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The US and that 'other'
axis
By Jephraim P Gundzik
Beijing's increasingly close ties with
Moscow and Tehran will thwart Washington's foreign
policy goal of expanding US security footholds in
the Middle East, Central Asia and Asia. However,
the primacy of economic stability will most likely
prevent a proxy-style military confrontation, in
Iran or North Korea, between China and the US.
Threat to 'axis of evil' unwinds in
Baghdad
In January 2002 during his State
of the Union address to the US congress, President
George W Bush outlined his administration's
primary foreign policy goal as preventing "regimes
that sponsor terror from threatening America or
our friends and allies with weapons of mass
destruction". Bush went on to specifically name
Iraq, Iran and North Korea as state sponsors of
terrorism, infamously dubbing this group the "axis
of evil". After failing to gather multilateral
support in the United Nation, Bush declared war on
Iraq.
Since the beginning of the war in
Iraq, Beijing has worked feverishly to strengthen
its ties with Moscow and Teheran in an apparent
effort to prevent US military action against the
remaining "axis of evil" members, Iran and North
Korea. In addition to recent massive energy deals
with Teheran, which place Iran in China's security
web, both Beijing and Moscow have accelerated the
transfer of missile technology to Teheran, while
selling the Islamic republic increasingly
sophisticated military equipment.
Armed
with a vast array of anti-ship and long-range
missiles, Iran can target US troop positions
throughout the Middle East and strike US Navy
ships. Iran can also use its weapons to blockade
the Straits of Hormuz through which one-third of
the world's traded oil is shipped. With the help
of Beijing and Moscow, Teheran is becoming an
increasingly unappealing military target for the
US.
As in the Middle East, the
China-Iran-Russia axis is challenging US interests
in Central Asia. Washington is working feverishly
to gain security footholds in Tajikistan and
Kazakhstan to complement existing US military
bases in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
China and Russia are working equally hard to
assert their influence in Central Asia. A good
portion of this work is being done under the
auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO.)
Composed of China, Russia,
Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan,
the SCO was created in 1996 and reborn in 2001
when it was bolstered to counter the initial
eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization. The SCO is becoming an increasingly
powerful regional mutual security organization.
Joint military maneuvers between SCO member states
began in 2003. In 2004, the SCO created a rapid
reaction anti-terror strike force. According to
Igor Rogachev, Russia's ambassador to China, the
new force is designed to combat and respond to
terrorist attacks in any SCO member nation.
In 2004, Iran made it clear that it was
interested in joining the SCO. Iran's mammoth
energy deals with China imply that Tehran is now
integral to China's national security. A good way
to formalize security relations between China and
Iran is through the SCO.
The autocratic
governments of Central Asia have much more in
common with China, Iran and Russia than with the
US. At the same time, China and Russia can invest
exponentially larger sums of money in Central
Asian countries than the US. Almost all of China's
and Russia's foreign investment is conducted by
state-owned enterprises. Investment by these
enterprises is primarily driven by geopolitical
expediency.
Foreign investment in the US
is controlled by profit-driven private
enterprises. While the US government can dole out
aid to Central Asian countries, the size of this
aid pales in comparison to the money that can be
lavished on Central Asian countries by China's and
Russia's state-owned enterprises. In 2004,
commercial and security ties between Kazakhstan
and China were strengthened when Beijing signed a
deal with Astana to build a pipeline from the
Caspian Sea to western China.
The pipeline
deal with Kazakhstan prompted Beijing to pledge
increased military and technical assistance to
Kyrgyzstan, through which this pipeline passes.
Despite its small size and lack of natural
resources, the geostrategic importance of
Kyrgyzstan, which hosts military bases for both
Russia and the US, is enormous. Recent political
instability in Kyrgyzstan especially alarmed
Washington.
In early April, US Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visited Bishkek to
ensure that Kyrgyzstan's new government would
continue to host US military forces. In addition,
Rumsfeld tried to persuade interim President
Kurmanbek Bakiyev to allow the US to station AWACS
surveillance planes in Kyrgyzstan. At the
beginning of 2005, the Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry
denied this request by Washington, saying that
such equipment was beyond the original
humanitarian and peace-keeping mission of US.
forces in Kyrgyzstan. Bakiyev made it clear that
Washington would not be allowed to deploy the
AWACS or to establish any more bases or expand
existing facilities in Kyrgyzstan.
Bakiyev
also stressed that US forces would not be in the
country permanently. Deepening economic and
security ties between Central Asian countries and
China and Russia could eventually reduce
Washington's influence in the region to
Afghanistan. However, in addition to three
operational military bases already in Afghanistan,
Washington plans on building another six military
bases, further amplifying the US military threat
to China, Russia and Iran.
East Asia is
another region where the China-Iran-Russia
alliance has common interests diametrically
opposed to Washington's. The most obvious country
where these interests conflict is North Korea. As
with Iran, the Bush administration is determined
to force North Korea's government to acquiesce to
US security demands. Again, like Iran, North Korea
poses a strategic threat to Washington's global
hegemonic aspirations. The mutual antagonism by
Iran and North Korea of the US has naturally
brought these two countries together. North Korea
has been an integral supplier to Iran's ballistic
missile program over the past 15 years.
The US State Department has sanctioned the
Changgwang Sinyong Corporation, North Korea's main
missile exporter, four times since 2000 for
engaging in proliferation activities with Iran. In
2004, US intelligence reported that North Korea
was helping Iran build long-range missiles. While
Iran's ties to North Korea are strategic, Russia's
and China's ties to the country are security
driven. Both Russia and China share common borders
with North Korea.
The Soviet Union had
strong ties with North Korea between 1950 and 1990
punctuated by a mutual security agreement. After
the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia's
relations with North Korea weakened sharply.
President Boris Yeltsin chose not to renew the
mutual security agreement with North Korea in
favor of strengthening relations with South Korea.
President Vladimir Putin reestablished the
historically close ties between Russia and North
Korea. In 2000, Putin traveled to Pyongyang. North
Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, paid return visits to
Russia in 2001 and 2002. In addition to official
state visits, Moscow and Pyongyang have exchanged
several ministry-level visits in the past two
years. Pyongyang also enjoys very close relations
with Beijing, with which high-level visits have
been exchanged regularly in the past several
years.
More importantly, Pyongyang and
Beijing are tied together by a mutual security
agreement. North Korea is an important security
buffer for both China and Russia against US
military projection in Asia. With Beijing and
Moscow clearly in accord about countering
Washington's global hegemonic aspirations, neither
country is likely to sell out their relations with
North Korea and this security buffer. More likely,
Beijing and Moscow would like to bolster the
security buffer in the light of expanding US
militarism. It is extremely unlikely that the US
will convince North Korea to give up its nuclear
weapons and uranium enrichment program because
both Beijing and Moscow need North Korea and the
security buffer it provides.
Playing in
Washington's backyard
In 2004, Russia and
China launched a counter-offensive to the
expansion of US militarism in Asia. Beijing and
Moscow began to court Latin America's new leftist
governments in an unprecedented slap to the US.
Both Russia and China have strengthened relations
with Washington's arch foe in Latin America -
Venezuela. In November 2004, Moscow agreed to sell
Caracas as many as 30 combat helicopters and
100,000 automatic rifles. In addition, Venezuela
is considering the purchase of up to 50 MiG-29
fighter jets from Russia to replace aging F-16s.
The Russia-Venezuela arms deal was widely
criticized in Washington. Both Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice have voiced strong opposition to
the deal. In late 2004, Venezuela's President Hugo
Chavez visited Beijing, where he signed several
oil sector investment deals with the China
National Petroleum Corporation. Chavez has also
stated that he would like to give oil export
preference to China rather than the US. China also
signed significant energy-related investment deals
with Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina in 2004. The
willingness of Beijing and Moscow to challenge US
security so close to home clearly indicates that a
geostrategic battle has begun.
Security
threat or strategic competitor?
Beijing's
expanding foreign relations both within and
outside the China-Iran-Russia alliance and China's
growing militarism have begun to repaint
Washington's perceptions of US-China relations.
These perceptions have been echoed by Washington's
closest allies in Asia - Taipei and Tokyo. In
mid-2004, reports by both the US-China Economic
and Security Review Commission (USCC) and the
Pentagon depicted China as a major threat to US
national security.
The USCC was created by
Congress in 2000 "to monitor, investigate and
submit to Congress an annual report on the
national security implications of the bilateral
trade and economic relationship between the United
States and the People's Republic of China, and to
provide recommendations, where appropriate, to
Congress for legislative and administrative
action". In June 2004, the USCC released its
annual report on China.
This report noted
that China was deliberately using economic warfare
against Washington by creating a "competitive
advantage over US manufacturers". The report
specifically referred to the undervaluation of the
yuan against the dollar and Beijing's (alleged)
disregard for World Trade Organization rules as
weapons in China's economic war with the US. The
report described China's expanding relations with
Iran as countering multilateral efforts to
stabilize international oil supplies and prices.
The USCC report also noted that Russia was
supplying increasingly sophisticated weapons to
China and that these weapons were part of
Beijing's strategy for defeating US forces in the
event of war with Taiwan. A congressionally
mandated report on China by the Pentagon described
China's Russia-assisted military buildup as giving
China the ability "to cause significant damage to
all of Taiwan's airfields and quickly degrade
Taiwan's ground based air-defenses and associated
command and control". Most alarming, the Pentagon
report warned that Chinese military strategists
were considering the use of nuclear weapons
against US and Taiwanese forces.
The Bush
administration's concern over China's growing
military power is also depicted in Washington's
reaction to the European Union's proposed lifting
of its China arms embargo. Washington's greatest
concern about renewed arms trade between the EU
and China was that this trade would permanently
tip the balance of power away from Taiwan and
toward China. Even worse, European arms could be
used to kill US troops in Asia. Of course, the
possibility of Beijing using European weapons to
kill US troops presupposes that a war between
China and the US will erupt.
Taiwan's
President Chen Shui-bian and his Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP) share Washington's
concerns about China's military threat. The Chen
government's concern stems from its drive for
Taiwan's independence from China and Beijing's
forceful reminders that Taiwan is part of China.
In the lead up to Taiwan's legislative elections
in late 2004, Chen campaigned on a platform of
Taiwanese independence. Though Chen's DPP suffered
significant losses in these elections, Beijing's
response was largely entrained in the form of
China's anti-secession law.
The law was
meant to firmly warn Chen against seeking Taiwan's
independence from China in the event that the DPP
won a legislative majority. The DPP's losses to
the unification-minded opposition takes much of
the bite out of the law. In addition, Chen's
opposition, the Nationalist Party, has permanently
stalled legislation seeking about $18 billion to
bolster Taiwan's missile defense system. The
opposition has realized that Taiwan has no hope of
defending against a military attack from the
mainland, prompting renewed ties between Taiwan's
Nationalist Party and Beijing.
Along with
Washington and Taipei, Tokyo also demonstrated its
growing concern over China's increasing military
might. In December 2004, the Japanese Defense
Agency issued a defense policy guideline that
defined China as a potential security threat. The
report noted, "China, which has significant
influence on the region's security, has been
modernizing its nuclear and missile capabilities
as well as naval and air forces, and expanding its
area of operation at sea."
In a joint
US-Japan security statement issued in February,
Tokyo went further, agreeing that Japan would
"encourage the peaceful resolution of issues
concerning the Taiwan Strait through dialogue".
Both the defense policy guideline and Tokyo's
concern over tension between China and Taiwan are
a dramatic departure from Japan's post-war foreign
policy. The change in foreign policy focus from
military pacifism to military assertion is being
driven by Washington's own security concerns.
These same concerns drove Tokyo to
encourage oil exploration in an area of the East
China Sea that is claimed by China. Japan's
military assertion has accelerated China's defense
buildup while contributing to the creation of the
China-Iran-Russia alliance. The shift in Tokyo's
foreign policy has led to a sharp deterioration in
China's relations with Japan. Foreign policies in
Beijing, Washington and Tokyo are all
characterized by two separate components -
geopolitical relations and economic relations.
Cold War redux
Beijing's
geopolitical relations with Washington and Tokyo
are arguably at their lowest ebb since China
established formal relations with the US and Japan
in the 1970s. The deterioration in China's
relations with the US and Japan and the resultant
improvement in relations with Iran and Russia are
being driven by Washington's outsized global
security concerns. These security concerns are
becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy for
Washington.
In sharp contrast to
geopolitical relations, economic relations between
Beijing, Washington and Tokyo remain quite strong.
The mutual interdependence of these economies
argues strongly against the preeminence of
security issues in overall relations. China is the
largest trading partner of Japan and third largest
trading partner of the US. In addition to
substantial trade links, American and Japanese
companies have invested tens of billions of
dollars in China over the past 15 years.
Nonetheless, Beijing, Washington and Tokyo have
all elevated the importance of security to overall
economic well-being.
While a conflict
between the US and China over Iran or North Korea
cannot be ruled out, economic interdependence
suggests Beijing and Washington have entered a
period of geopolitical detente. Beijing's
increasingly close relations with Moscow and
Tehran will contain Washington's further military
projection in the Middle East, Central Asia and
Asia and foil the Bush administration's plans for
subduing uncooperative governments in Iran and
North Korea. Finally, Washington's unilateralist
foreign policy will increasingly isolate the US to
the benefit of China's foreign economic relations,
making Beijing all the stronger.
Jephraim P Gundzik is president
of Condor Advisers, Inc. Condor Advisers provides
emerging markets investment risk analysis to
individuals and institutions globally. Please visit for further
information.
(Copyright 2005 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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