GEORGE W. BUSH, embattled at home, tied down in Iraq and watching the clock run out on his presidency, has found a diplomatic crutch in an unlikely place: China.
Last week’s agreement by North Korea to disable its nuclear facilities — announced in Beijing, tellingly — showed just how much Mr. Bush’s foreign policy has come to rely, for better or worse, on the help of the Chinese. They might just be the administration’s best hope for peacefully resolving the next big crisis on the horizon, Iran’s refusal to give up the right to enrich uranium. Or so some in the administration are hoping.
Mr. Bush, who spent most of his presidency with a swaggering, go-it-alone style, has increasingly turned to China on problem after problem: from North Korea to Darfur to the repression of pro-democracy demonstrators in Myanmar.
“China has become the first stop for any American diplomacy,” said Christopher R. Hill, the American negotiator in the North Korea talks.
Could China bring Iran around in a similar way? The two confrontations are different in myriad ways, but there are some signs that the answers could be yes.
White House officials, for example, note that China, which had remained in the background at the United Nations when the United States pressed for more pressure on Iran, has now signed on to two rounds of (mild) sanctions. They say it could support a (tougher) third round if reports expected this fall suggest that Iran is breaking its commitments not to pursue nuclear weapons.
Experts also say China needs Iranian gas and oil for its economic growth — and while this has made it skittish about imposing tough sanctions, it also makes China eager to avert a war in the Persian Gulf that would disrupt energy supplies.
Still, it would be wishful thinking to call China an ally or even a partner, given its historical and political divisions with the United States. China has proved unwilling to go along with much of what the Bush administration has asked of it, especially when it comes to punishing authoritarian regimes. On that score, China’s one-party rulers have always been cautious, calling such measures interference in the internal affairs of others.
Given that history, there are reasons to think that Chinese cooperation on Iran could have its limits. The Korean Peninsula is on China’s border, as is Myanmar, and that alone could explain China’s interest in reducing tensions there. For the United States, fear of Iran’s nuclear capability is linked to fear of Iran’s ties to groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, and to its growing influence in Iraq; those are worries whose urgency the Chinese do not seem to share.
And experts who take a skeptical view of the deal with North Korea point out that for all the help China has given, this agreement is just another step on a long road toward the ultimate American goal, which is stripping that government of the nuclear bombs it has already built. Meanwhile, Americans have had three decades of trying to squeeze Iran economically, while China is counting on retaining Iran as an important economic partner.
“China can be constructive when its interests align with the United States,” Clifford Kupchan of the Eurasia Group, a consultancy in Washington, said. “In Iran, it seems to have a different agenda.”
Nevertheless, Steven Clemons of the New America Foundation, a bipartisan research organization in Washington, said that while some Americans express frustration at what they see as Chinese unwillingness to press Iran, China has already played an active role in trying to resolve tensions that could lead to another military conflict in the Persian Gulf.
He credited what he said were quiet Chinese efforts to win the release of four Iranian-Americans jailed by the authorities in Iran this summer.
With the North Koreans, China’s support proved more crucial than anything else. China, which for decades acted as North Korea’s protector, responded to the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s nuclear test last year by cutting off military aid and joining the Bush administration’s efforts to choke off the country’s bank accounts abroad.
A senior administration official said in an interview that China’s diplomatic push began even before the test, after Mr. Bush assured President Hu Jintao that he wanted a peaceful resolution with North Korea during an outwardly disastrous White House visit in April 2006 in which a protester infiltrated their joint news conference.
Mr. Hu dispatched State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan that week for unannounced talks in North Korea that, after some ups and downs, laid the foundation for last week’s deal, the official said. “What changed was not them,” the official said of the North Koreans, “but the Chinese attitude.”
China, by virtue of its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, has always been an important diplomatic player. But its importance to the Bush administration has grown for two reasons: it has become more assertive around the globe and the administration has exhausted a lot of its options.
“I think we need China almost everywhere in the world because we’ve disengaged from the rest of the world,” Mr. Clemons said, criticizing the administration’s initial disdain for concerted international diplomacy and citing its preoccupation with Iraq.
Meanwhile, China has steadily expanded its diplomatic and economic ties far beyond Asia. Mr. Clemons suggested that that has caused a subtle tectonic shift in how nations view it and, conversely, the United States. “They see China as an ascending power,” Mr. Clemons added, “and they don’t see us that way any more.”
Such ties give China influence. And with influence comes leverage. In Sudan, the Chinese long resisted American-led efforts to stop the killing in Darfur but this summer lifted their objections to a United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force — perhaps in part because a Hollywood human-rights campaign threatened a boycott of the 2008 Olympic Games, to be held in Beijing, if China did not do more.
Supporters of the democracy movement in Myanmar — Burma to those supporters — also hope to use the threat of an Olympic boycott to force China to lean on the military government there.
Mr. Bush, who accepted an invitation to the games in Beijing next year, did not go so far, but he met in the Oval Office with China’s foreign minister, Yang Jeichi, to privately urge China to intervene with the generals.
Last week, Myanmar’s rulers relented and allowed a United Nations envoy to visit — a diplomatic accomplishment that the Chinese touted, but hardly a breakthrough given reports of continued arrests. “If China is claiming credit for this, they have to show results,” said Jeremy Woodrum of the U.S. Campaign for Burma.
Still, in the Iran negotiations as elsewhere, the United States seems to be betting that China’s interest in global stability will continue to rise, so that it coincides more often than not with American interests.
2 comments:
The author of this article believes that China has become a great asset to the U.S. by helping them resolve issues with foreign countries; ultimately decreasing military action in those countries. While China and the U.S. have been known for their government run tensions, the U.S. has greatly appreciated and needed their help recently. The author states "China, by virtue of its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, has always been an important diplomatic player. But its importance to the Bush administration has grown for two reasons: it has become more assertive around the globe and the administration has exhausted a lot of its options." China needs there to be peace with these countries because of economic ties with them. but the Bush Administration needs China's support and negotiation help in these countries because they really can't follow through with anything when our efforts exhausted in Iraq.
I think that it is good that China has been willing to help out the US because what if they hadn't, what kind of situation would the US have gotten into.
Great posting and terrific comments. Well done and kudos for using quotes from the article. Thank you.
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