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Obama's Asia trip: a series of unfortunate events
Posted By Daniel Blumenthal
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - 7:48 PM
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Before President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao released their joint statement, Obama's Asia trip was underwhelming. But after the statement, Obama's foray into Asia went from empty to harmful.
Before Obama arrived in China, the trip's policy successes were minimal at best. He showed up to a major trade forum, APEC, with no trade policy. If, as Evan Feigenbaum has said, the "business of Asia is business," without a trade policy Obama is putting America out of business in the world's most economically dynamic region. And then he was stiffed by Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama's outright rejection of the American proposal for a high-level dialogue to resolve basing issues on Okinawa. Not exactly a sterling performance by the new team.
But then came the joint statement after talks with President Hu. Two items in the statement struck me: one about Taiwan, the other in regard to India.
On Taiwan, the statement says:
The two countries reiterated that the fundamental principle of respect for each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity is at the core of the three U.S.-China joint communiqués which guide U.S.-China relations. Neither side supports any attempts by any force to undermine this principle. The two sides agreed that respecting each other's core interests is extremely important to ensure steady progress in U.S.-China relations.
The three communiqués do indeed mention respect for territorial integrity. But it is highly arguable that "respect for ... sovereignty and territorial integrity" represent the "core" of the understandings that led to Sino-American rapprochement. The Taiwan issue was treated more delicately by earlier American statesmen. Their basic idea was that we would acknowledge, without accepting, the position that Taiwan is part of China. We would continue strong, unofficial diplomatic ties with the island and we would provide for its security through the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA). We thus found a way to normalize relations with China without letting China have its way with Taiwan. Both sides of the Strait have prospered since the U.S. rapprochement with China and the signing into law of the TRA and relations have been more or less peaceful.
Now consider the situation across the Strait today. China has built a military capable of destroying the island if America does not assist Taiwan. Though obligated by law, the Obama administration has not sold a single weapon system to Taiwan. There is in fact no U.S.-Taiwan agenda under the Obama administration. It is even more dangerous, then, to stress the parts of the Sino-American normalization documents that most appeal to China. Of course China wants us to reiterate that our respect for "territorial integrity" and "sovereignty" is at the core of the three communiqués. Beijing wants us to accept its argument that Taiwan is part of China and that we should respect their sovereignty over the island. Obama has thus far done so through deed. With the joint statement he comes closer to officially accepting the Chinese claim of sovereignty.
On India, the joint statement says:
The two sides welcomed all efforts conducive to peace, stability and development in South Asia. They support the efforts of Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight terrorism, maintain domestic stability and achieve sustainable economic and social development, and support the improvement and growth of relations between India and Pakistan. The two sides are ready to strengthen communication, dialogue and cooperation on issues related to South Asia and work together to promote peace, stability and development in that region.
Here, President Obama broke new ground in ways harmful to both American and Indian interests. India and Japan are the two countries within Asia that can check China's desired dominance. For now, China has less to worry about with Japan as the Hatayoma government sorts through its foreign policies. But India is a different matter. It stood firm against China's pressure when the Dalai Lama visited Arunachal Pradesh, an Indian territory claimed by China. Delhi was sending two messages. First, do not interfere in India's internal affairs; the Dalai Lama is free to visit anywhere in India. Second, Arunachal Pradesh is India's territory. China had been putting military pressure on the border region but the Indians did not back down. Delhi is also standing firm in its maritime competition with China in the Indian Ocean. The Indian Navy will not allow China to build a sphere of influence in that maritime region.
Beijing's India strategy is to tie it down in South Asia to stop it from breaking out as a major power. The strategy has three basic pillars. First, Beijing has supported Pakistan's nuclear and conventional military programs. Second, China wants an acknowledged sphere of influence in South Asia. And third, Beijing wants to resurrect the so called "hyphenated" approach to India. It thus needs the United States to again think of India as part of an India-Pakistan problem, rather than as an emerging great power.
During the Bush and Clinton administrations, Delhi and Washington negotiated an arrangement that acknowledged Delhi's global role and increasing influence. This arrangement is of mutual benefit. Pakistan matters less to India as Delhi expands its strategic horizons. As Pakistan's importance to India lessons, so will Indian-Pakistani tensions. But as India frees itself from the weight of its Pakistan problem it has greater maneuverability to increase its influence in East Asia. China is threatened by that.
Thus, China won a diplomatic victory by getting Washington to agree to "cooperate" on issues of peace and development in South Asia. If China and America work together on South Asian issues, such as peace between India and Pakistan, then China is the great power while India is simply another South Asian country that needs help from others to solve its problems. With the joint statement, Obama officially accorded India junior status in Asia.
We should not be surprised by China's
positions. What
is surprising -- and extremely problematic -- is that on these key issues Obama
is acquiescing in them.
FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images
=Um the article is not fair on the Obama administration at all. The author compares Obama unfavourably to Clinton and Bush, but Clinton and Bush were dealing with a rising but financially and politically uncertain new power. Obama is dealing with our largest creditor.
As for India, I don't think it's fair either to criticize Obama on that level. China is bigger than India, and ignoring that in no way empowers India. India is poorer, more insecure, and less developed. It is more geopolitically uncertain. Ignoring all that isn't going to make India into some grand partner against Chinese designs. To the contrary, playing India against China might hamper India's development, and therefore its very ability to someday act as a counterweight to China. On the contrary, I think India can develop faster by being firm but friendly with China. Firm with its territory, friendly with Nepal and Pakistan.
And as for trade policy, it seems Obama had other priorities. IE, the environment, which is far more important, if it gets seriously underplayed. Not to mention, can you blame a new administration for not having a fully fleshed out trade policy for Asia when (1) the Japanese govt is brand new and a possible unknown, (2) the world economy is in a dynamic and unpredictable state, (ie, Carter through Bush left it a huge mess in part with a super-liberal trade police) and (3) national leaders have other priorities.
Lastly, how can we blame Obama for the Okinawa base thing? That's completely an issue of domestic Japanese politics. The LDP kept that issue bottled up like the 8 years Bush kept stem cells bottled up. Its unsurprising that the LDP's political enemies see the Okinawa base issue as something that their voters want to resolve. Obama can't be blamed for Japanese domestic politics!
agree 100% with sam...well said...
Do you honestly expect it to be a fair analysis? I find that to be the exception, rather the norm in this blog. After all, many of the writers of this blog have a partisan goal of tearing down Obama, both for future political gain and to obscure the disaster of so many Bush-era policies.
What does China being "America's largest creditor" have to do with anything? 20 years ago Japan was America's largest creditor. We didn't sign any agreements with Japan then implying our potential complicity of their invasion of another sovereign state. China's extensive holdings of Treasuries (which are a direct result of their policy of undervaluing the Yuan) is something they need to worry about, not us, and is in any case irrelevant to a strategic discussion.
obama needs to know that he is selling himself short by giving china the go ahead to negotiate between india/pakistan. does he know who necularised pakistan, who is assisting pakistan in terror.why is obama weakening himself and america. now china knows the weakest link in america and will use it to rise to superpower status and overide every rule america makes .china is putting pressure on japan to get the americans out so they can lay claim to the islands they want. if japan kicks out america then BYE BYE AMERICA AS A SUPERPOWER AND WELCOME KING CHINA.so YES WE CAN will mean YES WE THE OBAMAS CAN DESTROY AMERICA
I don't think Obama means to sell India out to China. The writer of the article seems to be taking Obama's foreign policy positions out of context for partisan shots. China needs to be involved because it occupies part of Kashmir itself, and also claims parts of Eastern India. There's no reason China wouldn't be amenable to a friendly solution that does not antagonize relations, assuming there is such an option on the table.
no need to hate china that much
sorry to see this articl when the leaders of the to countries trying to build a good relationship.
we chinese are not and will never be danger to anybody.
we know the pain suffered by the weak.
if one day,we get stronger as the author imagined,the only thing we will do is to help more and build a peaceful world.
i am a student,the so called future of the nantion.when is say it ,i mean it.
In response to the first comment India isn't a small backwater, it is the world's biggest democracy and as such is a worthwhile ally of the west and it's economic growth is just as fast as china's and it is also more stable in that half of the country doesn't want independence i.e Xanjing and Tibet.It would be a mistake to believe that although china is America's biggest creditor it can quickly become it's biggest opponent if allowed to do what it wants, remember this is how America became a superpower in the first place!!!!
In response to Tom g, I think you're letting the democratic nature of India's political system cloud events going on in that country. See this article about India's own homegrown separatists: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/world/asia/01maoist.html
And how are Xianjiang and Tibet half of China - geographically or population-wise? Furthermore, China is even more constrained than the U.S. It can't do whatever it wants, nor does it have the capability. That is one major flaw in Blumenthal's so-called realist polemic, China is nowhere near the U.S. in regards to its capabilities. China might be the U.S.'s biggest creditor, but if it did anything that threatened the U.S. -such as instigating a conflict with Taiwan-its whole economic situation would crumble. China's core FP agenda, after all, is ensuring the continued rise of their domestic economy. Any kind of conflict would completely jeopardize this.
It's in no way a backwater, but it's still a "country of the future". I just spent 6 months in Delhi, its capital city. Basic services are spotty, running water is undrinkable, the roads are falling apart. And it gets worse outside of Delhi. This isn't to say India is growing fast, and will be a world superpower soon, but it's a good 10-15 years behind China. Pushing India into a confrontation with China right now will distract the government. It will drive it to spend too much on its military and too little on the infrastructure it desperately needs to continue growing.
It's the most diverse country, and it's the country in the world with the single largest poverty problem. Hundreds of millions of people live in parts of the country with no services and active local insurgencies. Few people outside the cities or the North of India speak either national language-Hindi or English. And as a nation it's only about 150 years old (I think you could tie its birth to the first Indian rebellion in the 1850s, and the creation of the Raj)
I don't mean to rag on India, it's a treasure of a country. It has a glorious cultural tradition deeper and more diverse than any other in the world. But anyone who doesn't recognize its problems probably hasn't been there. Resolving its military issues with China and Pakistan peacefully is far better for India in the long-term, so it can become the country its people deserve. And for the sake of the Indian people, it's stupid to go exacerbating huge geopolitical problems that could be fairly easy to resolve otherwise.
While Obama is correct in not automatically adopting an antagonistic approach to China, he should not assume that just because China is currently rising power of Asia that its interests automatically become America's. Particularly when it comes to South Asia, China's influence has been a largely negative one. It was the chief backer of Pakistan's nuclear program, and continues to be a large supplier of conventional weaponry and missile designs. All of those weapons are aimed squarely at India. It also encourages Pakistan to engage in needless brinksmanship.
President Bush put into action what his predecessors merely talked about - a new active partnership with India. Because India values its relationship with the U.S., it has been willing to withhold military retaliation against Pakistan, despite repeated terrorist attacks that are traced back to that nation. Where India and America do have disagreements, such as climate change and trade policy - they hash it out in forums like the WTO or direct negotiations like two mature countries. Bringing in China does have the appearance that China is the adult that needs to sort out the quibbling adolescents India and Pakistan.
I hope Obama is better able to handle India when PM Singh comes to dinner later this month.
Sir,
You make the statement: "Though obligated by law, the Obama administration has not sold a single weapon system to Taiwan." This is, in fact a incorrect statement.
Section 3302 of the Taiwan Relations Act states: "The President and the Congress shall determine the nature and quantity of such defense articles and services based solely upon their judgment of the needs of Taiwan, in accordance with procedures established by law."
The decision for arms sales rests with the President and Congress based on government recommendations. There is no wording that says the U.S. MUST sell arms, but these sales are provisional." President Reagan also made the point in the Third Joint Communique to gradually reduce sales over time.
In short the U.S. is not bound to any law as far as FMS to Taiwan. Any other interpretation clouds judgement and leads to cross-Straits misunderstandings.
Thoughtful policies take time to develop
"without a trade policy Obama is putting America out of business in the world's most economically dynamic region."
I would think that such a a state visit so early in Obama's tenure is the right step forward in the development of a wise and prudent trade policy. Nothing wrong with a little face time to assess what will and wont fly. To Obamas credit, he gives the impression of trying to put a lot of thought into policy, any policy before actually creating it. .... Didn't we just sell some Aegis class Destroyers to Taiwan recently, I'm sure more arms deals are to come but right now the issue of Chinese/Taiwan relations is less in everyone's minds, than the global economy as a whole and China's major role in it which would only suffer more if it revisits the saber rattling we have seen in recent years.
As far as Japan is concerned, they can kiss our ass to the tune of the thousands of Marine lives lost in the taking of the Island. Japan's former brutal imperial regime's attempted enslavement of China and attack on the United states will not be easly forgotten for years to come. There is a position of dominance that we as a conquering nation in their eyes should hold onto for some time to come.
Okay, Daniel Blumenthal's well informed. What I don't understand is why he doesn#t bear down on a point of momentous salience, namely that China and the US are entwined in a cumbrous and perhaps ominous mercantalistic clinch. We owe them trillions but without those trillions they couldn't keep their economy going. This situation being of mutual embarrassment, it may have been a good thing for Obama to have chosen to fiddle lest both Washington and Beijing burn. As for the rest of the trip it underscored that we have as allies (presumed) both India and Pakistan who are deadly enemies. Better to soft-pedal that one, too. As for the rest of the trip, at least they all got to see what he looks like, handsomely black-on- white.
India has issues with both Pakistan and China. India has fought wars with both Pakistan and China. Both the India-Pakistan and India-China borders are volatile to the equal extent. But your President somehow seems to believe that China a country which has been colluding with Pakistan and been providing it with nuclear weapons and technology can 'help' India and Pakistan 'solve' their differences. If China can help solve India-Pakistan issues then who can help solve the issues between India and China? Pakistan? This is not 1989 or 1999. This is 2009. The US needs India as much as India needs the US. Remember that.
China has been, for long, an opportunist and power hungry, and its ambition to replace US as the greatest power in the world is too obvious. However, as a democracy India has been and will always be, driven by policies that benefit Indian people and the world at large, something that cannot be said about China. In addition, as PM Singh pointed out, the Indo-US relations are not driven by geopolitics but by common values and ethics. Despite the bickering Governments of the cold war, more than one million Indians went and made US their home, and now drive the countries on a common path of friendship.
China has been going all out in hampering India in any way it can: resources, diplomacy, nuclear proliferation to name a few. Therefore, it is in India's interests to have a friend in US who can ensure India continues to on a path to give its population a quality life without being bogged down by Chinese traps.
Now, it’s up to President Obama to decide whom does he sees as a long term friend of US, an autocratic-opportunist Dragon with power hungry ambitions or a democratic Elephant with deep running shared values, bonds with US.
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Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition and curated by Peter D. Feaver and William Inboden.
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