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2 China begins to define the
rules By M K Bhadrakumar
Russian Deputy Prime Minister and Defense
Minister Sergei Ivanov said in Moscow recently:
"The world has been changing dynamically, and
threats have been changing with kaleidoscopic
speed. The times of the Cold War when everything
was predictable and measured were like a paradise
in comparison with the present day."
Apparently, Ivanov was juxtaposing the
Cuban missile crisis of 1962 with the "threatening
trend" of proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction. But he managed to "scare the hell out
of us" and make things a little bit clearer than
the truth, to borrow the
famous words of the late US
secretary of state Dean Acheson to then-president
Harry Truman. Ivanov held up a mirror noir
of our own teetering times.
Despite the
jostling for position, with wariness and
friendliness alternating, accommodations and
compromises were going on all the time between the
two superpowers. In comparison, a massive gray
aura lacking in transparency surrounds the
multipolar chaos today. John Negroponte, one of
America's ablest diplomats, also gently drew
attention to this in his testimony before the US
Senate Committee on Intelligence on January 11.
Negroponte made a startling revelation in
his "Annual Threat Assessment of the Director of
National Intelligence" - the United States doesn't
worry about any "threat" from China, for Beijing
"places priority on positive relations with the
United States", and China is a factor of regional
stability in Northeast Asia. China's embrace of
globalization is "rapidly bringing the countries
of the region closer together".
Chinese
policy is emphasizing development of friendly
relations with the states on its periphery and is
"assuring peaceful borders", registering notable
success lately in improving relations with Japan
and in calming the waters across the Taiwan
Strait, as also in establishing strong ties with
the member states of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations both bilaterally and multilaterally.
Most important, Negroponte took note of China's
rapid rate of military modernization as an
understandable manifestation of its "aspirations
for great-power status, threat perceptions and
security strategy" rather than posing a threat as
such to the US strategic assets.
Negroponte described a China that is
almost entirely engrossed in its top priorities of
domestic social stability, environmental
protection, rule of law, balanced growth and
development, and battling corruption, and thereby
"strengthening the Communist Party's position"
among the Chinese people. But this is a far cry
from what former US secretary of defense Donald
Rumsfeld believed. What has changed?
Actually, very little. There was a
remarkable consistency in what China professed -
adherence to a foreign policy aimed at creating a
friendly environment for domestic reforms. Yet
something changed. The US defeat in Iraq solely
cannot explain it. Nor is it indicative of any
significant rollback of US global reach.
In essence, it is symptomatic of the US
foreign-policy dilemma - unwilling to play by
genuine multilateralism, yet having to abide by
it. This is best evident from the so-called
Princeton Project on National Security, the
three-year bipartisan initiative of leading
American thinkers from the government, academe and
business that hogged the foreign-policy debate in
the United States during the recent months.
The remarkably bipartisan initiative,
co-chaired by ex-secretary of state George Shultz
and former national security adviser Anthony Lake,
was motivated by the realization that a
strengthening of the intellectual underpinnings of
US global strategy was called for. It aims at
creating a "concert of democracies" that can help
create a benign international environment for US
global strategies. Its main finding is that the US
doesn't have to rush into military means while
facing the present dangers or long-term challenges
or for seizing countless opportunities.
It
openly draws inspiration from the late George
Kennan's doctrine of containment in helping the US
deal with the series of profound changes in the
international landscape in the post-Cold War era,
including rising new powers, a tightening energy
market, increasing anti-Americanism, and a
globalized economy. In a nostalgic tone, the
Princeton Project notes, "In the end, Kennan was
proved right; contained from without, the Soviet
Union ultimately crumbled from within."
The Princeton Project identifies six
criteria for an optimal US strategy in the 21st
century. First, it must be "multidimensional",
that is, it should operate "like a Swiss army
knife, able to deploy different tools for
different situations on a moment's notice".
Second, it must be "integrated", that is, it must
fuse coercive power with soft power.
Third, it must be "interest-based rather
than "threat-based", giving the United States the
flexibility to build cooperative frameworks with
countries tactically rather than insisting that
other countries must also share the US
prioritization of threats.
Fourth, US
strategy must endeavor to be based on "hope rather
than fear", which means it must radiate the
positive energy of a progressive world vision.
Fifth, it must be "pursued inside-out",
which implies that the US should strengthen the
"domestic capacity, integrity and accountability
of other governments as a foundation of
international order and capacity".
Finally, the strategy must be adapted to
the information age, that is, it must enable the
US "to be fast and flexible in a world where
information moves instantly, actors respond to it
instantly and specialized small units come
together for only a limited time for a defined
purpose - whether to make a deal, restructure a
company, or plan and execute a terrorist attack".
In its application to Asia, the Princeton
Project visualizes building a "trans-Pacific,
rather than pan-Asian, regional order" in which
the US "plays a full part", and in which " the
US-Japan alliance remains the bedrock of American
strategy in East Asia", and in which the US should
also continue to strengthen ties with India
("Asia's other emerging power") on the basis of
policies that calculate that "sustained economic
growth in Asian countries other than China is the
key to managing China's rise".
Thus we may
see the impending departure in the very near
future of a US-led caravan of Asian-Pacific
nations (Japan, Australia and India) heading to
engage the ancient Middle Kingdom in ways that
"help it become a responsible stakeholder" in the
regional and global systems.
Evidently, a
lot of sophistry surrounds what Negroponte said
and what the Princeton Project recommended as
Washington's China policy. And Beijing cannot be
unaware of such sophistry, though it almost never
criticizes foreign states. Referring to the
Princeton Project, Ruan Zongze, vice president of
the China Institute of
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