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	May 19, 1999	atimes.com

China

Alienating the A-list
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - The last two months must seem like a nightmare to one of the most influential U.S. defense planners of the last 25 years, former Pentagon chief William Perry.

Three weeks before NATO launched its air campaign against Yugoslavia on March 24, Perry warned that the prevailing era - marked by the absence of an enemy that could threaten the survival of the United States - could not last forever.

In a book unveiled at a standing-room-only breakfast at the influential Brookings Institution, he argued for a strategy of ''preventive defense'' whose purpose would be to delay for as long as possible the emergence of any such ''A-list'' enemy.

Such enemies would not be found in Iraq or North Korea - the two most-cited threat to the United States - because, while Washington was prepared to go to war against them, they did not pose a lethal threat to the United States.

In short, Iraq and North Korea were ''B-list'' threats. Nor was there any real U.S. enemy in lesser ''C-List'' conflicts such as Haiti, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo, which dominate media coverage and much diplomatic activity but offer no direct threat to the country.

According to Perry, only two countries could evolve into deadly U.S. enemies over the next decades: Russia and China.

''What if, in the next decade, Russia should go the way of Weimar Germany in the 1930s? What if, in the next decade, China should go the way of Japan in the 1930s?'' asked the man who served as President Bill Clinton's secretary of defense from 1994 through 1996.

Those questions, which seemed hypothetical when they were first asked, have suddenly become more pertinent, particularly in light of events of just the past ten days.

The May 8 bombing by NATO warplanes of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade set off a wave of nationalism in China whose ferocity and anger shocked, even frightened, foreign-policy makers here.

And the following week's firing by President Boris Yeltsin of Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov plunged Moscow into a major new political crisis, which could have far-reaching implications for Russia's economic stability as well as its ties with Washington.

Among the problems was the fact that Primakov's departure made it certain that the START-II disarmament treaty would not be ratified soon.

''I guess you could say this is an example of a C-list tail wagging the A-list dogs,'' said one administration official, noting how the conflict in Kosovo was reverberating with unexpected force in the two powers that could truly threaten the United States.

No one here believed that the week's events by themselves heralded an historic shift by either Russia and China into the A- list. But Russia and China experts said that, in both countries, strongly nationalist and anti-western forces had clearly gained strength.

This would make it harder not only to end the war in Kosovo, but also to pursue engagement of the kind recommended by Perry to ensure they do not become hostile.

Of course, both countries strongly opposed the NATO campaign from the outset, seeing in it an aggressive effort to interfere militarily in the internal affairs of a non-member state without the approval of the UN Security Council, where Beijing and Moscow enjoy veto power.

The fact that war was being waged in the name of protecting an ethnic minority within Yugoslavia - when both China and Russia have restive minorities of their own - made things worse.

NATO had hoped that, by drawing Russia into a mediation role - as it had succeeded in doing two weeks ago - it could gain Moscow's support for a UN resolution to which Beijing would not object. But that was before the events of the past week.

Russia, already angry and frustrated over NATO's eastward expansion and Moscow's inability to do anything about it, suspended ties with the western alliance in the war's first few days. Primakov - who had acted as a bridge between Yeltsin and Communist forces in the Duma - resisted calls for stronger action and lent support to the mediation effort led by special envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin.

Primakov's ouster likely will stall any progress toward a negotiated settlement, according to observers here, if only because there will be a continuing confrontation between Yeltsin and the Duma, despite the fact Yeltsin survived an impeachment vote.

It will take days or weeks or possibly even months before a new government can be installed.

Moreover, according to Thomas Graham, a Russia specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, ''Kosovo will become a pawn in domestic politics, where being seen as serving American interests is a distinct minus."

Even more worrying - particularly in light of Perry's concerns about a Russian Weimar - is the likely collapse of the tentative accord reached between Primakov and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). After rising 40 percent this year, the Russian stock market plummeted more than 16 percent after Primakov's ouster, spurring fears of a new financial meltdown.

Finally, according to Stephen Cohen, a Russian specialist at New York University, most Russians believe that Washington encouraged Yeltsin to oust Primakov, who had become Russia's most popular politician by far.

''That means this development will deepen and further embitter Russian anti-Americanism and make it even harder for Russia to be an intermediary,'' he said.

The reaction in China to the bombing of its Belgrade embassy has been no less negative.

Beijing immediately suspended all military exchanges with Washington, as well as bilateral talks on arms and missile proliferation. Significantly, it was precisely these programs that Perry worked hardest to promote with Beijing during his tenure as defense secretary form 1994 until 1997.

And a review of Chinese military strategy and spending, which was already underway in Beijing, has reportedly intensified over the past week amid genuine alarm over U.S. and NATO intentions.

Of course, these feelings did not come out of the blue.

Despite both countries' two-year-old commitments to a ''strategic partnership,'' most recently reaffirmed on a visit here in early April by Premier Zhu Rongji, differences - over such volatile issues as Beijing's $60 billion trade surplus, human rights, Chinese espionage and, most explosively, Taiwan - had already rendered the relationship extraordinarily delicate.

Moreover, the perception that the Chinese government attempted to exploit the outrage - both by charging that the attack was intentional and by initially suppressing news of Clinton's and NATO's apology - has been seized on by hard-line critics of engagement with Beijing as evidence that China itself sees Washington as its enemy.

''The problem is that this kind of incident takes on a dynamic of its own,'' according to one senior administration official who specializes in Asia. ''Their actions appear hostile, which in turn fuels those forces here which see in China the Soviet Union of the 21st century, and a very vicious circle is created."

(Inter Press Service)

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