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My old Tokyo German Jewish refugee physician, Dr. Rosenberg, of blessed memory, used to say, “Der traubul mit miner payshunts ist dat dey believe medicine ist ein science. It ist ein art!” [I have come to believe it.]
Diplomacy is the management of international relations by negotiation, the New Shorter Oxford Dictionary says. Fine! It is not the art of diplomacy; it is the science of negotiation.
But there’s the rub. Americans are historically, traditionally, nay! genetically, the worst negotiators. I like to think it is because, again as a high school principle said at an assembly in a little mountain village in North Carolina in the 30s: “But God has blessed America! And because of our great good luck, we are a most generous people.”
What American negotiators want, as always when we set out on something, is an end product. If our interlocutor is prepared to wait, we will come around — our diplomat’s career is based on his “success.”
Dubya is settling into a perilous, continuing negotiation with the Chinese. Now that we have our people back, we face the prospect he hinted at in his presidential campaign: China is our adversary for the next decade, perhaps longer.
All very well for my friend Owen Harries to sing — as only the Welsh can — about the tragedy of a self-fulfilling prophecy. And it is odious, as another diplomat has said to make historical analogies. But for those who lived through the antecedents of World War II, choosing every possible rationalization to excuse hostility of a trading partner is all too familiar. Kissinger sings that song, too: commerce leads to understanding, removes friction. Tell that to the French and Germans, Europe’s two leading traders who went to war in every generation. Or examine, please, those booming trade statistics with Japan in 1938-41!
No, there is nothing to it but what Jim Lilley, a wise Old China Hand, said when some bimboo on CNN asked “But what do we do now?” Response: steady as it goes but batten the hatches. [It takes a landlubber like me to really appreciate those nautical clichés.]
Somehow, not minimizing “diplomacy” and “negotiating” required inside the White House, the U.S. must
1] Boost our Chinese intelligence product. That not only means continued flights until we secure information from distant electronic gear, but bringing on board experienced people like Lilley who actually know the Chinese.
2] Immediately reinstitute strategic trade controls. In the new global economy, with “business’” weight on the Republicans, greater conflict of dual use [commercial and military] of hi-tech, our gallant [if greedy] allies, ad infinitum, we can do no more than slow the hemorrhaging to the Chinese military. But a day, a week, a month, a year is important as past examples demonstrate.
3] Reexamine our stake in perpetuation of Taiwan’s de facto independence. Then let’s take off the dumb-down controls on their F16 fighters, provide diesel submarines, begin a missiles defense shield — even if that means Aegis five years later — in a counter to new missiles on the Fukien Coast.
4] Use the bait. If the Chinese want the Olympics in 2002, then we want — immediately — the return of our Chinese ethnic nationals whom they have taken for spurious xenophobic reasons.. Let’s tell them, quietly [not on CNN], in a hard, cold negotiating statement, whether in English, Kuo-yu, Cantonese, or modified Japanese kanji. Beijing, as well as our allies after their Casablanca-like statements of “shocked, shocked, I tell you”, will come along.
5] We are running a $3 billion a month trade deficit with Beijing. That simply cannot continue. Even at our worst with the Japanese, there was always the possibility that Tokyo would open markets to rectify the huge imbalances. [They never did — because of that same negotiating deficit that exists in our psyche — until the Japanese 10-year-long recession began to right it. But that’s a discussion for another day.] There is no way the Chinese can or would open their markets. They are accruing huge dollar reserves, which they would use in any crunch. Let’s have the crunch now rather than later. And that means taking another look at the WTO and most favored nation treatment — again with, as that crude Yiddish expression has it — buttocks on the table!
Dubya in more newsfilm than I care for has shown us how he can play Kissinger’s cowboy/hero role, strolling around his ranch in Texas boots. Okay, I can forgive him, even if some of my West Texas friends can’t, for his Johnny-come-lately Westernization of his Midwest German American New England Blueblood roots.
But what we need is that machismo taken to the negotiating table. Mr. Bush, it’s tit for tat.
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.