SUBSCRIBE TO THE NIXON CENTER EMAIL BULLETIN

ff

Peter W. Rodman

The Nixon Center, Washington, DC

1997

Foreword by Senator John McCain

Executive Summary

Introduction

    The Approach
    Debates in America

Chapter I. China

    Economic and Military Strength: Some Facts
    Foreign Policy
    Internal Evolution
    The Debate in America
    U.S. Policy

Chapter II. Russia

    Internal Evolution
    Foreign Policy
        -NATO Enlargement
        -Relations with Iran
        -Relations with China
    U.S. Policy

Conclusion

Glossary

Notes

Acknowledgments

China policy and Russia policy are the two great conundrums facing American strategy in this period of extraordinary change in the international system. Twenty-five years after President Nixon's historic visits to Beijing and Moscow, the "strategic triangle" that developed then has been completely transformed. The uncertain evolution of both post-Communist Russia and late-Communist China is a glaring question mark hanging over the future of international peace. Contradictions and intellectual confusion abound in our policy. Some of our most fundamental assumptions are being tested. What is left of the strategic basis of the old U.S.-Chinese partnership? What is the relation between Russia's and China's domestic evolution and their foreign policies? Can we reconcile our strategic and moral concerns?

China's economic and military expansion presents an inescapable strategic problem. Not since the beginning of this century has the United States even had to imagine the existence of another country with an economy the same size as our own. But this is now likely 10 or 20 years from now. China's military buildup (especially in naval, air, and missile forces) poses a near-term challenge. Blowing the U.S. Navy out of the entire Pacific is not the standard the Chinese must meet. Rather, China is aiming at a potent capability in a "limited sphere of strategic action" (i. e., the Western Pacific and South China Sea) that will raise the costs and risks to the United States of coming to the aid of allies and friends. This is an attainable mission and one of enormous geopolitical significance.

The collapse of the Soviet threat has undercut the strategic basis of the U.S.-Chinese partnership; the upheaval at Tiananmen has led the Chinese leaders to see Western democracy as the new subversive "threat." These factors have transformed the U.S.-Russia -China strategic triangle. Russia and China now band together against US. "hegemonism."

China's foreign-policy and military assertiveness has already produced an almost Newtonian reaction, however, in that neighboring states are acutely sensitive to China's bid for regional power. China's military moves in the South China Sea accelerated Vietnam's entry into ASEAN; the Taiwan Strait crisis of last year helped repair the U.S.-Japan Alliance and resuscitated the Taiwan Relations Act in the supposedly isolationist U.S. Congress.

China's greatest vulnerability, however, is internal. The Communist regime's survival is in doubt. This is the giant's Achilles heel. The regime's loss of legitimacy is reflected in political ferment that persists in various forms even after Tiananmen. Deng Xiaoping's death compounds the problem. China is entering a period of profound political instability.

Yet an emotional debate has broken out in America, between supporters of "engagement" with China and supporters of "containment." The Administration has weakened its case by various missteps, including most recently the campaign financing scandal. Some critics, including the neoconservatives, see China as a galvanizing moral/strategic issue on which to mobilize a national consensus against the Clinton foreign policy just as Henry Jackson and Ronald Reagan rallied an assault on "détente" in the 1970s. Whether this will work is an open question.

A China policy for the United States must be comprehensive and long-term. It is a matter of strategy, not tactics. It requires maintaining our military preeminence and our key alliances and other relationships in the Asia-Pacific region. If China views the United States as a declining power, then it is in our hands to prove the premise wrong.

Other measures are also required: ballistic-missile defenses, restoring controls over high-tech exports, and perhaps other "targeted"' measures. Cutting off normal trade relations (which is what denying MFN amounts to) is not usable as leverage; it is too much like a nuclear weapon, in that the collateral damage (to U.S. businesses, to Hong Kong, etc) is excessive. Nor can the human-rights situation in China be affected by us except marginally, as long as the regime survives in its present form.

Ironically, this approach is more like George Kennan's original 1947 concept of "containment" than are the approaches of some calling today for "containing" China, whose real aim is much more ambitious. Kennan's turns out to be the moderate approach, midway between the Clinton complacency and the neoconservative enthusiasm, between an Administration policy of "deeper engagement" (which is vague on how to deter challenges) and a campaign of ideological warfare to bring the regime down (which is vague as to concrete policy prescriptions to accomplish this).

No one can doubt the importance and scope of Russia's transition from Communism. Americans had very high hopes for a friendly, democratic Russia Yet Russia is now not completely friendly and not completely democratic. The "vacuum of belief" left by Communism has been filled not by Jeffersonianism but by a traditional Russian nationalism. The economy is being privatized too often by corruption, not entrepreneurship, in the hands of a mafia class that mimics the predatory qualities of the 19th century American robber barons but without their genius at building industry.

Russian foreign policy under Yevgenii Primakov aims at preserving Russia's independence -- from us. Operationally, it is a Gaullist foreign policy whose main aim is to obstruct what it sees as America's global dominance.

NA TO enlargement is no threat to Russia; it is the consolidation of the outcome of 1989 -- the liberation of Central and Eastern European nations that choose to associate with the West. It should be done and put behind us. The long-term relationship between Russia and the West will be shaped by future issues and by Russia's internal evolution.

The U.S. speaks glowingly of its "strategic partnership" with Russia, yet Russia sees Iran and China as its strategic partners. Russia's relations with Iran and China -- especially its sale of advanced military technology -- have the declared strategic aim of complicating U.S. "hegemony." Russia's rapprochement with China, in particular, is a strategic shift of enormous importance (to which the U.S. government seems oblivious). The relationship with Iran may put Russia on a collision course with the United States.

Russia's policy toward Iran and China may thus be shortsighted. The Russian government's schizophrenia about both reveals its own premonition that the policy may be dangerous for Russia in the long run.

It is in the West's interest that the door always be open to Russia to reverse course. Russia must always have a Western option. But having a Western option should be at least as important to Russia as to us. The West will have no choice but to defend its interests and Russia may find someday that it has seriously miscalculated. If Russia wants a Western option, the price for it is peace and quiet in Europe and respect for the West's vital interests elsewhere.

The full text of this monograph is available for purchase in the Museum Store by following this link or by calling 800-USA-8865.