November 29, 2010--The China Card
While the media early last were whipping the traveling public into a frenzy about "enhanced" security checks at America's airports, once the traveling public started traveling and seemed to take the full body screening and new pat-down rules in stride, the story quickly turned to shopping--would Black Friday turn out to be a success or were we still holding onto our cash, assuming we had any.
Pretty much lost in these headlines was the very disturbing news that North and South Korea might be moving toward a resumption of the Korean War, which ostensibly ended in 1953. Hermetically-sealed North Korea launched a hundred or so artillery shells at South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island, killing four people. No one knows just why they did this. Or why a week or so earlier they invited an American nuclear physicist to visit a previously-unknown, super-secret uranium enrichment plant, which is clearly in the business of producing more fissionable fuel from which the North Koreans can build atomic bombs and thereby add to their current stockpile of at least 12 such weapons of mass destruction.
Perhaps their current supreme leader, Kim Jong-il, who is reported to be terminally ill, is attempting to engineer a transition to one of his sons and is thus flexing atomic muscles in a power struggle with his equivalent of the Pentagon. Perhaps they are attempting to force the United States into bilateral discussions about North Korea's weapons program. Who knows? Even experts who claim to understand this region confess they have no idea what is going on. All agree that the situation is dangerous and that the ruling family is irrational and unpredictable (read "crazy").
The U.S., in a show of force and support for South Korea, where since 1953 we have stationed 37,500 troops, moved an aircraft carrier into the area and the Obama administration has appealed to China to get them to tell their client-state, North Korea, to cool it.
As in the past when we appealed to China, or tried to exert pressure on them, China has thus far demurred.
In a thoughtful essay in Sunday's New York Times, Helene Cooper points out why it is so difficult to get China to lean on the North Koreans, or do much else that we would like them to do. (Article linked below.)
To no avail, we have tried to get China to cut back on its use of fossil fuel. They are the world's leading polluters. We have prodded them to allow their currency, the yuan, to float so it can find its true value. They have ignored this plea, artificially keeping it undervalued to assure that their exports remain unfairly cheap. We have urged them to support strong sanctions against Iran in an attempt to put pressure on them to end their nuclear weapons program. From our perspective, seemingly irresponsibly, the Chinese government has refused to do this.
All of this, including their unwillingness to cut food and energy supplies to nuclear-armed North Korea has one thing in common--China does not see the actions the U.S. would like them to take to be in their national self interest.
They see an undervalued yuan to satisfy that interest--largely based on manufacturing and exports, they are now the world's second largest economy and in a few decades will surpass us. They need Iranian oil to literally fuel their rapid growth so they can continue to bring more Chinese into the middle class. To them the pressure they feel from their rural poor who want jobs that will enable them to participate in the economy of the 21st century is greater than any threat they sense from Iran. And they are unprepared to curb carbon emissions because they need cheap energy, also in the interest of the hundreds of millions of Chinese who are clamoring for a "better" life. Global warming is thus not on their radar screen.
And when it comes to North Korea, China's perception of the "problem" is very different from ours. We are concerned about a rogue regime armed to the teeth with missiles and atomic bombs. They see our alliance with South Korea, including the tens of thousands of American troops near their border, probably also armed with nuclear weapons, to be a treat to their regional hegemony. We have our Monroe Doctrine that excludes foreign nations from being overly aggressive in our hemisphere, and they have their version for the China and Yellow Seas. They know, like with East Germany, if North Korea collapses, South Korea will seek to reunify all of Korea, right on its border, under its and the U.S.'s domination.
Quoted in the Times, David Rothkopf, author of Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power, claims that the United States is "still struggling with a post-unilateralist hangover." That hangover, causes us to believe "that we're the sole remaining superpower and the objective of our foreign policy is to get people to go along with that. To fall into step with our worldview. But the reality is that's not what the future holds."
And thus, countries like China with their own sources of power are no longer reliant on us, or easily prodded into following our lead. Like us they are pursuing their own self interest and we need to find new ways to relate to and work with them.
Welcome to the 21st century.
Pretty much lost in these headlines was the very disturbing news that North and South Korea might be moving toward a resumption of the Korean War, which ostensibly ended in 1953. Hermetically-sealed North Korea launched a hundred or so artillery shells at South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island, killing four people. No one knows just why they did this. Or why a week or so earlier they invited an American nuclear physicist to visit a previously-unknown, super-secret uranium enrichment plant, which is clearly in the business of producing more fissionable fuel from which the North Koreans can build atomic bombs and thereby add to their current stockpile of at least 12 such weapons of mass destruction.
Perhaps their current supreme leader, Kim Jong-il, who is reported to be terminally ill, is attempting to engineer a transition to one of his sons and is thus flexing atomic muscles in a power struggle with his equivalent of the Pentagon. Perhaps they are attempting to force the United States into bilateral discussions about North Korea's weapons program. Who knows? Even experts who claim to understand this region confess they have no idea what is going on. All agree that the situation is dangerous and that the ruling family is irrational and unpredictable (read "crazy").
The U.S., in a show of force and support for South Korea, where since 1953 we have stationed 37,500 troops, moved an aircraft carrier into the area and the Obama administration has appealed to China to get them to tell their client-state, North Korea, to cool it.
As in the past when we appealed to China, or tried to exert pressure on them, China has thus far demurred.
In a thoughtful essay in Sunday's New York Times, Helene Cooper points out why it is so difficult to get China to lean on the North Koreans, or do much else that we would like them to do. (Article linked below.)
To no avail, we have tried to get China to cut back on its use of fossil fuel. They are the world's leading polluters. We have prodded them to allow their currency, the yuan, to float so it can find its true value. They have ignored this plea, artificially keeping it undervalued to assure that their exports remain unfairly cheap. We have urged them to support strong sanctions against Iran in an attempt to put pressure on them to end their nuclear weapons program. From our perspective, seemingly irresponsibly, the Chinese government has refused to do this.
All of this, including their unwillingness to cut food and energy supplies to nuclear-armed North Korea has one thing in common--China does not see the actions the U.S. would like them to take to be in their national self interest.
They see an undervalued yuan to satisfy that interest--largely based on manufacturing and exports, they are now the world's second largest economy and in a few decades will surpass us. They need Iranian oil to literally fuel their rapid growth so they can continue to bring more Chinese into the middle class. To them the pressure they feel from their rural poor who want jobs that will enable them to participate in the economy of the 21st century is greater than any threat they sense from Iran. And they are unprepared to curb carbon emissions because they need cheap energy, also in the interest of the hundreds of millions of Chinese who are clamoring for a "better" life. Global warming is thus not on their radar screen.
And when it comes to North Korea, China's perception of the "problem" is very different from ours. We are concerned about a rogue regime armed to the teeth with missiles and atomic bombs. They see our alliance with South Korea, including the tens of thousands of American troops near their border, probably also armed with nuclear weapons, to be a treat to their regional hegemony. We have our Monroe Doctrine that excludes foreign nations from being overly aggressive in our hemisphere, and they have their version for the China and Yellow Seas. They know, like with East Germany, if North Korea collapses, South Korea will seek to reunify all of Korea, right on its border, under its and the U.S.'s domination.
Quoted in the Times, David Rothkopf, author of Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power, claims that the United States is "still struggling with a post-unilateralist hangover." That hangover, causes us to believe "that we're the sole remaining superpower and the objective of our foreign policy is to get people to go along with that. To fall into step with our worldview. But the reality is that's not what the future holds."
And thus, countries like China with their own sources of power are no longer reliant on us, or easily prodded into following our lead. Like us they are pursuing their own self interest and we need to find new ways to relate to and work with them.
Welcome to the 21st century.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
4:09 AM
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