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Hillary abroad: On autopilot and with excesss baggage

Monday, February 16, 2009   E-Mail this story   Free Headline Alerts

Sol Sanders also writes the "Asia Investor" column weekly for EAST-ASIA-INTEL.com.

It is probably a good thing that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be on autopilot for most of her first endeavor into international diplomacy.

Her clichŽ-ridden appearance before the Senate for the confirmation process was uneventful. And while few doubt her untried executive abilities, her role as first lady in a Clinton White House with a notorious record in foreign policy doesnÕt lend much gravitas to her new position.

The choice of the Northeast-Southeast Asian tour as her first overseas exposure probably had more to do with her domestic image in the U.S. than with the extremely weighty ø if hardly pliable ø issues she will encounter.

Appointing and sending off former Sen. George Mitchell, with his ethnic Mideast background, for the perceived required shuttle diplomacy between Arabs and Jews, removed one critical item on the very large foreign policy agenda Pres. Barack Obama had set for himself [and for her] in the campaign. Choosing a notorious bull-in-the-china-shop veteran, Richard C.A. Holbrooke, to work on the delicate quadrangle of Aghanistan, Pakistan, India, and China, may finesse [for a while] the presidentÕs campaign threat to pursue a rambunctious strategy there.

That pretty much left East Asia [or Latn America, forgotten again].

Washington pundits have all chattered on about ÒChinaÓ being the focus of the trip. ThatÕs dubious.

Not that there are not issues galore between Washington and Beijing.

But at this moment of enormous movement not only in the international arena but inside China itself, it hardly seems likely the new secretary can come away with more than impressions. Whether the usual academic economists who are predicting Beijing can ride out the current worldwide credit crisis and recession with relative equanimity are correct, or, as some of us believe, Beijing is in for a crisis of the regime because of the world economic downturn China will not be able to avoid, Lady Hillary is not much more than a bystander.

The modifications of the Bush policies, strategies and tactics, she indicated were in her quiver at the hearings are negligible. Cruel and bestial as they may be, Beijing is tightening the screws on dissent and any hint of possible rebellion. ClintonÕs proffer that Washington would do more on human rights appears as vapid as such protestations from time to time by the Bush Administration. The promised tussle with the Department of the Treasury over China policy which was implied, too, is put off for another day what with a very busy Sec. Timothy Geithner flopping in his first public outing.

The old problems in U.S.-China relations remain largely the same.

In the new international economic environment, Beijing is more unlikely than ever to end its strategy of manipulation of its currency in order to push exports. GeithnerÕs hardline on the issue in confirmation hearings was quickly mitigated with White House hints that Obama had taken it all back in his inaugural congratulatory conversation with Hu. Doubtful but the point was made. In any case, the issue may be on a backburner with reports of a capital flight of hot money out of the yuan given the grim prospects now of the Chinese export-led economy and, if anything, the likelihood that BeijingÕs much heralded stimulus package would contain more not so hidden export subsidies.

Clinton is presumably lucky that Taiwan Pres. Ma Ying-jeou has, at least for the moment, defused the Mainland-Taiwan issue with his emphasis on the status quo [rather than formal independence as the party of his predecessor, Chen Hsiu-bian, now under indictment for corruption, had suggested off and on]. It is typical of all the U.S.-China issues, however, that this one remains loaded what with the continuing buildup of missiles on the Mainland aimed at Taiwan and the inadequacies of the IslandÕs defense buildup and military liaison with the U.S. for implementing the American commitment to prevent its takeover by force.

In Japan, Ms. Rodham-Clinton will be dealing with a weak government only too happy that she put them first on her itinerary even though it is in no position to negotiate anything new or controversial. It probably isnÕt necessary. TokyoÕs decision to send its naval units to join the anti-piracy patrol in the Indian Ocean is another one of incremental steps toward Japan accepting its full worldwide responsibilities despite its ÒNo WarÓ constitution. Under the cover of a UN resolution on the pirates, Tokyo can claim the issue of participation in overseas armed peacekeeping operations is being fudgeda little farther, again. But the fact that armed encounters could take place certainly is that one more baby step toward Japan accepting its responsibilities as a major world economic and, albeit reluctantly, political and militarypower. That is, after all, the fundamental American national interest in dealing with Japan.

Furthermore, the always knotty problem of the crowded little island of Okinawa with its embittered past and radical present is layed, at least for a time, with the Pentagon decision to build a greater hub on Guam, with the Japanese paying part of the cost of transferring base operations there. The Secretary will repeat BushÕs gesture of meeting and listening to the pleas of the relatives of Japanese kidnapped by the North Koreans, perhaps escaping somewhat the onus of ashingtonÕs refusing to support JapanÕs priority for settlement of the issue in the Six Power talks.

The Six Power talks, of course, will come up everywhere. But the fact is that getting China to move dramatically to pressure Pyongyang to end its pursuit of weapons is probably not in the cards. Beijing is neutered, worried about the possibility of a collapse as North Korea goes through an excrutiating succession crisis and faces another famine. In other words, the Obama Administration is face to face with the same old circular problem: a North Korea which refuses to give up its one ablity to blackmail the world for the kind of aid it needs to survive its bankruptcy brought on by diverting resources to weapons. So Washington is back to the drawing board, perhaps to take up the earlier tightening sanctions route which Japan favors that produced some seeming progress before they were prematurely scaped.

But, indeed, it is South Korea that is perhaps at the moment the most critical of the countries Clinton will drop in on. Pres. Lee Myung-bak, a respected businessman and former mayor of Seoul, has his back to the wall. His effort to reverse the frothy if ineffectual decade of two predecessors on the left ø with their American media claque øafter a resounding electoral victory has been faltering. The left, with the help of Pyongyang, is using ever extra-parliamentary device to torpedo his attempts at economic and political reform. And, of course, those are taking place in the grim environment of worldwide recession with Korea still suffering from the effects of the 1997-98 Far East Financial Crisis, perhaps the precursor to the general world financial breakdown. The free trade pact with the U.S. ran into the usual kinds of sectoral interests that bedevil any such agreement ina democracy.

Korea needs more than anything a new inflow of foreign investment with its attendant technology transfers at a time of growing protectionist sentiment in the U.S. and hard times for SeoulÕs export-led economy, integrated and dependent on both Japan and China, as well as slowing markets in the U.S. and the EU. Lee appears to have got his second wind, however, and has virtually ignored loud explosive propaganda blasts ø even by their usual standards ø from the North denouncing so-called agreements, rarely implemented, which had been signed by his predecessors.

It is probably a time when some steel should be put back into the U.S.-Korean military alliance, cosmetic if not fundamental, but that isnÕt likely to come from this meeting. Nor given budget cuts expected from the Obama Administration and increasing demands in Afghanistan [if not Iraq] on stretched American forces.

There have been, for example, hints that Lee [and his military] would be interested in joining the integration of Japan and the U.S. in the anti-missile shield being built fairly rapidly to counter North KoreaÕs missile and nuclear weapons program. That kind of defense integration in northeast Asia has been the dream of American planners for half a century. The technical inevitability at some later stage of integrating anti-missile developments in northeast Asia with the program the Bush Administration had begun to deploy in Europe may be a bridge too far now for either government, much less Clinton. But hopefully it would be discussed behind closed doors.

Whatever else the SecretaryÕs trip indicates, it is an expression of the shrewdness of her political instincts ø or perhaps those of her mentors in Foggy Bottom, although that seems unlikely given their track record. It was better left to the President to cope with the political funk he will find with the allies on his April European debut trip for the 60th anniversary of NATO. Asia, for the moment, looks much less predictably a rough diplomatic road for a novice. And this is, after all, the compensation for the larger prize she sought and lost in 2008.

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