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2 Romney stays
in character on China By Peter Lee
Awkwardness seems to be a
defining characteristic of the Mitt Romney
campaign to be the next United States president
and of his China policy, as well as of the
candidate himself.
Certainly, Romney does
not have an easy row to hoe. A moderate Mormon
plutocrat who seems to reserve his passion for the
sacred cause of keeping his money safe and happy,
in the Cayman Islands if necessary, he can only on
count multi-millionaires - with their
uncomplicated yearnings for further tax cuts, less
regulation, and more complete disengagement from
the US government's political dysfunction and
fiscal mismanagement - as his genuine core
constituency.
Constitutionally
ill-equipped to rally the Republican base, Romney
is also an inept,
uninspiring, and unempathetic candidate whose
stumblings along the campaign trail have prevented
the GOP from taking deadly aim on the faltering US
economy and President Barack Obama's alleged
mismanagement of it.
It is Romney's one
good fortune that he is running against Obama,
whom an aroused conservative rank and file
perceives as unacceptably liberal (and black), an
advocate of Big Government (and black), hostile to
free enterprise (and black), uncomfortable
acknowledging America's God-given exceptionalism
(and black), and prudent almost to the point of
being apologetic in wielding US power overseas
(black black black black black).
Romney
appears to have adopted the strategy of pandering
to this conservative base while throwing an
apologetic shrug to the prosperous, cosmopolitan
elites who bankroll his campaign and provide it
with its media heat.
However, if Romney's
political dalliance with right-wing populism
threatens to blossom into a genuine liaison,
business and financial elites and their associates
in the popular press are quick to object. One of
the most interesting illustrations of this
phenomenon is China.
China-bashing is
underpinned by a broad American unease with the
rise of China, an autocratic, independent power
that, unlike erstwhile Asian bigshot Japan, is
manifestly unwilling to submit itself to US
military and economic tutelage. This insecurity
gives special intensity to American distaste for
China's human-rights, environmental, economic, and
foreign policy transgressions against
liberal-democratic values.
The Obama
administration's "pivot" to Asia - which in
retrospect may be remembered most as a sterling
opportunity for the United States to hopelessly
entangle itself in Vietnam's counterproductive
anger toward Beijing and the Philippines'
free-form security funk - will provide ample
opportunities for continued friction and will
institutionalize anti-China hostility in US
politics for the coming decades.
Confronting China, like any other
polarizing initiative, is a self-reinforcing
policy, creating its own momentum out of fear,
self-interest, and escalating contingency
planning.
Logically, the strategic and
diplomatic pivot into Asia requires that the
United States field a credible military deterrent
in case things with China don't go well. To this
end, the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment came
up with a gargantuan war plan - AirSea Battle -
based on the worst-case scenario.
And by
worst case, I really mean worst case: the People's
Liberation Army destroys US military assets in the
Pacific by sneak attack and the US is forced to
engage in an enormous counteroffensive against
targets across China to regain the upper hand.
Fortunately, according to the scenario,
the confrontation doesn't go nuclear.
Actually, the confrontation doesn't go
nuclear because the scenario refuses to consider
it. It simply assumes China won't use its nuclear
weapons because a brisk nuclear exchange would
render the whole scenario (and the beefed-up US
Air Force and naval units eager to demonstrate
their mastery of 21st-century tech war against
hardened targets in the Chinese interior
provinces) moot.
This would be a laughable
case of strategic self-gratification by the ONI, a
fear-mongering Pentagon operation sometimes called
the Office of Threat Inflation, except for the
fact that the US Air Force and Navy love the plan
(according to the Washington Post, the Army and
the Marines are unenthusiastic, for understandable
reasons; after all, the plan is called AirSea
Battle, not Air-Sea-Ground-Heroic Marines Jumping
Out of Helicopters Battle).
Politicians
also love it. Per the Washington Post:
The concept… aligns with Obama's
broader effort to shift the US military's focus
toward Asia and provides a framework for
preserving some of the Pentagon's most
sophisticated weapons programs, many of which
have strong backing in Congress. Sens Joseph I
Lieberman (I-Conn) and John Cornyn (R-Tex)
inserted language into the 2012 Defense
Authorization bill requiring the Pentagon to
issue a report this year detailing its plans for
implementing the concept. The legislation orders
the Pentagon to explain what weapons systems it
will need to carry out Air-Sea Battle, its
timeline for implementing the concept and an
estimate of the costs associated with it. [1]
Big-picture military strategist (and
no olive-branch or panda hugger) Thomas Barnett
wrote in his Time column:
AirSea Battle is an exercise in
spending fantastic amounts of US taxpayer
dollars in certain congressional districts. This
is the only reason it flourishes, and the
primary reason why a cynical Obama embraces it:
it proves his "tough on defense" credentials as
he draws down in Afghanistan.
We have no
serious leadership in Washington. Strategic
thinking has been completely eliminated in the
quest for program-preserving rationales. It is a
sad time to be in this
business.
Barnett also makes the point
that US military, political, and policy elites
won't be the only constituency benefiting from
confrontation with China; so will their opposite
numbers in the PRC:
The worst part? This is a
self-licking ice cream cone.
As China's
development matures and the government is forced
to limit defense spending in deference to the
mounting costs associated with environmental
damage, aging of the population, rising demand
for better healthcare, safer food and products,
etc, the People's Liberation Army desperately
needs an external enemy image to justify
protecting its share of the pie (which is
already smaller than the amount spent on
internal security).
Thus, the PLA needs
the Pentagon's big-war crowd ... as much as the
latter needs the PLA.
This is a marriage
made in heaven - and pursued with an indifferent
cynicism that is stunning in its magnitude.
[2] In summary, thanks to internal,
Chinese, and regional dynamics, the US popular,
political, and military constituency for
confrontation with China is growing and the
steady-as-she-goes contingent (perhaps soon to be
identified as the agents of appeasement) is
shrinking into relative insignificance.
Romney and his advisers have read the
political tea leaves.
A centerpiece of
candidate Romney's surprisingly insubstantial
foreign policy portfolio is China bashing, in the
form of the crowd-pleasing assertion that, on Day
One of his presidency, he will designate China a
"currency manipulator" and instruct the Department
of Commerce to impose countervailing duties if
Beijing doesn't behave. [3] This is meant to make
a marked contrast with the Obama Treasury
Department, which declined to make the currency
manipulator designation this year.
As
Scott Lincicome, an experienced international
trade litigator (and, it might be noted, a
libertarian fan of Romney running-mate Paul Ryan's
economic policies) wrote on his blog, the Romney
China plank is pure, election-year BS:
Treasury's assessment must be done
in consultation with the IMF [International
Monetary Fund] and pursuant to pretty strict
guidelines. In short, the president can't just
tell the Treasury to designate a country a
"currency manipulator," and he/she certainly
can't do it publicly via Executive Order (as
Romney's plan promises). To do so would not only
violate the letter of the law, but also destroy
the Treasury report's credibility.
Second, the president can't just
instruct the Commerce Department to begin
imposing countervailing duties on Chinese goods.
Pursuant to US trade law and regulations, the
imposition of countervailing duties on imports
requires (i) a petition from an affected
industry or self-initiation by Commerce ...;
(ii) preliminary and final findings, based on
extensive evidence (including rebuttal from
Chinese producers, US importers and the Chinese
government) ... ; and (iii) preliminary and
final findings by the non-partisan International
Trade Commission that said imports are injuring
the US industry. Each of these steps is required
by US law and WTO [World Trade Organization]
rules. So Romney's plan to, on the very first
day of his presidency, just start imposing CVDs
[countervailing duties] on Chinese imports would
be in direct conflict with both US law and the
United States' WTO obligations. [4]
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