Asia Times: China


	May 24, 2002	atimes.com

China

Mega-NATO: China out in the cold
By Francesco Sisci

BEIJING - Next Tuesday in Rome, the strategy that led US president Richard Nixon to Beijing 30 years ago will come to an end, and could rapidly reverse into its opposite. On that day, Russia will sign an agreement that will incorporate Moscow into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the alliance designed half a century ago to defend the West against the Soviet Union.

The main focus of the treaty will be Central Asia and its appendices, the Middle East and the rest of Asia. The agreement will also have to deal with Japan, up until now a bulwark of American interests in Asia but not part of NATO. One does not need to be a visionary to see that a NATO that includes Russia and Japan could become an umbrella alliance spanning the whole Eurasian continent and thus an instrument to deal with any crisis, big or small, in the world. And it would mainly deal with the rest of Asia, where, from Pakistan to India, to Southeast Asia to China, there could all kinds of problems while the region is the largest economic growth area in the world. So Russia's accession to NATO could isolate China more than on any other occasion since Nixon's visit.

On that visit, Nixon ignored China's ideology and underscored the geopolitical value of the alliance: to isolate the USSR and force it to divert its attention from the western front to the eastern front. For China, it was a godsend, as it helped it out of its isolation and created the international conditions that would make Deng Xiaoping's reforms successful a few years later.

Then, the focus of US attention was the USSR; now it is Central Asia. In the past months, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been extremely active in pampering the Americans and convincing them they would be the best partners in keeping control of troublesome Central Asia and the Middle East. This area is strategically important for China, but China, while helpful in sharing intelligence, was not so forthcoming in reaching out to the George W Bush administration. There were many reasons for this, but certainly part of Putin's success is due to his personal, youthful vigor. And China appears to be the main object of this new mega-NATO pact.

One does not need to think of China as a potential enemy, or even as a competitor, to see that the two large countries left out of this new grand alliance are China and India. Yet China's economy is one of the largest in the world, far larger than Russia's.

China has pursued a doctrine of considering the United Nations, where it holds veto power, as the only accredited forum for security debates. In the past, China was also reluctant to join in multilateral economic agreements. This has obviously changed, as China has joined both the World Trade Organization and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. On the security front, China has for the first time also joined in a multilateral agreement, the Shanghai Five, although the organization is not purely about security.

China has been reluctant to join security pacts for fear of losing out its precious veto power in the UN, and also because it didn't want to become a junior partner, an experience of which it has bitter memories after its alliance with the USSR in the 1950s.

The situation after September 11 has been changing rapidly and tension between Pakistan and India has been escalating. In fact Pakistan, a country where China still has large influence, is, in the words of former Italian foreign minister Gianni De Michelis, the fuse of the world. It would therefore be in China's best interests, after Russia's accession to NATO, to look for ways to join the alliance in order to avoid isolation.

However, this will not be easy, for internal and external reasons. The reasons internally spin around the old conflict between socialism and nationalism. For similar reasons, NATO might not be willing to welcome the Chinese into the alliance. But what would China's future be outside an expanded NATO?

The talk in Beijing minimizes the importance of this event. The Chinese believe they have good relations with Russia, excellent relations with Europe and improving ties with the United States and Japan. They consider these entities separate and to be played eventually one against the other.

They fail, however, to see that if it all went down to a choice between America and China all of these players would choose America. In other words, with this pact Russia is willing to become America's junior partner in Central Asia, and thus perhaps also keep an eye on Beijing for Washington. One could see it as a new containment, although nobody would call it that, so carefully crafted that Chinese chest-thumping and nationalistic screams would draw no sympathy worldwide. The importance of this isolation can be seen only in the dramatic effect of Nixon's strategy of opening up to China 30 years ago. If China does not react, it may end up in a bad predicament.

A series of countermeasures should be devised, and on top of the list should be a massive rejuvenation of the Chinese leadership. In a world where leaders are typically in their mid-40s or early 50s, Chinese leaders stand out as singularly old, even those earmarked to head the next generation of leadership. Their modes and mores are also outdated and out of sync with a world that looks with suspicion, or at least perplexity, at the old name of "communism".

On the external front, China has been thinking regionally and it has done so to prevent fears of expansionism. However, the recent changes in the world are forcing China to think globally.

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