israel's sale of the Phalcon AWACs
system to India, with US approval, and the visible
expansion of Indo-Israeli defense ties to the point
where some observers believe Israel is now India's
largest supplier.
Given the high reputation
enjoyed by Israeli defense products and services, as
well as Israeli defense firms' needs for markets outside
of Israel, it is not surprising that the Chinese
government is eager to resume what had been a lucrative
relationship, and that Israel is equally interested in
finding a way to restore those military ties.
But it should be noted that the Israelis have
made it clear they will not cross Washington again and
take the risk of offering a system to China that
Washington regards as a threat to its strategic
interests. Thus there is reason to believe that there
will be limits and restraints to whatever Israel is
prepared to offer China.
In this connection,
Israel's earlier arms sales to China, especially the
Lavi jet fighter, have aroused considerable unhappiness
among American conservatives, who suspect Chinese
military aims - with regard to Taiwan, considered its
breakaway province. Some of these Israeli weapons are
now turning up as Chinese systems, such as the new
semi-stealth fighter, the Jian-10, which causes many
difficulties to opposing air forces and air defenses.
Nor is this the only such troubling - to
Washington - sale. Any future sale that arouses US
suspicions about how they could augment China's existing
capabilities - again, especially with regard to Taiwan -
will certainly affect Israel's ties to the US.
There also is as yet no sign of what India's
response to this meeting will be. Perhaps Delhi is
waiting to see what happens. But it must strike at least
some prominent Indian elites as strange that on the
heels of Israel's greatest success in its bilateral
defense ties with India, that it is turning to China,
which many Indian elites consider New Delhi's main
rival, to sell it weapons. Certainly it will be
interesting to see how the Israeli government and
defense industry handle the complex situation involving
Beijing, Washington, and New Delhi.
But there is
more to this story - arms sales to China - than the
Israeli angle. Even as China's indigenous capabilities
for producing relatively high-level defense systems
grow, and its shipbuilding capabilities become much more
impressive, it is conducting a vigorous campaign to
broaden the base of its defense imports.
Even
though it now imports some $2 billion annually from
Russia in defense sales, Russian reports confirm that
most of what China buys is technology for its own
indigenous arms industries - not finished weapons. This
apparently coincides with renewed efforts to use foreign
technology to develop an impressive and stable
indigenous defense technological base.
But this
turn to technology in its defense relationship with
Russia also coincides with a determined effort to break
the blockades imposed on it by the West. France clearly
wants to sell weapons to China, but the European Union
imposed a blockade with American support in 1989 to
protest the Tiananmen massacre of pro-democracy
protesters. France's desires to gain a market, once
again thumbing its nose at the US, and to strengthen the
global presence of the EU notwithstanding, the EU is
obviously reluctant to terminate the sanctions on arms
sales. Doing so would obviously cast doubt on the
seriousness of the EU's commitment to democracy and
human rights abroad and to the stability of the
cross-Taiwan Strait balance. Moreover, it would
introduce another and unneeded source of tension into
its relationship with the US over what is for it a
peripheral issue - but a vital one for Washington.
China's quest for superior Western technologies and
weapons - from Israel - also suggests a growing
disillusionment with Russian systems and unhappiness
with Beijing's exclusion from the global arms market.
There is little doubt that Western systems are generally
of higher quality than are Russian weapons, that Western
producers provide better services and after-sale repairs
and possibly more value for the dollar than do Russian
systems and services.
Thus it is possible - if
China is successful in eventually breaking the EU arms
embargo and resuming military ties to Israel, that it
can find alternatives to Russian producers. If current
trends continue, Israel can end up inheriting or
displacing much of the Russian market for the export of
defense systems to India and China, Russia's main
customers. That outcome would represent a disaster for
the Russian defense industry and the Russian armed
forces, which have few if any sources for developing new
weapons, except for those sales.
Thus China's
and Israel's efforts to resume their formerly profitable
relationship lie at the intersection of some important
trends in world affairs, and can have significant
repercussions for international affairs that go far
beyond the bilateral relationship. Only time will tell
how far this rapprochement goes and what its
consequences will be, not only for Israel and China, but
for all those with an important interest in that
relationship. But whatever happens, and however this
relationship develops or does not mature, its
consequences will most assuredly be profound, with
repercussions that go far beyond Jerusalem and Beijing.
Stephen Blank is an analyst of
international security affairs residing in Harrisburg,
PA.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co,
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