POLITICS-US/ASIA: Trouble Ahead

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Analysis Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb 23 2001 (IPS) - While US President George W. Bush focuses initially on Washington’s closest foreign relationships, storm clouds appear to be massing steadily in Northeast Asia.

The sinking earlier this month of a Japanese fishing boat after it was accidentally rammed by a US submarine off the coast of Hawaii has dealt an unexpected blow to ties with Washington’s closest ally in the region.

This week’s threat by North Korea to cancel its year-old moratorium on testing long-range missiles also raises a spectre which top officials in the new administration had hoped they would not have to deal with for at least a few more months.

At the same time, the administration has yet to sort out precisely what will be its approach to China, as Republican hawks and doves fight over government positions which could be decisive in influencing policy toward Beijing.

Five weeks into the administration, however, it is clear that Bush’s team is deeply divided over ties with China, which will be sorely tested over the next few months as it decides on whether to sell advanced weaponry to Taiwan and how to persuade Beijing that a US national missile defence (NMD) system, which it appears determined to build, will not be aimed against China.

Early appointments to key posts cannot be encouraging to any hopes Beijing may have had for the continuation of Bill Clinton’s policy of “strategic partnership” with China.

On the contrary, top posts in the Pentagon and on the staff of Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been referred to as Bush’s “prime minister” are now held by people who have favoured a much tougher policy toward both China and North Korea.

Among them are I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, who will head a beefed-up national security staff for the vice president; and Paul Wolfowitz, tapped as chief deputy to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has himself strongly championed NMD regardless of what China may think.

Both Libby and Wolfowitz have signed statements published by the right-wing Heritage Foundation calling on Washington, for example to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself against Chinese attack, including providing it with theatre missile defence (TMD).

Rumsfeld also named Andrew Marshall, author of a controversial study called ‘Asia 2025’, to lead an unprecedented review of future US defence needs.

Marshall, a 50-year Pentagon veteran, has argued since before the collapse of the Soviet Union that conflicts in Asia, and especially with an emerging, energy-hungry China, represent the greatest long-range threat to US security. In Asia 2025, published just last year, he said Beijing could not be anything other than a “persistent competitor to the United States”.

Even at the State Department, considered home to whatever dovish spirit animates the Bush administration, two appointments so far stand out as problematic for both North Korea and China. Secretary of State Colin Powell has chosen Richard Armitage as his chief deputy, while superhawk John Bolton has been nominated for under-secretary for arms control and international security affairs.

Both men signed the Heritage statements on Taiwan, while Bolton is considered a charter member of the “Blue Team,” a loose group of Congressional aides, think-tank associates, and lobbyists who see China as relentlessly hostile and Clinton’s efforts to co-opt it as hopelessly and dangerously naïve.

Bush so far has shown no particular interest in the region or urgency about dealing with it. Instead, he has focused initially on Washington’s closest relationships in what the administration has called “concentric” diplomacy.

Thus, the first foreign leader welcomed to the Bush White House was Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, his first foreign visit was to the ranch of Mexican President Vicente Fox. On Friday, he met here with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and visits with other Latin America and West European leaders have been pencilled in over the next six weeks.

But it is not clear how long Asia can be put on hold.

The sinking of the Ehime Maru, in which nine trainee fishermen were drowned, came at a moment when more and more Japanese were already questioning the value of the long-standing joint security treaty under which some 47,000 US troops are based in Okinawa.

Attacks by a few of those troops on Okinawan women and girls have provoked demands that Washington reduce its forces in Japan, while constant US pressure on Japan’s governments to take on ever-increasing responsibility for providing military and logistical support to US operations in the Pacific as part of the alliance has contributed to growing resentment.

Armitage, who has long considered the US-Japanese military alliance to be the bedrock of Washington’s strategic position in Asia, was in fact the head of a panel of defence specialists who last year issued a strong report which called on Tokyo to become “a more equal alliance partner”. That pressure is likely only to increase under Bush.

As for North Korea, Republicans have long urged a tougher line against Pyongyang, even at the risk of derailing the “sunshine” policy of South Korean President Kim Dae Jung.

Kim has reportedly become increasingly worried that the Bush administration’s apparent disinterest in continuing negotiations with the North over ending its missile programme could not only undo the progress made by the Clinton administration in reaching such a deal, but could also sour the warming trend in ties between the two Koreas which produced the first intra-Korean summit in Pyongyang last June.

As a result, he has pressed very hard for a meeting with Bush here in early March in which he hopes to convince him to promptly re-engage the North Koreans. While senior Bush officials have insisted publicly they support Kim ‘s policy, they have been far more skeptical privately, insisting that they are in no hurry to reward the North’s Kim Jong Il with offers of new aid in return for a missile moratorium.

As a result, some Korea watchers believe Kim Jong Il may be tempted to resort to the brinkmanship for which the North is famous, possibly by announcing an end to his moratorium on missile tests, a step that would almost certainly provoke a new crisis with Washington.

China is also clamouring for attention on both NMD and Taiwan, warning that any move to provide Taiwan with the kind of advanced warships and other weaponry which the island has requested is certain to damage bilateral ties with the United States.

In recent weeks, Beijing has sent high-level officials to Washington to argue their case, and it appears for now that, despite the past views of key Bush officials, the administration is unlikely to sell Taiwan everything it wants. This past week, the State Department denied a visa for Taiwan’s top admiral to come here just before the administration must make a decision in April.