Abstract
The U.S. presidential election offered a choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, according to Ralph Nader and the people who voted for him. But on East Asian questions the candidates' differences were significant: If George W. Bush is inaugurated on January 20 it might undermine peace and stability in Northeast Asia.
During the campaign his foreign policy advisers argued that the United States should commit itself to defending Taiwan; they criticized new policies toward North Korea; and the Republican party has spent a great deal of effort in Congress vilifying China, running investigations into allegations of Chinese influence-buying in the 1996 campaign, and examining the alleged theft of U.S. nuclear secrets at Los Alamos. If Al Gore were to be inaugurated, on the other hand, one could expect continuity with the policies of the Clinton administration. Those policies are the ones Republicans reacted against–so what were they?
During the Clinton years China moved from post-Tiananmen pariah to membership in the World Trade Organization (wto), and from the reign of Li Peng and Deng Xiaoping–both deeply identified with the Tiananmen crackdown–to the stolid but stable leadership of President Jiang Zemin and the dynamic, often brilliant, economic mastery of Prime Minister Zhu Rongji.
China's continuing evolution owes much to an energetic U.S. foreign economic policy that was the hallmark of the Clinton years–and the only “doctrine” that Bill Clinton can be associated with. His trade representatives worked tirelessly to get China into the WTO, just as his economic advisers depended on China to keep its currency stable during the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. The justification for this strategy was always that economic glasnost would clear a path toward political openness. And even if that has not yet happened, today there is a vast difference from 1992 in the freedoms enjoyed by Chinese citizens. Clinton's policies both brought about and were supported by an enormous business lobby anxious to continue opening the China market.
Clinton's security policy was equally effective. In spite of much baloney to the contrary, China remains today essentially what it was in 1992, a country of limited global reach and miniscule military clout compared either to its economic prowess, or to a United States that still spends about 10 times what China does on defense.
Nor was Clinton merely appeasing China, as many Republicans claimed; any Chinese strategist observing the recent warming of U.S. ties with North Korea and Vietnam, or Clinton's evolving Taiwan policy, would see a slow encirclement of China, a sort of stealth containment policy.
During the Clinton years Taiwan was the source of continuing tension and several mini-crises between Washington and Beijing, but the worst tension was in the spring of 1996, when China plunked missiles down near the Taiwan coast and Clinton moved two carrier task forces into Taiwan's waters. That crisis caused Clinton to change his early policy of denying any intent to defend Taiwan to the calculated and effective ambiguity of not saying whether we will or we won't. The Chinese hardliners who provoked this crisis lost out, and even when Taiwan elected Chen Shuibian in 1999 (a president committed to an independent Taiwan), China mostly kept quiet and bided its time.
A DIFFERENT TAKE
Encourage Japan “to revise its constitution to allow the right of collective self-defense, to expand its security horizon beyond territorial defense, and to acquire appropriate capabilities for supporting coalition operations.”
“Taking Charge, Bipartisan Panel Offers National Security Action Plan for the President-Elect,” Rand Corporation report
Clinton's worst East Asian crisis came in June 1994, when the United States and North Korea nearly went to war. But that pushed the administration toward an energetic diplomatic effort that succeeded in mothballing Pyongyang's nuclear reactor, gained a longterm moratorium on its missile testing and, with former Defense Secretary William Perry's mission in 1999, completely transformed Korea policy from one of containment and isolation to engagement and reconciliation. In June 2000 Clinton lifted the longstanding economic embargo on the North, followed by Madeleine Albright's historic visit in late October.
Republicans have been continuously critical of these Clinton policies, and a Bush administration would probably be much less interested in engaging North Korea. It is unlikely, though, that Bush would return things to the levels of confrontation seen before 1994, if only because South Korean President Kim Dae Jung has been the indispensable catalyst for the new policies toward the North, and he has two years left in office. Moreover, if the North Koreans are left out in the cold they will quickly find ways to get Bush's attention (one more missile test would do it). It is really Taiwan that may provide the only critical difference between Bush and Gore.
If Bush were to commit to an open defense of Taiwan's independence, Sino-American relations would plunge to a nadir not seen since the 1970s; things could easily unravel toward war. It would be a foolish strategic move, since the current policy of calculated ambiguity allows the United States so much more room to maneuver and to pressure China and Taiwan to behave. But the Republicans have always had close ties to Taiwan; the right wing of the party hates China and frequently works together with Pentagon hardliners in search of a new security threat (and China is their usual candidate); and Senator-from-Taiwan Jesse Helms will, in all likelihood, chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A new stance on Taiwan might make young George look tough on foreign policy.
Still, I don't think it will happen. Both Bushes, junior and senior, strongly backed China's entry into the WTO, and both come from the moderate wing of the Republican Party, which listens to the same big business coalition on China that Clinton did. The legendary lure of the China market is finally paying off, and all the multinationals are salivating to have a presence there. Taiwan is itself so divided on the question of independence that President Chen may not even last out his current term. There will continue to be an anti-China commotion in Congress, but there would be less political value for it in a Bush administration. So maybe it was Tweedledee and Tweedledum after all.