Questions Facing Bush
by
David M. Lampton
Reprinted from the June 15, 2001 edition of the South China Morning Post
As Washington moves beyond the spy-plane incident and the adrenalin it injected into the United States body politic, the flip in the balance of power in the U.S. Senate is apparent. This provides a badly needed opportunity for the Democrats, who took control after Senator Jim Jeffords quit the Republican Party to become an independent, to pose some hard questions to the new administration about its emerging China policy.
First: isn't the administration's policy of relying on Asian allies destined to fail if Washington unnecessarily provokes China while all our Asian friends are seeking to improve ties with Beijing? Even at this early date, the new administration appears committed to two contradictory ideas: relying on U.S. allies (most notably, Japan) while making China the strategic challenge around which to organise American power. But U.S. friends in Asia are either opposed to defining China as a threat or ambivalent. This scares U.S. friends in Asia, not least Singapore's Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, who said in Washington on Tuesday: "It makes no sense to mortgage East Asia's future by causing the Chinese people to conclude that their neighbours and the U.S. want to keep them down." This strategy is also flawed because Beijing desperately needs to focus on domestic economic development, but most U.S. policies are strengthening the hand of a Chinese military that wants a much bigger slice of the budgetary pie and a more aggressive position on Taiwan.
While some unrepresentative individuals in the new U.S. administration believe the precipitous collapse of the Beijing regime should be America's goal, few persons inside or outside China look at such a prospect with anything but horror. Beyond the likelihood that such a strategy would backfire, even if it proved effective, it would produce refugees, nuclear instability and rapacious local authorities exporting crime. A weak China is a larger threat to America and its allies than a relatively stronger China.
Second: is China policy once again becoming the sacrificial lamb for other policy objectives? The most notable example of subordinating China policy to other considerations was from 1947 to early 1950, when then-president Harry Truman needed a suspicious and fiscally conservative congressional wing of the Republican Party to support his emphasis on Europe, building NATO and getting a larger military budget. He gave that wing its head on China policy - contrary to his own impulses - as the price to be paid for its support. The Bush administration similarly has its higher-order goals, these being missile defence, a dramatic restructuring of the U.S. military and requisite budgetary increases. The signs are intensifying so much that as the administration unveils its ambitious defence objectives, it may be falling into a posture similar to Truman's.
Third: is it logical to think that America can adopt a military posture that takes China as the principal 21st-century challenge and simultaneously cultivate Beijing as an economic partner? President George W. Bush says he attaches great importance to a robust economic and trade relationship with China. His support for this year's renewal of normal trade relations with Beijing and the administration's support for China's entry into the World Trade Organisation are indications of this. Last year, and for the decade preceding that, Congress also emphasised trade with China, repeatedly approving normal tariff treatment for China. Now, the recommendations of some in the U.S. Defence Department would re-target nuclear weapons on China, deploy additional naval forces in the Pacific, and stiffen deterrence threats against Beijing regarding the use of force against Taiwan.
The juxtaposition of these economic goals and incipient defence policies begs several questions: if China is the threat it is portrayed to be by some in the Defence Department and elsewhere, then how can building up its economy be in America's interests? On the other hand, if the China threat is overstated, how can a bellicose posture do anything but harm Sino-U.S. economic ties, cede a major market to US competitors and foster a Chinese military build-up that might not otherwise occur?
For its foreign policy to be effective, America must have the support of at least some of the other world power centres: the European Union, Japan, Russia and China among them. U.S. unilateralism has impaired the co-operation it can expect from all quarters. America cannot be effective on China policy or anything else when every other significant party opposes it.
David Lampton is the director of China Studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and at The Nixon Center. He is the author of "Same Bed, Different Dreams: Managing U.S.-China Relations, 1989-2000"
