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Every piece is now moving on the Asian chessboard. The moves are long-term, short-term, contradictory, complementary, and unpredictable.
It is no wonder that a recent backgrounder by Pres. Bush’s foreign policy adviser, Condelissa Rice, misinterpreted [or their own agenda?] by The New York Times and The Washington Post added one more dischord to the cacophony.
Japan, the keystone of Ameican strategy in Asia, is in turmoil. A charismatic prime minister, Koizumi, may or may not have a strategy for initiating a required cultural as well as economic and political revolution. So far, he has not shown his hand. He has made abeyances to the American alliance but like many other Japanese conservatives he must ponder Washington’s conflicting statements and interests.
China, whom the Clinton Administration courted as moving inevitably toward modernization and democratization, has proved an unreliable partner in whatever transformation. Increasingly clear is our talented MBAs’ straight line projections — economic as well as political — have no more validity than their similar prophecies for the U.S. economy. China’s fate is inexorably tied to U.S. markets, now on the downturn. But military buildup as fast a pace as it can maintain, is aimed at challenging and eventually eliminating U.S. regional influence; a contradiction, perhaps, but look back to the 1930s with Japan to appreciate its validity.
Korea, Asia’s potential pigmy-giant has [again] run afoul of an ambitious, shrewd but overreaching leader with no operable strategic concept. Kim Dae Jung’s “Sunshine Policy” was to bring his North Korean brothers, in their not atypical 20th century contradiction of weapons of mass destruction but a starving population, to rationality and unification. Kim believed that a united Korea’s potential, the economic dynamism of a South Korean economy now dawdling, would permit him to play Tokyo against Beijing against Moscow against Washington. Now his country faces the prospect of a “peace offensive” by Pyongyang [with Beijing and Moscow’s help] against an eviscerated, lame duck regime.
Russia, despite its demographic catastrophe, its faltering economy, its interminable war in Chechnya [with implications for its huge Moslem minorities and relations with Moslem Central Asia], is largely bluffing. Its [eroding] nuclear stockpile and its [probably diminishing] weapons exporting capacity give it a role to play. But there is already public muttering by high military about the obvious danger of selling weapons to old rivals and potential enemies, China and Iran. And its talk of selling weapons and technology to North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, and probably to Iraq, only dramatizes Putin’s helter-skelter attempts to plug holes in the dike.
India and Pakistan, where potential for nuclear war [by accident if not design] now must be a high priority, presents a set of problems largely on the backburner for half a century. The Clinton Administration’s lunge toward India as a new ally in its growing disenchantment with China, quickly snapped up by Bush II, goes a glimmering. Even Bush’s new ambassador to India has pointed out [pre-appointment] that the collapse of Pakistan into chaos or Islamic fanaticism should be the major preoccupation of Washington. Furthermore, those who take a second look at Indian military competency, fragile political structure, economy exiting slowly from the long nightmare of Soviet-style planning, endemic ethnic and religious conflicts, know full well Beijing could with little effort exploit these weaknesses.
Hanging over all these is the major strategic initiative of the Bush II Administration: creation of a missiles defense. It was an explanation of negotiating around that concept that brought on last week’s Condigate. According to intimates, what Rice meant to elucidate was the Bush II effort to minimize the argument [used mostly by the Democrats] of Chinese and Russian opposition and riposte.
The Bush II position is that the Chinese are going to modernize their nuclear forces come what may. The Chinese are at a pre-series production stage, but test flights have been successful and the inevitable deployment of 100-200 mobile systems. Condi's point was Washington could do nothing about this since it was an integral part of modernizing the world’s largest [but antiquated] military. China's deployments had been limited because Beijing could not produce sufficient fissile material. Moreover, its shift to U.S. nuclear weapon designs [especially the W-88 used on the U.S. Trident missile] will require much more fissile material The Russians helped China solve this problem, so the Chinese program is now unstoppable. China will probably need to test to assure confidence in their W-88s [they have already tested one]. As a result, they will probably conduct covert tests unless the U.S. too openly resumes testing. This simple observation Condi offered has been perverted to suggest that the U.S. is somehow prepared to "trade" acquiescence in China's nuclear modernization for a similar Chinese posture on U.S. missile defense.
Unfortunately, not much of this got through the NYTimes-WashPost filter to even the foreign policy establishment, much less the general public. And so history is written [or miswritten] by my fellow journalists.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@abac.com), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.