By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, May 10 1996 (IPS)

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole has promised to back President Bill Clinton in his upcoming bid to extend preferential trade treatment for China.

Despite a blistering critique of Clinton’s Asia policy as one of “weakness and indecision, and double-talk and incoherence,” Dole, the Republican party’s presumptive presidential candidate came down in support of Clinton’s current position on most major regional issues as he delivered a long-delayed policy address.

In addition to endorsing extension of “most-favoured nation” trade status for Beijing, Dole stressed Thursday that Washington should cooperate with the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on regional security issues and press Japan to “open its sanctuary market and level the playing field” on trade.

In only two areas, did the candidate spell out positions clearly at odds with the CLinton. He called for breaking off bilateral talks with North Korea until Pyongyang resumes direct discussions with South Korea.

He also proposed the creation of a “Pacific Democracy Defence Programme” with U.S. allies in Asia to work together on the creation and deployment of a ballistic missile defence system. South Korea and Japan, both of whom he said could be attacked by North Korean missiles, would be the charter members of such a group, while Taiwan would also be invited to join under a Dole presidency.

Dole’s speech, which had been delayed for two months as his foreign policy and political advisers debated whether or not to back MFN extension for China, could further alienate his remaining Republican foe, television commentator Patrick Buchanan.

Dole strategists are worried that Buchanan, who attacked Dole repeatedly for his support of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and his relatively moderate views on social issues, may walk out of the party and run an independent campaign. That could cripple Dole’s hopes of defeating Clinton, who currently leads Dole by 20 points in the public opinion polls, in the November elections.

Dole’s MFN stance could make Buchanan’s defection more likely. Since Dole effectively grabbed the Republican nomination by winning a majority of delegates to the party’s national convention in mid-August, the rightwing populist has been on a crusade to deny China MFN benefits.

In a Washington Post column earlier this week, Buchanan laid out a litany of complaints against Beijing, stressing China’s 30- billion-dollar bilateral trade surplus, its transfer of nuclear technology and missiles to “rogue nations,” and its alleged human rights abuses and persecution of minorities.

“A regime that uses slave labour, bullies neighbours, brutalises minorities, and sterilises weeping women is not one we ought to be doing normal business with,” Buchanan wrote, adding: “If Dole will lead the fight against MFN, he may dismay corporate America, but he will astonish critics and find himself heading a great coalition of conservatives, economic populists, pro-life activists, and human rights Democrats.”

Even as the article was published, a group of Republican lawmakers and Christian Right leaders announced a campaign to defeat MFN in the Congress if, as seems certain, Clinton approves its extension later this month. They also hinted they might abandon Dole if he backs Clinton on the issue, as he is now certain to do.

“He bit the bullet,” said Robert Manning, an Asia specialist in the administration of President George Bush some of whose principal foreign policy advisors are now clustering around Dole. “He’s taken the issue head-on.”

While Dole originally opposed normalisation with China during the 1970’s, he has been a fervent MFN backer over the last 15 years. His home state of Kansas has been a major beneficiary of Beijing’s large appetite for grains and Boeing aircraft.

For him to flip-flop on the issue would have been a major blow to his credibility, according to political analysts who note that a series of equivocations by Dole on NAFTA and abortion during the primary campaign may have contributed to his decline in the polls.

It would also have deprived him of his basic theme Thursday — that Clinton’s “overnight reversals…, conflicting signals, and …strategic incoherence” had “disillusioned our allies and emboldened our enemies” in Asia.

Indeed, as Dole pointed out himself, Clinton had defeated Bush in part by promising to link China’s trading privileges to its record on human rights and weapons sales — a position which he completely reversed two years ago when he “de-linked” human rights from approval of China’s trade status.

Dole charged that such reversals have become routine under Clinton as when the administration first said it would deny a visa for Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui to visit the United States, only to cave in to Congressional pressure to grant him one a year ago.

That action provoked a strong reaction from China and contributed decisively to a downward spiral in Sino-U.S. ties that has yet to reach bottom. Relations may worsen again next week when Clinton is expected to announce two billion dollars in trade sanctions against Beijing for violation of a two-year-old accord to protect intellectual property rights.

But Dole was hard put to identify major policy differences with Clinton. Like Clinton, and Bush before him, he argued that “continuing trade offers the prospect of continuing change (in China). …China is not Haiti and cannot be bullied by an American president,” he said.

On Taiwan, Dole suggested a stronger stance than Clinton’s policy of “strategic ambiguity,” which refers to whether and how Washington would react to a Chinese attack on the island. “If force is used against Taiwan, America will respond,” Dole declared. But he did not go on to say exactly how the United States would, in fact, respond.

“This could be read in Taiwan as a blank cheque for those who support independence,” said Manning, who expressed dismay over the ambiguity in Dole’s statement.

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