Strategic Reassurance
It’s the latest revolutionary new geopolitical concept. The Obama administration’s, or more specifically, the Clinton State Department’s, theory for constructive engagement with the People’s Republic of China.
It got a passing reference in a UK Telegraph article yesterday about the Obama admin throwing the Dalai Lama under the bus. But it’s more complex and comprehensive than just ignoring the PRC’s history of gross human rights violations. Given that it will apparently govern our relations with our greatest emerging military, political and economic rival for the next four to eight years, it’s worth a look.
US Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg at the Center for a New American Security on Sept. 24, explains all:
Strategic reassurance rests on a core, if tacit, bargain. Just as we and our allies must make clear that we are prepared to welcome China’s “arrival”, as you all have so nicely put it, as a prosperous and successful power, China must reassure the rest of the world that its development and growing global role will not come at the expense of security and well-being of others. Bolstering that bargain must be a priority in the U.S.-China relationship. And strategic reassurance must find ways to highlight and reinforce the areas of common interest, while addressing the sources of mistrust directly, whether they be political, military or economic.
But if our efforts are truly to be successful, they must go beyond words to actions that reassure. We must each take specific steps to address and allay each other’s concerns.
…
Now, some say that human rights have nothing to do with our strategic relationship, and therefore doesn’t belong in the list that I’m discussing today. Indeed, some in China have even argued that our interest in human rights and ethnic minorities and religious freedom is designed to weaken China and so inconsistent with the basic bargain I’ve been talking about. But I couldn’t disagree more.
Of course we stand up for human rights because, as President Obama has said, it is who we are as a people. But we also believe that a China that respects the rule of law and universal norms provides reassurance to others that it will bring the same approach to its international behavior, as well as providing greater stability and growth for its own people.
…
As we pursue these policies, we will be open to China’s growing role, but we will also be looking for signs and signals of reassurance from China. If China is going to take its rightful place, it must make those signals clear.
Click into the link for the full Monty on where they think they are going with nukes, military rivalry, economic competition and cooperation.
Some realists might call it same-old same-old with a new label. Cynics might call it a long ass kiss for short advantage. Nothing exactly new about that in US-China relations. Couched as a form of constructive engagement, it’s actually a grander, more expansive formalization of the somewhat racist and naive policy maintained through successive US administrations, that the Chinese are a delicate lot who must not be allowed to lose face. The PRC has been playing the United States on that fiddle for decades. In its execution, however, the new policy rises to a level that I’d like to call, “The New Amoralism,” or “How To Be More Useful Idiots.”
Call me a cynic. But raise your hand if you think reassurance, particularly in the form of an utter abandonment of overtly stated moral principle, will prompt any meaningful reciprocality on the part of China in the way of human rights or anything else. Particularly as exercised by an United States president who in eight short months has made great progress toward establishing himself as the greatest foreign policy patsy since the Carter administration. OK, here’s the Dalai Lama thing:
UK Telegraph: Obama cancels meeting with Dalai Lama “to keep China happy.”
The decision came after China stepped up a campaign urging nations to shun the Tibetan spiritual leader.
It means Mr Obama will become the first president not to welcome the Nobel peace prize winner to the White House since the Dalai Lama began visiting Washington in 1991.
The Buddhist monk arrived in Washington on Monday for a week of meetings with Congressional leaders, celebrity supporters and interest groups, but the president will not see him until after he has made his first visit to China next month.
Samdhong Rinpoche, the Tibetan prime minister-in-exile, has accused the United States and other Western nations of “appeasement” toward China as its economic weight grows.
“Today, economic interests are much greater than other interests,” he said.
…
Sophie Richardson, Asia advocate for Human Rights Watch, said: “Presidents always meets the Dalai Lama and what happens? Absolutely nothing.
“This idea that if you are nice to the Chinese Communist Party up front you can cash in later is just wrong. If you lower the bar on human rights they will just move it lower and lower.”
…
Mr Obama has changed his position on Tibet since his election campaign.
In April 2008, he was joined by Hillary Clinton, then his rival for the Democratic nomination and now his Secretary of State, in calling on George W Bush to boycott the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony in protest at the bloody repression of a popular uprising in Tibet.
“If the Chinese do not take steps to help stop the genocide in Darfur and to respect the dignity, security, and human rights of the Tibetan people, then the President should boycott the opening ceremonies,” they said.
You know, I wasn’t too crazy about President Bush going to China at that point, either. But getting the malleable new president to back down from his absolute statement with no effort at all has to have prompted all kinds of high fives, or whatever the Chinese equivalent is, in the PRC’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. With an approving nod from the Politburo.
Mrs Clinton has been at the forefront of a new approach, called “strategic reassurance”, which seeks a more amicable partnership with the emerging power.
On her first trip to China in February she said public pressure on China over human rights was ill-advised as she “knew what the Chinese were going to say”.
So much a high moral stance on human rights. That’s the icing on the geopolitical cake, anyway. It’s probably not fair to point out that China experienced one of its greatest leaps forward in military technology through espionage and illegal sales under the nose of the Clinton administration, nor to draw any conclusions from the swiftness with which the Dalai Lama was thrown under the bus about what advantage the United States might gain in the key areas of military rivalry and economic cooperation.
Goldfarb at Weekly Standard: China appeasement now offically underway.
Morrissey at HotAir, looking at the Dalai delay, thinks Obama got it right and will get something on Iranian nukes for his snub. Maybe, if you think whatever you’re going to get from China is worth anything re Iranian nukes.
Fausta: Taiwan sweats.
Another Black Conservative: “At a loss … this president never seems to be willing to stand up for freedom and dignity.”
Altas Shrugs: Evil, I tell ya …
In accordance with FTC regulations re blogger conflict of interest, I’d like to report that I own several televisions, computers and a lot of other stuff all made in China, cheap, and that I am an American citizen currently residing in the United States with a vested interest in its national security and economic interests. As a human being, I am also interested in the betterment of humanity in general, which I see as tied to the advancement of American ideals in the world.
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Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:31 am Comments (5) on Tuesday, October 6, 2009
5 Responses to “Strategic Reassurance”
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October 6th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Jules, with Ear Leader in charge, and Shrillary as SoS, do you suppose hope and change is just around the corner? :)
October 6th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Hope for Change!
October 6th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
It is very simple. If BO doesn’t keep China happy, they will not finance our out of control federal deficit.
He who pays the piper, calls the tune.
October 6th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
What next? Mao’s Little Red Book in the nightstand in every hotel room?
October 6th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Don’t you just love it when this Administration tells China what it “must” do — and then turns around and does what China tells it to?