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China, too, wants to mend US fences
Jing-dong Yuan
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has indicated his willingness to visit to
China this year. If the visit takes place, it will be seven years since the
last visit to China by a US defense secretary, William Cohen, during the second
administration of US president Bill Clinton.
A meeting has yet to be scheduled, but when it comes about, and this appears
likely, this should be an important visit, one that is long overdue. The
current Sino-US relationship, which both Beijing and Washington describe as
being at its best in decades, provides a good opportunity for the top military
leaders of two great powers to engage in serious and constructive dialogue on a
broad range of issues.
Sino-US military ties since the end of the Cold War have served as a key
barometer in the overall bilateral relationship. Indeed, right after the
Tiananmen violence of 1989, among the first casualties of the sudden resulting
Sino-US estrangement was the suspension of high-level military contacts and the
freezing of the US foreign military sales program to China. It was not until
1993 that military-to-military contacts were resumed, but without high-level
visits.
During the administration of Clinton, Sino-US military ties were gradually
developed and improved, resulting in major achievements in a number of areas of
mutual interest. Among the key features of this relationship are high-level
exchange visits of defense ministers and military leaders; confidence-building
measures (CBMs), including the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement (MMCA);
annual Defense Consultation Talks (DCTs); port visits; and regular contacts at
the functional level between the two countries' national defense universities
and military academies. Through these contacts, the two militaries began to
engage each other in exchanging views on threat perceptions, perspectives on
global arms control and regional security, defense conversion, military
doctrines and broader political-security issues.
However, the path to a mature military relationship has never been smooth. The
US and China have approached the development of bilateral military ties based
on their divergent interests. Each pursues its own set of objectives. Progress
has been possible where these interests coincide; on the other hand,
disappointments are bound to arise as each expects outcomes that the other
cannot (or declines to) deliver due to differences in perceptions, agenda and
core values.
Indeed, Sino-US military relations have experienced difficulties and, at times,
severe setbacks since the early 1990s. At least four such setbacks can be
identified. The first occurred in the wake of the US government issuing a visa
to Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui in 1995. The Chinese government postponed the
scheduled visit to the US by its defense minister. The subsequent Chinese
missile exercises near the Taiwan Strait and the US dispatch of the two
aircraft carrier battle groups to the vicinity plunged the bilateral military
relationship to its lowest point in years.
The second setback was the congressional suspension of the US-China Joint
Commission on Defense Conversion, which then-defense secretary William Perry
signed with his Chinese counterpart during his October 1994 visit to Beijing.
However, the most severe blow to bilateral military relations was dealt with
the release of the Cox Report and the accidental US bombing of the Chinese
Embassy in Belgrade in May 1999. After the release of the Cox Report in March
1999, charging Chinese espionage and efforts to steal US nuclear secrets,
serious questions were raised by a Republican Congress wary and suspicious of
Sino-US military exchanges. Indeed, the congressional leadership pressed the
Clinton administration to limit the scope of military contacts, in particular
People's Liberation Army (PLA) observation of US training and sensitive
military facilities.
Finally, the April 2001 EP-3 incident, in which a US naval spy aircraft
collided with a PLA fighter plane resulting in the death of the Chinese pilot
and the detention of the 24 US crew members, led to a significant reduction of
military-to-military contacts. Over the next few years, the Pentagon, under
Rumsfeld, would review bilateral military programs on a case-by-case basis,
with a number of ongoing programs either scaled down or suspended altogether.
The Chinese defense attache to Washington reportedly was never invited to
official Pentagon functions and the PLA's Army Day was either shunned or
attended by low-level Pentagon uniformed officers.
While these major setbacks have all been occasioned by major events, some of
them quite unexpected, the slow pace in bilateral military relations and the
limitation of military exchanges reflect deep-seated differences,
interpretations, and interests. The Pentagon has sought to achieve several
broad objectives in its military contacts with the PLA and has outlined them:
"To establish clear lines of communication between senior leaders to reduce
changes of miscommunication and miscalculation;
"To establish CBMs designed to reduce the possibility of accidents or
miscalculations between US and Chinese operational forces;
To encourage PLA participation in appropriate multinational military
activities;
"To engage the PLA, a critical actor in China's national-security community, on
a range of global and Asia-Pacific regional-security issues; part of such
efforts would be to shape PLA behavior;
" To conduct functional and professional exchanges that are of mutual benefit;
" To increase Chinese defense transparency to better understand the scope and
extent of PLA modernization; and
" To engage the Chinese military in the areas of nuclear weapons, arms control,
and security of fissile materials. Hopefully this would involve officers from
the US Strategic Command and the PLA Second Artillery Corps.
The Chinese, on the other hand, have always considered military diplomacy as
part and parcel of its overall national security policy and specifically, as an
important means to its defense modernization drives. The PLA has a number of
rationales for developing military contacts with the US.
To begin with, Beijing regards the Sino-US military relationship as an
important component of the overall bilateral relationship; hence enhanced
military contacts should reflect improved bilateral relations and vise versa.
Second, there are important psychological factors in that the PLA wants to be
seen as a peer with the US military, the strongest in the world. Port visits,
for instance, can have good demonstration effects where the PLA navy can be
showcased to the American public as well as to the domestic audience. Yet
another reason may be to gain a better understanding of the US military
thinking, particularly in the area of the "revolution in military affairs", and
to explore the possibility of greater cooperation involving, hopefully the
transfers of military technology
Clearly, these differences in priorities and emphasis make mutually acceptable
programs difficult to conceptualize, develop and maintain. One such area is the
implementation of the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement. Others include
the promotion of transparency, joint exercises, and sharing of information.
These divergences are in turn a reflection of their opposing views on the role
of military alliances, use of force, regional security architects, and overall
threat perceptions and national security agendas.
Perhaps most important of all, however, is their continuing mutual suspicion of
each other's long-term intentions. The PLA would be most concerned with what
the US military's role would be in a Taiwan Strait crisis, while the Pentagon
is closely monitoring the PLA's modernization drives and its strategies in
asymmetrical warfare.
The post-September 11, 2001, environment has provided the opportunity for
Beijing and Washington to develop a more mature, candid and cooperative
relationship. The two countries have been able to agree and cooperate on a
range of issues, from anti terrorism and weapons of mass destruction
nonproliferation. In the military arena, the annual Defense Consultation Talks
and the MMCA (maritime Military Consultative Agreement) meetings, port calls
and exchange visits, including those between high-level military leaders, have
become more regularized.
But more candid discussion at the highest military level and the introduction
of mechanisms for greater consultation and crisis management through the
establishment of military-to-military hotlines are needed to move the bilateral
military ties beyond the protocol formality to a more solid footing. This is
required first and foremost to prevent misperception, misunderstanding,
miscalculation, and misjudgment between the world's most powerful and the
world's largest militaries. On the Taiwan issue, the US-Japan security
alliance, Chinese military modernization, and many others, missteps could spell
disasters.
Rumsfeld's proposed visit, if it takes place, would have significant symbolic
values. As someone who has held a consistently hardline view of China and the
Chinese military, his visit at least suggests he is taking US-China military
ties more seriously and he is willing to engage in constructive dialogue with
his Chinese counterpart. One is reminded of former Indian defense minister
George Fernandes' visit to China in the spring of 2003. That visit, by someone
who five years earlier had been widely (mis)quoted by media as describing China
as India's "security threat number one" just prior to the May 1998 Indian
nuclear tests, signified just how much the two countries had mended their
fences. Rumsfeld's visit could be equally significant.
Of course, one would be naive to think that Rumsfeld's visit would turn a new
page in Sino-US military relations. For a more stable bilateral military
relationship to develop and to be sustained, longer-term strategies must be
formulated that emphasize engagement, exchange, and better understanding of
each other's interests, priorities and policy options. Particularly important
may be greater contacts between the two militaries at the officer corps level
where both sides are of increasingly similar makeup in terms of education and
selection criteria and share the ideals of professionalism. Such a relationship
cannot be left untended to be swayed by the vicissitude of bilateral relations
during a crucial period of transition in international politics and adjustments
for both. It must be constantly nurtured. That remains, perhaps, one of the
greatest challenges ahead.
Dr Jing-dong Yuan is director of research for the East Asia
Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey
(California) Institute of International Studies, where he is also an associate
professor of international policy studies.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
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