The question of the day in Washington is will the People's Republic of China
veto further United Nations Security Council sanctions against Iran over
Tehran's nuclear program?
Informed opinion says "no".
China has exercised its veto only six times in 30 years on the council. In
matters core to national priorities, like punishing countries such as Guatemala
and Macedonia for their ties to the Republic of China (Taiwan) and protecting
the interests of Pakistan, it has acted alone.
However, on broader geopolitical issues, in recent years it has
vetoed resolutions only when joined by at least one other Security Council
member.
France and the United Kingdom are lined up solidly behind the United States on
Iran's nuclear program, which some say is geared towards making a nuclear bomb,
a charge Tehran consistently dismisses.
Russia this year is interested in improving ties with the US and Europe and has
moved toward support of sanctions. No Russian veto, no Chinese veto, says the
conventional wisdom.
On the other hand, chances of China voting for sanctions are slim.
A press report covering Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi's visit to Paris
at the beginning of February says it all: "China Says Iran Sanctions Hinder
Diplomacy."
Abstention is, therefore, China's most likely course.
Beijing's reaction might be expected to be a dismissive and a resigned shrug: a
symbolic vote, another toothless round of sanctions, more political kabuki,
and eventually business as usual.
However, China's expected non-vote will be accompanied by new feelings of
unease and anger, reflecting Beijing's growing suspicion that an important
motivation for the Iran sanctions, and the escalation of Iran tensions in
general, is Washington's desire to employ the issue as a wedge against China.
In past years, China could regard US sanctions against authoritarian regimes
with a certain amount of complacency. The George W Bush administration's
heavy-handed approach dismayed and divided natural allies of the US and drove
its targets deeper into China's embrace.
However, the Obama administration has decided to supplement brute power with
smart power. It apparently promotes divisive international initiatives only
when the splits in international opinion and alliances are expected to go
America's way.
China first got a taste of the smart-power approach in December at the
Copenhagen climate summit. The US linked the release of billions of dollars of
climate adaptation aid to vulnerable developing countries with China's
acceptance of a satisfactory transparency regime. Its delegation passed the
message to smaller nations that China's intransigence was standing between them
and billions of dollars of much-needed assistance.
Despite the treaty debacle, the geopolitical results for the Obama
administration were encouraging. The European Union sided with the US.
According to an internal Chinese report, a good number of Group of 77 nations
were, for the large part, influenced by the American position but did not
openly confront China. China cobbled together an alliance with the emerging
economies of Brazil and India and, despite a concerted "blame China" effort by
the US and the UK, was able to limit the political damage.
However, it was a sobering experience for Chinese diplomats. The report
concluded "A conspiracy by developed nations to divide the camp of developing
nations [was] a success."
Now, the Obama administration is picking on the regionally and globally
unpopular government of Iran, thereby exposing China as the regime's lone
international supporter of note.
The US has worked to bring the EU and Russia to its side. The EU, at least, is
now an enthusiastic ally. Relieved to be dealing with a judicious and
consultative American president, it no longer sees the need to accommodate a
greater role for China on the world stage.
Russia has joined the American team (with sub voce reservations),
reportedly in response to the Obama administration's concessions on shelving
plans for a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe.
The State Department has also worked with the Gulf states to gain their support
for a policy of putting Iran in its place.
As far as the China issue is concerned, America's direct solicitation of
China's Security Council vote involved Obama passing the word to President Hu
Jintao that China's interests would suffer if diplomatic pressure failed,
Israel attacked Iran's nuclear facilities, and the price of oil went up.
It is unlikely that the Israel attack card was persuasive to the Chinese
leadership, and did little more than convince them that Washington was using it
as an excuse to justify an extension of US influence in the Middle East.
A pre-emptive attack by Israel to nip Iran's nuclear ambitions in the bud is
unlikely.
Despite Tel Aviv's brave talk of its ability and determination to launch a raid
independent of US approval, even a resounding success would probably only slow
down the program a few years while earning the undying enmity of the Iranian
people and the Muslim world toward Israel ... and the United States, which
would have to provide Israel with flight privileges over Iraq to stage the
attack.
American assertions that the Iranian nuclear program will spark a ruinous arms
race in the Gulf no doubt elicited similar skepticism from China, with the
unspoken observation that, since most of those arms would be supplied by the US
and EU, the onus for (and profits of) an arms race would probably fall to the
West.
American efforts to wedge the Arab states away from China are more likely to
attract Beijing's attention and concern.
James Phillips of the Heritage Foundation spun US Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton's current trip to the Middle East:
Clinton will be looking to
the Arabs to "act as a counterweight [to Iran] on China and help unlock its
Security Council vote.
The US is hoping to use these discussions with the Arabs as a way to encourage
China to look at its long-term economic interests," Phillips added. "The Arabs
could let the Chinese know that it will hurt them economically with the Arab
countries in the long run if China clings to this pro-Iran position.
United States protestations that all this diplomatic maneuvering directed at
China is justified by the need to exhibit international unity on Iran ring
hollow.
Invocation of the Israeli attack and the Gulf states arms race bogeymen
notwithstanding, the primary justification for the current spasm of concern
over Iran's nascent nuclear activities is the dreaded Western "impatience",
which appears very similar to the manufactured impatience that sent the
coalition of the willing charging into Iraq in 2003.
The stated remedy for this impatience, the UN sanctions, is unlikely to work.
Russia cares enough about its relationship with Tehran to make sure anything
that gets through the Security Council will not be particularly catastrophic.
On February 11, Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Ryabkov made this memorable
statement: "We do not think sanctions will work, but we understand that it is
impossible to get by without them in certain circumstances."
With early reports that a massive government presence marginalized Green
Movement demonstrators on the February 11 anniversary of the Iranian revolution
of 1979, regime change in Iran is probably off the table, too.
Even if a new regime came to power, Iran's national commitment to nuclear power
- and the perceived nuclear weapons threat to the region - would probably
remain unchanged.
By conventional geopolitical logic, China would seem to have the right idea:
more jaw-jaw and engagement or, as it called for in a recent editorial,
"patience, patience and more patience."
But US policy seems to be moving in the opposite direction, stoking the crisis
instead of lowering the heat.
So what's China's takeaway from the Iran crisis?
Absent an immediate, credible threat of an Israeli attack on Iran, the US is
rushing the international community toward "crushing sanctions" on Tehran that,
if carried out, would result in disruption of Iran's energy exports.
If this were to actually occur, the big loser in the Iran crisis would be
China.
As a Chinese analyst told Reuters: "Fully going with Western expansion of
sanctions on Iran so they restrict Iran's energy exports would amount to
disguised sanctions against China, and China certainly won't agree," Wang Feng,
a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences told the Global Times, a
Chinese newspaper published on Thursday.
Reportedly, the US had advised China it would dispatch Hillary Clinton to visit
Iran's enemies in the Persian Gulf and ensure that, if sanctions disrupted the
supply of Iranian oil, Saudi Arabia and its associates would ensure that
China's petroleum needs would continue to be met.
It is unlikely that China's vision of its energy security involves relying on
the US's good offices to deal with the consequences of a US-imposed policy that
it rejects and had no voice in formulating.
In any case, the prospects for an oil-price Armageddon are unlikely. Given
free-market realities and the greed of oil producers inside and outside the
Gulf, the world would suffer as much as China if Iranian crude disappeared from
the market.
For Beijing, the biggest concern is its perception that Europe, Russia and the
Gulf states are signing on to an anti-Iran initiative that could impact China's
interests in such a major way without accommodating China's priorities.
From Beijing's point of view, China is the main superpower stakeholder in the
Iran crisis.
So it is asking why isn't it being consulted? Indeed, why aren't its critical
interests given priority, instead of subjecting it to moonshine about an
Israeli attack, an arms race in the Gulf and lectures about its geopolitical
interests?
China is not a threat to the international order, but it is its most
independent and uncontrollable element. There are growing signs of a shared
consensus in the West that reliance on China as a stabilizing financial,
economic and geopolitical factor must be reduced.
The past few years have been good to China's competitors - especially India -
and bad for China's allies - Pakistan and Iran.
By accident or design, the Obama administration's decision to heat up the Iran
controversy has driven another wedge between China and the US, the EU, the Gulf
states and even Russia.
The issue for China is whether the purpose of America's Iran campaign is to
isolate Iran ... or to isolate China? This is a consequence of China's
participation in the security initiatives that the US chooses to organize to
protect and promote its own and loyal allies' interests.
China responded to the escalation of the Iran nuclear crisis with a remarkable
lead editorial in the Global Times, the international affairs organ of People's
Daily, the government mouthpiece,.
The editorial, with the eye-catching title "Iran and the West: Neither Should
Think of Taking China Hostage", painted China as the victim of the standoff. In
an effort to be even-handed, both Iran and the West are criticized for their
intransigence.
Nevertheless, both the West and Iran are unheeding at
this time. They both believe that only if they are unyielding, then the other
side will back off. This unenlightened attitude even extends to their attitude
toward China. Both sides believe that all that's needed is to put pressure on
China, then China will, without considering its own interests ... lower its
head to them ... This thinking is unrealistic.
The use of the
loaded term, "lower its head", conjuring images of the humiliating kowtow,
instead of a more neutral term such as "support one or the other" is an
indication that red lines are being drawn.
The fact that China's main worry is the West, and not Iran, is unambiguously
conveyed in the editorial's conclusion.
Recently in Western public
opinion has been a call to use the Iran issue to isolate China. This is
extremely superficial ... China is a big country and its interests must be
respected. China's dilemma must be sympathized with. China's proposal opposing
sanctions must be understood. The big powers must cooperate and negotiate on
the Iran issue ... China is a great country. If anyone seeks
to compel her, to injure her, they will certainly pay the price.
Pretty strong
stuff.
The editorial is a clear indication that China considers itself the target - or
at least intended collateral damage - in America's anti-Iran campaign. It makes
the case that, if the Obama administration sincerely cared about its
relationship with China, Washington would back off from the sanctions campaign
and allow negotiations to continue.
But that doesn't look like it's going to happen.
Sanctions will probably go ahead, with China either abstaining or throwing in a
tactical "yes" vote to postpone an overt breach, and Washington will obtain
another point of leverage against China in the Persian Gulf.
If that happens, China will have to think about adjusting to a new world
situation in which the West seems less interested in bargaining for its support
or respecting its interests.
Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection
with US foreign policy.
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