CHINA-U.S.: Storm Warnings over the ‘Pacific Century’

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Mar 25 1996 (IPS) - Twelve years ago, then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan headed to China, celebrating the advent of the ‘Pacific Century’.

“I see America and our Pacific neighbours as nations of the future, going forward together in a mighty enterprise to build dynamic growth economies and a safer world,” he told an influential gathering of U.S. foreign-policy experts.

In the 12 years since, things have worked out more or less as Reagan foresaw. Led by a decade of torrid Chinese growth rates, East Asian economies have boomed, with trans-Pacific commerce now far exceeding that between North America and Europe.

“I look at the flow of Asian prosperity and I see the seeds of American renewal,” Secretary of State Warren Christopher said recently in a succinct statement of the prevailing view.

Until now.

With the increasingly angry verbal exchanges between Washington and Beijing echoing the thunderous booms of M-9 ballistic missiles being fired from the Chinese mainland to targets just 30 kms off Taiwan’s coast, it appears that storm clouds may be gathering over the Pacific Century and its promise of prosperity.

While Chinese fears of a democratic Taiwan aspiring to eventual independence under U.S. protection explain the current crisis, they are only one part of a worrisome picture. Beijing’s territorial claims elsewhere in Asia, a possible collapse in North Korea, historic Chinese and Korean hostility towards Japan, and rising defence spending throughout the region are forcing a new look.

Just as last year’s to-and-froing over some shallow-water shoals in the South China Sea between Beijing and the Philippines caught analysts here by surprise, the recent public dispute between Tokyo and Seoul over tiny Takeshima island — Tokdo in Korean — came as something of a shock.

“It’s a more fragile structure than people have realised,” says Robert Manning, an Asia expert in the former administration of President George Bush. “You have a lot of animosity out there.”

Indeed. While investors here show little sign of intimidation at the gathering storm over Taiwan — a storm they hope newly elected Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui may try to dissipate — ripple effects from the explosive impact of China’s missiles are being felt everywhere.

“By firing ballistic missiles near Taiwan’s coast, China has sown the seeds of a new and worrisome Asian arms race, military experts and defence officials say.”

That was the lead in a prominent ‘Los Angeles Times’ article last week. It noted that China’s unprecedented missile exercises had sent military planners from Seoul to Singapore scurrying to their arms catalogues in search of counter-measures.

At the same time, Republican lawmakers hurriedly approved resolutions calling on President Bill Clinton to defend Taiwan militarily if China attacks the island, while Clinton’s Defence Secretary, William Perry, noted he had sent two aircraft carrier- led naval task forces in waters near Taiwan since February.

“Beijing should know, and this will remind them that, while they are a great military power, the premier — the strongest — military power in the western Pacific is the United States,” he warned. He also approved the sale of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and an advanced targeting and navigation system for potent, U.S.-made Taiwanese warplanes.

On Friday, he announced that Washington had unilaterally put off the planned visit here next month of China’s defence minister, Gen. Chi Haotian, saying that it was “not appropriate in the current climate.”

U.S.-Chinese relations, which have been up and down since the crushing of Beijing’s “pro-democracy” movement in 1989, now stand at a critical juncture. And, because China looms as the dominant military — and rising economic — power of the region, all of Asia stands to be affected.

Few believe that war will break out between China and Taiwan soon (although Washington’s intelligence chief, John Deutch, worried publicly last month about the possibility of an “accident or miscalculation” setting off hostilities).

But senior U.S. officials and analysts believe that Clinton’s China policy of “comprehensive engagement” may not be sustainable, especially if Beijing persists in its military intimidation after Saturday’s election. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin noted this week that Congress may not even approve China’s preferential trade status this year.

The abandonment of engagement, according to Stanley Roth, until recently the top Asia expert on the National Security Council, would bring on “containment” — the same strategic doctrine that defined Washington’s policy towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War and which hardliners in Beijing believe is already U.S. policy.

But containment will not work, according to Manning, who says that, unlike in Europe, Washington lacks firm allies in Asia.

“They know the white boys are leaving, and the Chinese are coming,” he says, noting that other countries in the region have not spoken out nearly as forcefully as the United States against Beijing.

Indeed, the conventional view is that if China attacked Taiwan, Japan, despite very close ties to Taipei, might not even allow U.S. forces to use their bases in Okinawa to respond. If, on the other hand, Washington did not try to defend Taiwan, “Japan will feel betrayed,” according to James Przystrup, director of Asian Studies at the rightwing Heritage Foundation here.

The result, he says, would lead Tokyo to re-arm, a development that would transform relations throughout the region.

“The Taiwan issue has the potential to overthrow the entire Asian-Pacific strategic balance,” he says.

Some analysts take comfort in the fact that their increasing economic interdependence makes the outbreak of war between China and Taiwan little sense. Taiwanese capital — about 24 billion dollars’ worth — has helped fuel China’s spectacular growth.

“That would be like killing the goose that laid the golden eggs,” noted one administration official in a metaphor that he says could be applied to any conflict between East Asian nations.

“But if calculations of economic costs and benefits could stop wars from happening, very few would ever have been fought,” observes Edward Luttwak, a conservative analyst at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank here.

He worries that the increasing shows of force by aspiring regional powers is returning the world to the kind of confrontational dynamics that often led to real conflict in the pre-nuclear era.