Clinton issues warning on China

Secretary Clinton is warning about China's diplomatic overtures in Latin America.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/01/clinton.latin.america/index.html

The World Domination Quarterfinals ended sixty years ago when we beat Germany; in the semi-finals we beat Russia. Now it’s the finals: U.S. versus China. The winner rules the world. I hope someone has the good sense to hire a small army of Chinese experts.

China’s quest for respect didn’t begin with the Olympics. For millennia they saw themselves as the center of human civilization, the Middle Kingdom; the rest of the world was filled with barbarians. A century and a half ago they were stunned to be humiliated by those very barbarians in the Opium War and the intrusions which followed; the Righteous Fists, the loss to Japan in 1895, the Versailles Treaty which handed territory to the Japanese without consultation with China, the Japanese invasion, the rape of Nanking – a century of lost face. To regain it they have been flexing their muscles in Korea and in border fights with India, Vietnam and Russia; they have blustered at the Japanese over the Senkaku Island which has oil reserves nearby. Hu Jintao does not share Deng’s reluctance to put China out there as an assertive power, and he needs the army to maintain power, which would explain why he his putting himself forward globally, wooing the generals, and giving the army fat budgets.

China wants a seat at the table when major global issues are addressed, and wants to see international systems rebuilt to their liking; they had little say the first time around in the 1940s. They also need the international economic system. We do want China to be a full partner in the major international organizations: the more we wire them into it, the fewer incentives they will have to wreck it. We don’t want to poke them in the eye and scare them off so that they make other, less savory alliances and give up on reform. Contrariwise we don’t want them gumming up the works, forging anti-American alliances with Russia and France, vetoing everything at the UN. On that front, proliferation will be a thorny issue: they provide arms technology, anti-ship missiles and other goodies to countries such as Iran and North Korea. They see that as leverage against us. We need to make that a priority.

Provided they get the respect they feel is due, they are unlikely to take a confrontational stance on the world stage, at least not overtly or directly. They will become a great power, but quietly (unless challenged on Taiwan), ruffling no feathers; Fareed Zakaria predicted that they would not supplant the U.S. as the Number One power. They will think of long-term strategy rather than immediate gains. They will try to be the international good guy, as opposed to Big Bad Uncle Sam, so the U.S. will need to continue to market itself and its ideals. Because the prevailing philosophy in China, Confucianism, is not a religion at all – Confucius taught about society and knowledge, and warned people not to bother with the divine – the Chinese will not try to convert the world to their philosophy as America does.

The Chinese believe in relationships and trust, rather than laws and rules. They don’t grasp that laws and contracts are important, so their participation in international institutions will be a tricky business.

One way or another, the sheer immensity of China is going to change the world politically and economically as they become more integrated into the outside world.

They are already providing a lot of international aid, although they are probably playing their own regional geopolitical games while they do it. Some of their efforts might be shortsighted: they give Zimbabwe arms and political protection at the UN, and arm Sudan as well, something which the Africans might not appreciate in the long run. They helped in Afghanistan and provided aid in Iraq, and we will want help on more terrorism and crime issues such as computer crime and human smuggling, as well as WMD inspections in Chinese ports. Other issues: bird flu, AIDS and Darfur.

The bad news is that a lot of people are worried about the rise of China. The good news is...that a lot of people are worried about the rise of China. In recent years the popularity of China has fallen in Russia, Japan, India and Europe. Many expect the Chinese to replace the U.S. as the dominant world power. And as we remember from our balance-of-power lessons, the next thing everyone will want to do is form an anti-China alliance; India (possibly), Australia, Japan and Vietnam could be interested. Europe, a key trading partner for China, would be important: if America and Europe are not on the same page regarding relations with China, things could get sticky quickly, and the Chinese would be looking for a crack of disunity to exploit. The U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement may have been crafted with one eye on China. Just don’t get so close to India that we foul up our relationship with Pakistan and increase Pakistani paranoia. Tricky, isn’t it?

When Britain saw America rising a century ago, they cultivated that relationship, partly for selfish reasons. We might do the same to China: offer friendship and as much guidance as they can tolerate.

The Chinese are configuring their military to fight our military. This is yet another area which will require a total overhaul of US strategic doctrine. Our current doctrine, such as it is, differs little from the nukes-and-overwhelming-firepower combo we were using fifty years ago, little of which will help in a strategic contest with China today. We outspend them militarily by roughly six to one, but we have the whole world to worry about while they focus only on their own front yard, and their strategic doctrine is quite low-tech, so the balance of forces is more even than one might think. As we learned in 2001 when they punched one of our airplanes out of the sky, they are not adverse to poking us in the eye, if they think we’re crowding them. They also have, or can obtain, asymmetric advantages such as cyber warfare which could disrupt US military deployments; they successfully tested an anti-satellite weapon in 2007. In the end they would prefer to use political or economic tools, rather than military tools, to get what they want.

In one of his moments of political lucidity MacArthur warned Kennedy not to indulge in a land war in Asia (Kennedy intended to get out of Vietnam after the 1964 election). We are very unlikely to get into a land conflict with China ’s gigantic army, so if there is a fracas in the western Pacific, it may happen at sea.

A key issue will be the Straits of Malacca and its route into the South China Sea, which carries more merchant traffic than Suez and Panama together, including eighty percent of China’s oil. Our navy – ironically built with a fair amount of Chinese money, which must drive them bananas -- is at either end of the strait, at the Changi base in Singapore and on Diego Garcia. We are in the neighborhood because we want to prevent any disruptions in the shipping routes, and because other Asian countries want us there, to keep China (and some other folks) honest. Also India has military facilities nearby on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. If we do joint exercises with India, the Chinese will go insane, but generally, provoking them on the Straits issue is more trouble than it’s worth.

China intends to compete as a leading sea power, although they have a long way to go; it may occur to them to stop giving us money for our navy and spend considerably more on their own. They have no carrier (although they’re building one) so they can only project power so far. So far they have been relying on other navies to keep their sea lanes clear of trouble, although they sent destroyers to Somalia to help with the anti-piracy effort. They have alliances with countries which can host their ships as needed: Pakistan, Cambodia, Thailand and Burma. According to a press report they have put a nuclear-missile submarine and other naval vessels at Sanya and Yalong Bay on the southern coast of Hainan Island; they have bought Russian submarines.

They dislike U.S. military moves near China, particularly surveillance. One Chinese sub surfaced in the middle of a U.S. carrier group not far from China, the one thing that is absolutely certain to get the undivided attention of a carrier-group commander. That’s how you say “Yankee go home” in Mandarin. In 2001 they attacked a surveillance aircraft, and in 2009 they harassed a U.S. vessel hunting subs near the Sanya base, trying to snag our sonar array and using debris to try to prevent our departure from the area. They claim ownership of a 200 mile belt of water as an economic zone, and claim the right to regulate shipping there under the terms of the UNCLOS treaty; the U.S. never signed the UNCLOS and doesn’t recognize the claim.

Since they really don’t want their energy supplies dependent on the good will of the U.S. Navy, they are also looking for alternative energy routes, and generally strengthening ties to energy suppliers: pipelines across Venezuela and Canada to the Pacific, pipelines in Iran and Sudan, tidying up relations with the Saudis and Central Asians.

Soon we would need to decide: if Taiwan makes a move toward independence, and China uses its navy to blockade, how hard and how fast do we react?

Some assert that the mostly like cause of a US-Chinese war will be Taiwan, a humiliating issue for the Chinese, but both sides have been cautious for the most part. The US has recognized that Taiwan is part of China and that neither side should disturb the status quo unilaterally, China accepts our contacts with Taiwan, and the Taiwanese Kuomintang is seeking good relations with Beijing. Temperatures have risen occasionally but never for long: when China objected to our arms sales to Taiwan we dialed it back; when the former Taiwanese president visited the US, China sent ships to the straits on exercises, the U.S. Navy went to keep an eye on them, and things cooled down. China could use missiles to attack our ships and Taiwan’s missiles, but they do not have landing craft. If they were to make a military move and fail, the humiliation would be catastrophic, and other outlying regions could get uppity. They think time is on their side – they’re doing things to make Taiwan more dependent on the mainland, for example on the trade front.

The Chinese know we are very sensitive about human rights. After Tiananmen we suspend arms exports, reduced aid and investment, and blocked IMF credits. And they know we have an eye on Tibet.

Could Taiwan be brought into the fold under the Hong Kong model?


So once we wrap up Iraq and Afghanistan, we have a few other things to worry about...