Back to the Future:
The Bush Administration and China

John Gershman

0101china.pdf

Let me open by challenging the conventional wisdom and highlight one area where there is the basis for comradely feelings between George W. Bush and China’s head of state, Jiang Zemin. As the Tiananmen papers reveal, the legitimacy of Jiang’s selection process to the position of general secretary in 1989 was just as controversial as Bush’s was: both were selected by a small group of people for the country’s highest office.

I’d like to start with a fearless prediction. By April at the latest, the Bush administration’s foreign policy team will be in a convulsive debate, both internally and with key Republican legislators, over U.S.-China policy.

The issues will be arms sales to Taiwan and the question of providing an explicit statement on U.S. defense of Taiwan. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell are more interested in maintaining the strategic ambiguity of U.S. policy regarding a response to an invasion by China. It’s likely that Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and many congressional Republicans would prefer an explicit statement of support for Taiwan.

On arms sales, Taiwan will likely again request destroyers outfitted with the top-of-the-line AEGIS radar and High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARM) for its air force, requests refused by the Clinton administration. Most of the AEGIS destroyers are built at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi, home state of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. Last year Raytheon moved the primary guidance production for the HARM missile from Tennessee to Arizona, the home state of John McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The political stars in Congress are aligned to favor such sales. And if “like father like son” has any meaning, we will recall that Bush’s father approved the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Taipei in the early 1990s. With some of the same foreign and defense policy advisers in key positions in the new administration, such arms sales are very likely.

Three points about a Bush administration China policy:

• Continuity and Change
• Division and Incoherence
• The Vision Thing

Continuity and Change

On economic issues, there will be little difference between the Bush administration and the Clinton administration. Bush is more of an unconditional free trader, however, meaning that even the limited efforts of integrating labor and environmental issues into the trade agenda will be absent from the Bush agenda. The Bush administration shares the Clinton administration’s agenda for China joining the WTO and expanding trade and investment with China.

Five big changes under the Bush administration will be:

1. Identifying China as a competitor.
2. A preference for strengthening the bilateral alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand that formed the foundation of the cold war-era security architecture in Asia, deemphasizing relations with China, and reducing efforts beyond their already low level under Clinton for a multilateral security architecture in Asia.
3. The Bush administration’s almost fanatical enthusiasm for building new national and theater missile defense systems will inordinately complicate emerging Asia policy. Beijing finds missile defenses in Asia inherently provocative, especially if Taiwan winds up under the U.S. umbrella, and will counter any U.S. move with a fierce and determined offensive missile buildup of its own. That would be the last thing anyone in Asia wants.
4. The Bush administration’s opposition to multilateral arms control agreements, such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, will make it very difficult to make progress on missile technology and other nonproliferation and weapons of mass destruction treaties.
5. A more explicit commitment to Taiwan, including increased arms sales.

Division and Incoherence

There will be one crucial tension in Dubya’s administration, however. The tension lies between the free trade engagement wing of the Republican Party and the retro cold warriors who view the “China threat” as the overriding concern of U.S. policy in the region. This tension divides congressional Republicans as well as his administration, as right-wing members of the self-described “blue team” face off against others in their party. Rice and Torkel Patterson at the National Security Council and Powell and James Kelly, likely Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific would lead the “engagement” perspective within the administration. On the “containment/rollback side” would be Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretaries Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz at the Defense Department, as well as some members of the armed forces. For example, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Henry Shelton called for “all elements of U.S. power and diplomacy” to be focused on “ensuring that China does not become the 21st century version of the Soviet bear.” This debate over U.S. policy toward China already erupted during the platform-drafting meetings before the Republican convention last August.

This tension will serve as the fault line for major policy disputes within the administration, and between the administration and both houses of Congress. Initial salvos have already been fired. Frank Gaffney Jr., charter member of the “blue team” and president of the Center for Security Policy, recently wrote an op-ed critical of Secretary Powell’s views on China.

The Vision Thing

As we move back to the future under the Bush administration, there is no region with more opportunities to make things worse than Asia, and no relationship that is more critical not to screw up than that with China. I am fearfully confident that George W. Bush will do just that.

China is critical to a range of regional and global issues, from control of weapons of mass destruction, to proliferation, globalization, global warming, infectious disease, and human rights. An effective policy requires moving away from verbal gymnastics of “strategic partner, competitor, or rival” and “engagement versus containment.” It does require an effort to build a domestic consensus for U.S.-China relations that recognizes the complexity and centrality of that relationship—a failure of the Clinton administration that will likely be repeated under this one. This requires no illusions that China will soon become democratic, or even that a democratic China would share more interests with the U.S. than an authoritarian one.

Focusing on containing China and pursuing destabilizing policies like theater missile defense and national missile defense without extensive discussions with China will only confirm the views of hardliners in China that the U.S. is intent on maintaining its hegemonic presence in the region. Chinese military modernization will accelerate the ongoing Japanese debate over its military preparedness and encourage Japanese expansion; something opposed by Korea as well as other countries in the region. A vicious circle of growing insecurity and renewed arms races is very possible.

China is a player in a range of security issues not only involving the Taiwan Strait and the Spratlys but also on the Korean peninsula, and in South and Central Asia. Peace and security in Asia will require China to be an active participant. U.S. bilateral discussions with China need to be framed in a manner that works to integrate China into a multilateral, multilevel regional security architecture.

The next two years will be a critical time within the leadership of the Communist Party, as bargaining begins over succession and China continues to polish its international reputation over the next few months to try to host the 2008 Olympics. The Tiananmen Papers represent one salvo in that process. That context presents the Bush administration with a great opportunity to recast U.S.-China relations.

(This commentary by John Gershman <jgershman@igc.org> was presented at a FPIF press conference on Bush’s foreign policy at the National Press Club on January 25, 2001.)

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