Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Who’s Bold? Who’s Ignoring Obama’s China Rollback Strategy?

Not China.

In the secret history of the Obama administration’s campaign to roll back Chinese inroads in Africa, Western shenanigans in the Democratic Republic of Congo will deserve a separate chapter.

The West blocked China’s massive $9 billion dollar ore-for-infrastructure project in order to protect its flagship project—Freeport McMoRan’s Tunke Fungurume copper mine--and show the DRC who was boss down in the heart o’ darkness (hint: it wasn’t the DRC government or the Chinese).

The Chinese project is going ahead, albeit on a reduced scale.

However, looking at the current balance of forces in the DRC, the project now looks as much as another point of Chinese exposure to Western leverage as it does a masterstroke in China’s African diplomacy.

I document the atrocities at Asia Times in my article: China has a Congo copper headache

When trends in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia are examined, I think the US-PRC dynamic is pretty clear.

The Obama administration is reasserting U.S. influence in resource-rich regions that China penetrated during the distracted and internationally unpopular Bush administration.

Now the U.S. is cannily framing and choosing fights that unite the U.S., the EU, and significant resource producers, and isolate China and force it to defend unpopular positions alone.

Cases in point: Copenhagen climate summit, non-proliferation, and Iran sanctions. Next up: RMB valuation.

By my reading, China is pretty much a one-trick pony in international affairs.

It offers economic partnership and cash.

What it doesn’t have is what the U.S. has: military reach, moral leadership, heft in the global financial markets (Beijing’s immense overexposure to U.S. government securities is, I think, becoming less of an advantage and more of a liability), or a large slate of loyal and effective allies that help it dominate the global discourse and exert a decisive influence over international organizations.

When President Obama recommitted the United States to multilateralism, the countries that had grudgingly sided with China during the Bush years quickly fell into line with the U.S.

China got stuck with the rather miserable roster of Sudan, Myanmar, North Korea, and Iran and a political, economic, and human rights regime that provides a ready-made justification for criticism and containment by the liberal democracies of the West.

And the U.S. is quietly chipping away at Myanmar and Sudan.

The United States is also making good progress in pursuing the most destabilizing initiative (I’m not making a value judgment here, just a factual statement) of the next twenty years: encouragement of India’s rise from Afghanistan through to Myanmar as a rival and distraction to China.

The Chinese realize this and they are nervous.

As I wrote last week on the occasion of the Beijing visit of the top Obama China hands, James Steinberg and Jeffrey Bader:

China’s playpen [according the Obama playbook] is supposed to be Greater China: the PRC, Taiwan, Hong Kong.

A pretty major chunk of the world, but still not an attractive option for China, which sees itself competing with Japan for regional supremacy in Asia and isolated and relegated to second citizen status in key resource regions such as the Middle East and Africa.

According to this theory, the Obama administration should give China a free hand in dealing with Taiwan and Tibet.

But, of course, the Obama administration isn’t doing that.

I’ll repeat the bolded excerpt from Qin’s statement here:

But in the past two months, on the Taiwan and Tibet-related issues, the US violated the principles enshrined in the three joint communiqués and China-US Joint Statement, seriously disrupted the development of China-US relations and caused difficulties for the bilateral cooperation in major fields.

What Beijing is saying is, You’re trying to stick me in the Greater China box…and now you’re f*cking with the box! Are you trying to say China’s only legitimate sphere of influence is the 25% of the PRC’s area that is occupied by Han Chinese?

What Beijing wanted from Steinberg and Bader was an acknowledgment of a legitimate sphere of interest for China by the United States—including Taiwan and Tibet—in order to alleviate the PRC’s worries about President Obama’s geopolitical initiatives, initiatives that, by accident or design, are pushing China into a corner.

Pretty clear to me.

But it looks like I’m the only one who thinks so.

After Steinberg and Bader came back from Beijing, Foreign Policy Josh Robin posted a blog piece whose tone was one of headshaking disbelief at China’s Taiwan obsession:

Several China experts close to both sets of officials said that Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg and National Security Council Senior Director Jeffrey Bader went to China with the understanding that they would have substantive discussions on some key issues of U.S. interest, but the Chinese side used the opportunity to try to bargain for an end to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, something Beijing has wanted for decades and now feels bold enough to demand.

"It was all about Taiwan," said Bonnie Glaser, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), "The message that the Chinese are giving us is ‘We've had enough; we're fed up. We've been living with this issue of U.S. arms sales for too long and it's time to solve it.'" [emph. added]

For bonus points, we can also play the game, Who’s clueless? Beijing or Washington?

"There is a strong push from Beijing to get that core issue as their big ask and there's a desire to reopen discussions about what a plan to eliminate arms sales to Taiwan would look like," [Charles Freeman of CSIS] explained. "There is some sense that we can trade Iran for Taiwan, but that's a non-starter for the Obama administration. The Chinese don't seem to understand that."


China considers Taiwan part of China.

Nobody considers Iran to be part of the United States.

Which might mean that China’s call for non-interference on Taiwan might more legitimate than U.S. demands that everybody join in a united front dogpile on Iran.

And the Obama administration’s invocation of the stern god of political convenience to ignore Chinese concerns on Taiwan begs the question of why it’s not OK for China to simply declare that Iran sanctions is a “non-starter” for them.

The true significance of whether China feels it has a legitimate and significant beef on Taiwan issue brings up the talking point:

China: nervous or emboldened?

The Cable piece takes the “emboldened” China side, stating that China apparently “now feels bold enough to demand” changes in Taiwan policy.

And Willy Lam, the veteran China watcher who got his walking papers from the South China Morning Post because of his informed and critical views on the PRC, made the same point in Asia Times.

Say it ain’t so, Willy!

What is new is China's much-enhanced global clout in the wake of the world financial crisis, which is coupled with a marked decline in America's hard and soft power.

More importantly, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership is gunning for a paradigm shift in geopolitics, namely, new rules of the game whereby the fast-rising quasi-superpower will be playing a more forceful role. In particular, Beijing has served notice that it won't be shy about playing hardball to safeguard what it claims to be "core national interests".


However, the only “core national interest” Lam identifies are…Taiwan & Tibet, which the U.S. has already recognized as parts of China.

And the “hardball” tactics, he invokes are pretty tame measures: like withholding China’s OK for U.N. sanctions, complaining to Western countries over providing a welcoming haven for dissidents, and playing footsie with Pyongyang.

I think of “hardball” more along the lines of using missile defense systems in Eastern Europe as a bargaining chip, threatening sanctions that would cut off some of China’s oil imports, hey, maybe even selling arms to a renegade province and holding a White House meeting with the leader of a Tibetan dissident outfit.*

You get the picture.

Finally, Lam indirectly undercuts his point and supports mine by citing China’s fears of containment.

A likely factor behind the apparent softening of Beijing's diplomatic gambit could be fears of a backlash from countries that have been burnt by the fire-spitting dragon. General Yang Yi has warned of the danger of the emergence of an "anti-China coalition" in the West. "Some Western nations may adopt the formula of 'making individual moves to produce the effect of concerted action' - and join the 'contain China' camp one after the other," he said. Under this scenario, the well-known strategist added, "[anti-China] measures may come one after the other the rest of the year."

A late February commentary by the Beijing-run Hong Kong journal Bauhinia also drew attention to the possible worsening of the international climate this year. The monthly magazine noted that Western countries' dependence on China might lessen in the wake of the global economic recovery. "It is possible the West will put more pressure on China over issues such as Tibet, Xinjiang, human rights, the value of the yuan as well as trade protectionism," the commentary said. "Forces calling for the 'containment of China' may also rear their head."[emphasis added]


Note, by the way, all of the areas of concerns cited by Lam in the Bauhinia article are within China’s borders—not exactly the priorities of a self-confident, burgeoning superpower eager to make its mark on the world.

And notice that they are couched in terms of the West’s decreased reliance on China—may I say boldness?--not as a reflection of China’s indispensability and heightened assertiveness.

So I’m willing to remain the outlier vis a vis The Cable and Willy Lam.

I don’t think the Obama administration is unaware of the nature of China’s Taiwan and Tibet concerns—rooted in geopolitical anxiety, not boldness.

I also don’t think that it is unhappy that media commentary buys into the “emboldened China” line, making its job of rolling back China that much easier.


*The Obama administration’s arms sale to Taiwan and meeting with the Dalai Lama were rather nuanced and not particularly provocative. However, from Beijing’s perspective, I think they feel the U.S. already has its thumb firmly planted in China’s eye; grinding it a little less isn’t much of a concession.

11 comments:

denk said...

**What it doesn’t have is what the U.S. has: military reach, moral leadership, heft in the global financial markets .....**

moral ? dud u actually say that ch ?
did u forget the quotation marks by any chance ?

Unknown said...

That's a very good analysis, but I'm not sure it will work out as US policy makers hope.

1) While Obama has definitely improved American diplomacy, and while China isn't quite the economic juggernaut of lore, it is still not 1998. China, by any measurement is much stronger, the US is much weaker.

2) So far, despite 7 years of threats of war and sanctions, the US has failed to intimidate Iran. But they think they can scare China??

3) Even more, they can't even get Brazil to toe the line on Iran. Are they going to isolate Brazil too? And how about old reliable Turkey? Even they seem eager to befriend Iran and don't seem terrified of the consequences.

4) Japan, the linchpin of US China containment, is make some moves towards China. They are even making previously unheard of noises about removing US bases. Also, as to Toyota gets trashed in the US over largely contrived or greatly exaggerated problems, the Chinese market most look awfully good.
(Do you think the two might be related?)

The US really does not have much Leverage against China. Sure, there is Taiwan and the Dali Lama, but having already sold the weapons and met the Lama...leverage is useless once used.

Holding lots of Treasury debt isn't the advantage it might have seemed before, but so what? What can the US do? Default? Start a trade war? The first is financial Armageddon and the second will bring bond and stock markets in the US to their knees. Debtor nations don't start trade wars. There is almost nothing the US can do to China economically.

OTOH, China does have a huge and painful leverage point against the US. Obviously, that is Iran, if China ever gets bold.

While the US currently spends extraordinary resources to ensure continued Israeli dominance, and to keep client states Egypt and Jordan in line, China can get a powerful strategic asset at a bargain price. Unlike the US and Israel, China need not give Iran anything. All will be paid for. It need only sell weapons and technology.

By doing so, China will make money, gain a powerful ally in a strategically vital area, and it will force the US to spend even more to keep Israel sweet. And as a bonus, Iran may even offer up some middle man influence in Iraq. That ensures a very good energy source for China well into the future.

What is more...looking at a map, it seems possible, even if highly improbable, to build a gas/oil pipeline from Iran, across Afghanistan and into China. Iraq might also feed some oil into the pipeline...Checkmate.

Don't laugh. Iran has plenty of influence in Afghanistan and the US will have to leave sooner or later. Hopefully, not until they have sufficiently weakened the Taliban.

In short, the US will have no chance of truly isolating China. Europe may say bad things about them, but they can take it in stride.

PS. Have to agree with denk about the moral leadership. I don't think many countries are impressed anymore.

denk said...

**By my reading, China is pretty much a one-trick pony in international affairs.

It offers economic partnership and cash.**


ziad,
ch does have a point there...

i made a similar observation in this guardian piece,
http://tinyurl.com/yckhle8

where the good professor ac grayling claimed that china is
**an imperialist, irredentist, massively human-rights-violating totalitarian state that will use any means to get its way** [sic]

this is my reply…

[such as .......?

torturing the locals who are unwilling to part with their possession and land..........no, i am not talking about gitmo either.
this fine western tradtion goes way back to centuries ago
http://tinyurl.com/26l5ur

bumping off leaders who refuse to submit to the washington concensus ?
http://tinyurl.com/lvkxby

killers who slit women and children's throat at night....after raping them ?
http://tinyurl.com/kob8mv

false flags ?
http://tinyurl.com/98kd4

blackops ?
http://tinyurl.com/3czfjq

sabotages ?
http://tinyurl.com/d8up42
[jim press, spare us your infantile ned/soros wisecracks, they have blood on their hand , lots of it, you do care about hr, i presume ?]

cultivating yet more “our kind of guys”
http://tinyurl.com/4fndqt

coups ?
http://tinyurl.com/2gn6g

covert wars ?
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6141

proxy wars ?
http://tinyurl.com/4tndam

outright invasions ?
http://tinyurl.com/fqpck

biowar…….now whats with this “advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes ” ?
http://tinyurl.com/5afu9g

phew, what’d they think of next !!
hell, u aint seen nuthin yet, i am writing a 5000 pages book on the subject right now]
but i am afraid the accursed chicoms would disappoint you big time, professor of philosophistry, no less.
see, those chicoms are one trick ponies, their modus operandii is always monies talk, they might be willing to grease some palms to get the job done…..just like everybody else.
but there’s all there is to it, sorry professor, the chinese are rather simple folks really, they dont even understand the concept of hr lol.
may be they should consider sending their cadres to the school of americas to immerse themselves in the democratic way of getting things done in a jiffy.
i heard the soa has changed its name to some fancy stuff ?]


as for the "moral" bit, i have a feeling ch is in tougue in cheek mode ?

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Jhonny said...

china is so powerful



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