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| K Subrahmanyam: Yin and Yang in the US-China relationship | | With global economic recovery underway, Obama may have decided to demonstrate that the US is still the world's pre-eminent military power |
| K Subrahmanyam / Feb 07, 2010, 00:45 IST |
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All those strategic pundits who concluded that the international system had become G-2 — with US and China sharing a cosy duopoly — would have had a rude awakening with the notification of the proposed $6.4 billion US arms sales to Taiwan and China’s predictable reaction to it.
The Chinese point out that this sale is a clear violation of various joint communiqués in which the US pledged to respect China’s core interests. According to the Chinese, this sale comes at a time when the cross-straits relationship had started to walk on a path of positive interaction. The official Chinese News Agency Xinhua warned, “The age of our times needs healthy, stable and developing China-US ties. Defying such historical trend and making such a wrong decision that undermines China’s core interests and the overall situation of China-US cooperation can’t be viewed as a wise action by any responsible government, no matter if it was influenced by residue of the Cold War mentality or the pressure of certain special interest. China has recently made several solemn representations to the American government on the arms sale issue, asking the US to fully assess the serious damage caused by the sale and take China’s concerns seriously and stop the transaction. If the US continues to ignore the solemn position made by China and is determined to make the wrong decision to sell arms to Taiwan, it ought to take all responsibilities for any serious consequences caused by such a decision.”
Following this warning, China is postponing bilateral military programmes and security talks and will sanction certain US companies. The company which is likely to be affected most is Boeing, which sells civil aircraft to China. Even in that case the loss will be minimal, since China has already started constructing civil passenger airliners under licence from the Airbus consortium. While the Taiwanese President, who has improved relations with China significantly in recent months, said that the sale will increase Taiwan’s confidence and sense of security and will enable it to further stabilise and improve its relations with China, Beijing is understandably angry.
Responding to the Chinese reaction, the US National Security Adviser, General James Jones, said, relations with China are of the “utmost importance” and a “very, very high priority” for the United States. “We all recognise that there are certain things that our countries will do periodically that may not make everybody completely happy, but we are bent on a new relationship with China as a rising power in the world and influence on a variety of issues that go beyond arms sales and go beyond military confrontation.”
US media has reported that the timing of the arms sale was deliberate and that it comes along with the strong defence of the US Secretary of State on Internet freedom and speculation in Washington that the postponed meeting of the Dalai Lama with Obama may now be scheduled. The Chinese criticism reveals that the sale announcement was not a surprise to them. After they made several representations the decision was taken to override Chinese objections.
Though the US subscribes to the ‘one-China thesis’, it has made it clear that it will oppose use of force to integrate Taiwan with China. Hardly 10 weeks ago, following Obama’s carefully choreographed visit to Beijing, there was world-wide speculation that the US was prepared to coexist with China in a duopolistic arrangement, and there were predictions that Asian countries would be adjusting themselves to this reality.
In India this view had wide support. It was also felt that Obama, with his commitment to multilateralism, was not as tough as George Bush in sustaining US pre-eminence. It would appear that Obama has finally decided to communicate to the world he is not going to surrender US pre-eminence.
With the global economic recovery now underway and with the US acquiring a good sense of Chinese capability to hurt the US economically, Obama may have decided to demonstrate that the US still retains the capability to act and has greater manouevrability in the international system as a pre-eminent military power. President Obama appears to have chosen China’s backyard to demonstrate it. Perhaps there are messages to Japan, South Korea and Asean nations too. From the American NSA’s comment it would appear that China's possible adverse reactions have been taken into account and this US move is not likely to come in the way of continuing US-Chinese economic cooperation.
At this stage it will be useful to recall the views of candidate Obama on China. During his campaign he once said: “Having China as a banker is not good for the US economy, it is not good for US global leadership. It is not good for US national security……History teaches us for a nation to remain a pre-eminent military power, it must remain the pre-eminent economic power.”
Obama may have discovered by now that having invested so much in the US, Beijing has become a stakeholder in the prosperity and growth of the US. While China’s growth is symbiotically linked with that of US, the latter is in a position to step up its exports and growth without linking it up with China, especially in respect of new sources of clean energy generation and energy-efficient and energy-conserving new products.
These developments underscore our own need for developing adequate intelligence assessment capabilities and avoiding the tendency to draw immediate conclusions based on individual events. In international politics, as Bhishma advised the Pandavas at the end of the Mahabharata war, for kings (read states in today’s context) there are no friends and no enemies. Only circumstances make enemies and friends.
In the wake of the financial crisis it became imperative for the US and China to cooperate in their mutual interest. There are other issues in which their interests conflict. There may be circumstances in which the compulsions of mutuality of interests may subsume other conflicts of interests, and other times when it may not. By making assumptions that nations’ relationships with other nations will be fixed and unaltered, we will be foregoing opportunities which are open to us to exploit.
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