At the beginning of a new American administration, two schools of thought dominate the American debate over China. The view of the Clinton administration was summed up in the slogans "engagement" and "strategic partnership." Based on the Wilsonian premise that a world of democracies can hold no enemies—at least none prepared to vindicate their views with force—the multiplication of contacts on trade, environment, science, and technology is believed to strengthen the forces favoring international cooperation.

The opposing point of view regards China as a morally flawed inevitable adversary—at the moment with respect to Taiwan, eventually the Western Pacific, and, in time, the global equilibrium. The United States should therefore treat China as it treated the Soviet Union during the Cold War: as a rival and a challenge, reducing trade wherever possible to nonstrategic items, creating an alliance of Asian states to contain China or, failing that, building up Japan to help America share the burden for the defense of Asia and the containment of China. Advocates of this view would treat Taiwan as an independent country and a military outpost and, in practice, scrap the "one-China" policy on which Sino-American relations have been based since diplomatic contacts were reestablished in 1971.

The fundamental question is whether either of these approaches meets America's needs. It is one thing to

reject a strategic partnership that never functioned; it is another to treat China as a permanent adversary. The conditions of Asia are not analogous to the Cold War. Then, a single ideological adversary threatened all the nations of Western Europe, which eagerly sought American assistance. In Asia, barring major Chinese provocation, the United States would have to conduct a containment policy alone.

Unless their own survival is directly and clearly threatened, the Asian nations

# ASIA: World in the Balance

BY HENRY KISSINGER

will not join a common crusade as did the nations of Europe in opposition to a single threat. An Asian version of the containment policy of the 1980s will find few, if any, takers except perhaps in Vietnam, thus turning history on its head; much more likely, it will cause the Asian nations to move away from the United States. America's ability to influence Japan would decline. Korea would turn into a talibbox. Nations with ambitions or territorial claims would sense new opportunities. America's European allies would eagerly step into the economic and political vacuum. A policy that is perceived as having designated China as the enemy primarily because its economy is growing and its ideology is distasteful would end up isolating the United States.

From *Does America Need a Foreign Policy?* by Henry Kissinger. Copyright © 2001 by Henry Kissinger. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

PHOTO: APP PHOTO/ERIC FEBERBERG

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ■ Summer Reading Issue 2001

41

[LC]

To be sure, it is in the American national interest to resist the effort of *any* power to dominate Asia—and, in the extreme, the United States should be prepared to do so without allies. But a wise American policy would strive to prevent such an outcome. It would nurture cooperative relations with all the significant nations of Asia to keep open the possibility of joint action should circumstances require it. But it would also seek to convey to China that opposition to hegemony is coupled with a preference for a constructive relationship and that America will facilitate China's participation in a stable international order. Confrontation with China should be the ultimate recourse, not the strategic choice.

The inadequacy of both the dominant schools of thought was brought home by the incident of the American reconnaissance plane. The prospects of "engagement" were overwhelmed by the realities of Chinese domestic politics. But the ideological interpretations of the challenge provided no guide to the Bush administration either. For Chinese conduct was shaped much more by nineteenth-century ideas of nationalism than by nineteenth-century Marxism. Long-range surveillance from just outside the territorial limits, while consistent with international law, is a challenge to traditional notions of sovereignty based on the premise of the impermeability of frontiers and now made irrelevant by modern technology. This was compounded by Chinese obsessions regarding perceived colonial conduct. This is why the challenge to America did not come from the ideological part of Chinese society, the Communist party, but—by all accounts—from students and the military.

It is important to get this conjunction of motives straight if one wishes to analyze the relevance of the incident to future Sino-American relations. Chinese conduct was shaped primarily by an attempt to navigate the shoals of

Chinese domestic politics on the part of a government whose ideological element is in decline and which is facing a succession decision within two years. The challenge to American foreign policy is how to deal with Chinese nationalism without inflaming it while standing firm when it turns to threats.

In a mood of fatalism, the emergence of China is often compared to that of Germany in the nineteenth century, which ultimately led to World War I. But there was nothing foreordained about that war. History has recorded it above all as a failure of statesmanship, a blunder that produced costs out of proportion to any conceivable gains for all the parties. Which of the statesmen who went to war in 1914 would not have jumped at the chance to revisit their decision when they looked back a few years later and saw the catastrophe they had inflicted on their societies, on European civilization, and on the long-term prospects of the entire world?

Of course, the choice is not entirely up to the United States. Faced with a threat of hegemony in Asia—whatever the regime—America would resist as it did Japan's in the Second World War and the Soviet Union's in the Cold War. But insofar as the choice depends on American action, it should be made with great care.

Americans think in terms of concrete solutions to specific problems. The Chinese think in terms of stages in a process that has no precise culmination. Americans believe that international disputes result either from misunderstandings or ill will; the remedy for the former is persuasion—occasionally quite insistent—and, for the latter, defeat or destruction of the evildoer. The Chinese approach is impersonal, patient, and aloof; the Middle Kingdom has a horror of appearing to be a supplicant. Where Washington looks to good faith and goodwill as the lubricants of international relations, Beijing assumes that statesmen have done their homework and will understand subtle indirections;

insistence is therefore treated as a sign of weakness, and good personal relations are not themselves considered a lubricant of serious dialogue. To Americans, Chinese leaders seem polite but aloof and condescending. To the Chinese, Americans appear erratic and somewhat frivolous.

Partly because of the difficulty the two sides have had in understanding each other's culture and code of conduct, they have rarely succeeded in getting Sino-American relationships into a stable balance for any extended period. In the early 1900s, America's approach to China was heavily influenced by missionaries and traders, both largely oblivious to the humiliation Chinese society felt when subjected to the colonialist pressures of the European powers. In the 1930s and during the Second World War, China was idealized as a victim of Japanese aggression and as a heroic democratic ally. After the Communist victory in the civil war, China was transformed in the American public mind into the incarnation of ideological and strategic hostility. A combination of Maoist militant ideology, China's intervention in the Korean War, American distaste for Beijing's domestic institutions, and the interposition of the American Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan

42

[L]

The challenge to American foreign policy is how to deal with Chinese nationalism without inflaming it— and how to stand firm when it turns to threats.

Strait produced a period of nearly a quarter-century in which the two countries had no diplomatic relations and very little contact of any kind.

Yet, after diplomatic contact was restored in 1971, five American administrations of both parties went on to pursue a broadly bipartisan policy based on Sino-American cooperation. It was only in the 1990s that the idea of confrontation between the two countries gained momentum again, threatening to return the relationship to the tensions of half a century before. At this point, a digression tracing that evolution may help to define the nature of the existing choices.

In 1971 and 1972, President Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao Zedong reestablished diplomatic contact, not because American and Communist ideologies had become more compatible but because of their respective geopolitical necessities. During the early period of renewed contacts, much innocent nonsense was disseminated about how “unnatural” the estrangement between the American and Chinese peoples had been, as if rapprochement had fulfilled some deep emotional need on both sides. The facts were far more prosaic. China, in its long history, has rarely had the experience of dealing with other societies on the basis of equality. For the

greatest part, it was dominant in its region; in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, it was humiliated by the imperial powers. Before that, it had felt most comfortable when it was

able to stand aloof and self-contained, as a culture whose uniqueness placed it beyond the reach of outsiders—and, until approximately 1500, also as the most advanced nation in science and technology. For China, there was nothing unnatural about living apart from the United States.

Nor was there in 1971 any groundswell of demand for an opening to China. Whatever public pressures for it existed derived not from geopolitics but from a general idea that “good relations” were their own reward and that the Cold War could best be ended by overcoming the hostility as a kind of psychological exercise.

What brought the two nations together was their leaders' awareness of a common threat. The Chinese leaders saw an awesome buildup of Soviet military power along their border, including nuclear missiles and forty modern combat divisions—over a million men. By 1969, it was obvious to China that Marxist theory not only did not shield it from Soviet military pressures but provided a pretext for them. For the newly promulgated Brezhnev Doctrine claimed for the Kremlin the special right to use military power within the Communist world to enforce its unity.

For the United States, opportunity was merging with necessity.

Under the impact of the Vietnam War, the United States—or, to be more

specific, Richard Nixon—recognized the role China might play in establishing a new Asian balance of power. In geopolitical terms, there were powerful reasons for a rapprochement with China to balance the Soviet Union—either to restrain it or to induce it to negotiate seriously; to isolate Hanoi and thereby spur an end to the Vietnam War; to maintain America's self-confidence amidst the painful withdrawal from Indochina; and, finally, to demonstrate America's undiminished capacity to master an international environment that was turning multipolar.

The new links between China and the United States flourished so long as the two sides were in a position to concentrate on the common objective of resisting what their communiques came to describe as “hegemony.” Simply put, this meant resisting Soviet attempts to upset the global or Asian balance of power and some tacit agreement on an appropriate strategy to achieve this end.

Even then, the different histories and geopolitical situations of the two sides produced disagreements on tactics. Beijing, being directly threatened, favored resolute confrontation with Moscow. Washington, having allies and a restive public opinion to consider, emphasized tactics that would give Moscow an opportunity to settle or shift to it the onus for confrontation. China was suspicious of any negotiation between Washington and Moscow—explicitly concerned that the appearance of progress would undermine the West's willingness to stand up to the Soviet Union, implicitly fearful that it might lead to some unspecified U.S.-Soviet arrangement at China's expense, if only by permitting the Soviet Union to direct its attention to Asia. For its part, Beijing tended to compete with

PHOTO: DAVID & PETER TURNLEY/GETTY IMAGES

43

Moscow in the developing world by appealing to radical movements, and this often caused it to back leaders or causes that were hardly America's favorites.

> Despite its complexity, this balancing act was carried out successfully for 20 years by five presidents of both parties—an extraordinary bipartisan achievement.

The weakening of executive authority in the United States due to Watergate and its aftermath reduced Beijing's confidence in America's ability to resist Soviet pressures and blandishments.

The challenge for the United States was to make sure that it always had more options than either of the other two parties within the triangle. This obliged the United States to stay closer to both Moscow and Beijing than they were to each other, with a tilt toward Beijing since it was the Soviet Union which represented the more immediate and by far the more powerful threat.

Despite its complexity, this balancing act was carried out successfully for 20 years by five presidents of both parties—an extraordinary bipartisan achievement. Despite differences, an unusual coordination of strategies and, on the whole, of policies was achieved. High-level Chinese-American meetings rarely dealt with technical or day-to-day issues (in those days, there was little, if any, commercial contact); most of the dialogue involved sharing long-term global geopolitical assessments, projections, and strategies.

This bipartisan consensus was shattered by two events: the collapse of Communism and the bloody repression of the students in Tiananmen Square. The collapse in Moscow destroyed the common fear while the domestic upheaval in Beijing undermined domestic American support for a policy based on common purposes. The anti-Communist right, always uncomfortable with close ties with a Communist country, began to treat the Beijing government as the new evil to be extirpated.

And the American left, always uncomfortable with a policy based on geopolitics, returned to its emphasis on human rights and the promotion of democracy as the main priorities in American foreign relations.

The events in Tiananmen Square had been more complex than a simple anti-Communist revolt, having at least three causes: the revolt of students based on Western principles of democracy; workers rebelling to remove, or at least to alleviate, the inequities, abuses, and dislocations generated by economic reform; and the internal struggle within the Communist Party largely about the political consequences of the reform of the economy.

For Deng Xiaoping, who ruled China at the time and for the decade preceding it and who was excoriated by the Western media, the Tiananmen Square uprising represented an ironic reversal. Mao had imprisoned him for a

decade as a “capitalist roadier,” and history is likely to treat him as a reformer who launched China on the road to modernization. The Deng reforms initiated in 1979 sent tens of thousands of Chinese students to Western countries, where they were exposed to values for which they shed their blood in Tiananmen Square. Deng abolished the agricultural communes and made China nearly self-sufficient in food. He industrialized the drab, gray, fearful China of the Cultural Revolution by emphasizing consumer goods.

What Deng and his associates did not foresee—or thought they could avoid—was the political consequences of overcoming the economic stagnation of Mao's China which had fallen prey to the inevitable diseases of mature Communism, rewarding stagnation and discouraging initiative as prices established by administrative fiat lose their relationship to costs. In the end, every-

PHOTO: KEREN SUCORSIS

44

[L]

thing from food to housing is subsidized
without any criterion for efficiency.

Placing wide discretionary authori-
ty in the hands of bureaucrats leads to
corruption. Jobs, education, and most
perquisites depend on some kind of per-
sonal relationship. It is one of history's
ironies that Communism, which claimed
to be the harbinger of a classless future,
in the end generated a privileged class
comparable to that of traditional feudal-
ism.

Embracing market economics and
decentralized decision making, Deng
combined initially the problems of cen-
tral planning with those of a free market.
The attempt to make prices reflect real
costs leads to price increases, at least in
the short term.

The shift to a market economy
actually magnified opportunities for cor-
ruption, at least initially. A still very large
public sector coexisted
with a growing market
economy, and two sets of
prices resulted.
Unscrupulous bureau-
crats and entrepreneurs
could shift assets between
the two sectors for per-

sonal gain. In short, the beginning of
reform can—and, in China, did—pro-
duce severe short-term dislocations
among the constituencies at the core of
the discontent.

Deng had been perhaps too daring
in his economic reforms and surely too
cautious in the political reforms his poli-
cies made inevitable—ironically, the
opposite mistake of his contemporary,
Mikhail Gorbachev. His task was made
all the more difficult by the ambivalence
of many in the ruling Communist elite.
In most countries undergoing compara-
ble economic transitions, innovative
managers at lower levels must overcome
resistance from a more conservative sen-
ior leadership. In China, the opposite
occurred. The top leadership's emphasis
on incentives and market forces had to
be implemented by executives without
experience with such measures and no

enthusiasm for the process of reform.
Deng had to fight, therefore, on two
fronts: against the corruption tempted by
reform, and against the survivors of
Maoism insisting on their version of a
Communist economy. While he won the
battle in the economic field, he settled
for continued Communist dominance in
the political arena. Deng opted to live
with the paradox of insisting on political
stability in order to complete an eco-
nomic and social revolution. In his
mind, he was fighting chaos, not democ-
racy. "I am still a reformer," Deng said to
me six months after the suppression of
the Tiananmen Square revolt, "but if sta-
bility had been lost, it would have taken
a generation to restore it."

I have sketched the circumstances
surrounding the upheavals of Tiananmen
Square because they marked the turning
point at which China began to be per-

because disagreements that before that
time had been considered the normal
by-product of relations between great
powers now came to be treated in much
of American public discussion as con-
flicts with a totalitarian evil.

At the same time, China's military
modernization, which had been post-
poned during the first decade of Deng's
reforms, attracted growing attention.
Chinese moves were increasingly inter-
preted in terms of a geopolitical and ide-
ological design on its neighbors. A cycle
of self-fulfilling prophecies followed,
accelerated not a little by occasionally
heavy-handed Chinese tactics.

During the George H. W. Bush and
Clinton administrations, the political and
psychological basis for constructive
Sino-American relations was gradually
weakening. President Bush, who, in the
mid-1970s before the establishment of

Conflict with the United States would free all the
countries around the vast Chinese periphery to
pursue their various ambitions and claims.

ceived by many as an ideological and
geopolitical adversary. In fact, they grew
out of the dilemmas of reform as much
as out of Communist ideology. They
were almost totally dominated by con-
siderations of Chinese domestic politics
and did not represent a philosophy
meant to be applicable elsewhere.

But whatever Deng's motives, the
brutality of the repression at Tiananmen
Square witnessed on television by the
entire world stigmatized China as a
repressive regime. This coincided with a
period (beginning in the mid-1970s) of
increased emphasis on human rights in
the industrial democracies and especially
in the United States. The human rights
issue quickly became the dominant
theme of America's relations with
China. All other issues were both sub-
merged by the concern with China's
domestic structure and distorted by it

diplomatic relations had served as head
of the United States Liaison Office in
Beijing, sought to keep the relationship
on some sort of even keel even after the
events in Tiananmen Square. Bill
Clinton began his term with rhetoric
that made improvement in Chinese
human rights practices the key to Sino-
American ties even in the economic
field. By 1995, his administration had,
however, returned to the pattern of reg-
ular dialogue established by predecessors
even while justifying it with slogans that
evoked a more Wilsonian theme.

While the Clinton administration
did consolidate the economic relation-
ship with China by supporting World
Trade Organization membership for
China and normal United States-China
trade relations, it never did settle on a
convincing geopolitical rationale.
Applying to China policy its domestic

45

[LC]

tactics of co-opting the goals of critics while claiming it had a better way of accomplishing them, the Clinton administration proclaimed a policy of "engagement." It asserted that it would bring China over to the American perception of human rights and domestic governance by multiplying contacts in all fields but especially in trade.

In Clinton's second term, the slogan of engagement was raised to "strategic partnership," which implied some kind of global cooperation—a proposition which proved politically controversial and substantively empty in the face of continuing crises and the absence of any sustained political dialogue (for example, during President Clinton's entire nine-day visit to China in June 1998, there were only four hours of discussion at the summit level—reduced further by the need for translation).

As a result, at the end of the Clinton administration,

China policy remained hostage to domestic politics. What has been lacking is a definition of the national interest that gives the relationship some geopolitical content. Trade and other New Age issues such as the environment and narcotics are not enough to distill a sense of direction or to overcome the mixture of cooperation, suspicion, mutual misunderstanding, and stagnation that characterize Soviet-American relations at the turn of the century. This potentially combustible combination must not be left in its present state for the sake of the stability of Asia and the peace of the world.

## Relations With China: The Strategic Context

Should the United States use all the means at its disposal to delay as long as possible the emergence of China as a

major power? Or should it attempt to bring about an Asian structure open to cooperation with all states, a structure based not on the assumption of any one country's inherent aggressiveness yet supple enough to resist any country's hegemonic aspirations?

While these questions apply to some degree in every part of the world, they are particularly relevant to relations between the world's most powerful industrial nation and the world's most populous nation. China has the longest uninterrupted history of any country in the world and is controlled by the last major government to call itself

Communist. It is the state with the greatest potential to become a rival of the United States at some point in the new century—though, in my view, not in the first quarter.

The answer to these questions will resolve the shape of the twenty-first century world. And that world has few analogies to the Cold War. Soviet ideology had insisted on its universal applicability, and every Soviet leader until Mikhail Gorbachev proclaimed the worldwide triumph of Communism as the ultimate goal. Soviet armies occupied Eastern Europe. The Brezhnev Doctrine affirmed Soviet determination to maintain Communist parties in power, by force if necessary, and the Soviet Union intervened militarily in Hungary and Czechoslovakia and threatened to do so in Poland and—

indirectly—in China. The Chinese Communist leadership conducts no such policies abroad and makes no such universal claims; it does not have at its beck and call a worldwide network of Communist parties or radical organizations proclaiming their loyalty to Beijing. Nor does China challenge the domestic structure of other states on ideological grounds.

It is nationalism, not Communism, which could lead to confrontation with the United States and then not over the issue of global hegemony but over Taiwan. In the first two decades of its rule, the legitimacy of the Chinese

Communist party was based on having unified the country and expelled the colonialists (Japanese and Western). For two decades after the catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution, the party's legitimacy was based on its ability to produce stunning economic progress (which had the unintended effect of weakening its political

monopoly). Now that a so-called socialist market economy has been established and is growing, the governing group may be tempted to rest its claim to a monopoly of power on nationalism. As this claim evolves, it may inflame the issue of Taiwan's future, but it does not necessarily translate into a quest for hegemony in Asia.

China's foreign policy is patient and long-range. Viewed from Beijing, the geopolitical challenge is likely to be perceived not as the conquest of neighboring countries but as preventing a combination of them against China. Least of all can it be in the interest of China's leaders to provoke the United States, the most distant country, which historically has never threatened China's unity and integrity. To be sure, Chinese public statements often criticize American mil-

> In Clinton's second term, the slogan of "engagement" was raised to "strategic partnership," which implied some kind of global cooperation—a proposition which proved politically controversial and substantively empty.

46

[L]

itary alliances in Asia, giving credence to the view that China's long-term objective is to undermine the American role and presence in the region. Yet one need not postulate Chinese goodwill or permanent peaceful intentions to conclude that prudent Chinese leaders will not lightly risk confrontation with the world's dominant military power at this stage of China's evolution. In addition, modern China has a huge stake in the international economic system—more than the Soviet Union ever had—generating powerful incentives not to challenge the status quo in Asia.

Conflict with the United States would free all the countries around the vast Chinese periphery to pursue their various ambitions and claims. A far more prudent course for China would be to implement the basic maxim of its traditional statecraft—of pitting the far-off barbarians against those close by. In such a context, the United States is cast in the role of a geopolitical option for China—even as a potential safety net—rather than an innate adversary. On the whole—and despite some ups and downs, largely over Taiwan—this has, in fact, been the thrust of Chinese policy.

Some perspective is also called for with respect to the Chinese military capacity to challenge the United States directly. The Soviet Union possessed some twenty-five hundred strategic delivery vehicles, many with multiple warheads capable of high accuracy. An all-out attack on the United States was technically feasible and strategically not inconceivable (though never very likely). The Chinese strategic force of some thirty liquid-fueled missiles with single warheads, requiring hours to launch, is not an instrument for offensive operations. And when, over the next decades, the Chinese acquire multiple warheads for a larger number of solid-fuel missiles, an American missile defense will serve to maintain the equilibrium.

As for Chinese ground forces, they are capable of defending the home country through a strategy of attrition

but they are not suitable for sustained offensive operations against a major opponent. And around its periphery, China is obliged to cope with a strategic situation far more difficult than the Soviet Union experienced in Europe. The Soviet Union threatened weak neighbors unable to resist Soviet ground forces, either alone or in combination. China faces militarily significant neighbors, including India, Vietnam, Japan, Russia, and the two Koreas, each of which would be difficult to overcome individually and even more so in combination. At a minimum, this imposes on China a diplomacy that does not threaten all its neighbors simultaneously.

To be sure, as China develops what it calls its “comprehensive national strength,” its military power will become a more significant challenge. But for the foreseeable decades, the United States possesses diplomatic, economic, and military advantages allowing it to shape the future without resorting to preemptive confrontation with China.

The issue is not whether to oppose Chinese attempts to dominate Asia. If they occur, they must be resisted. But at a moment when capacity for it does not exist, what is the purpose of a confrontational strategy conducted for its own sake? What is to be the strategic goal? In what way does America gain by conducting relations with China by analogy to the Cold War unless Beijing gives the United States no other choice? To what extent is America alone in a position to impede China's growth in the face of the near-certainty that such a policy would find no significant international support? A prudent American leadership should balance the risk of stoking Chinese nationalism against the gains from short-term pressures. Even on the assumption that a new Cold War is inevitable—an assumption I do not share—a wise American policy would seek to shift the onus for conflict to Beijing to prevent America's isolation.

If China remains domestically cohesive, it is destined to become a major

power and, as such, will have an enhanced capacity to challenge the United States. But it will not be the only one: India, Brazil, and Russia have options similar to China's and, in some respects, face less daunting obstacles. Is the United States to define its security in terms of preventing the emergence of any possible major power? This would make it the policeman of the world and eventually turn most of the other nations against it. It would exhaust America's resources and psychological equilibrium if permanent interventions and crusades became the defining characteristics of American foreign policy.

China policy should be liberated from familiar slogans. The issue is not how to label the relationship but what content it can be given. Cooperative relations are not a favor either country bestows on the other. They are in the common interest of both countries. There are enough issues to test the seriousness of both sides. A permanent dialogue on such issues as the future of Korea and proliferation of nuclear weapons and missile technology could test the prospects of a stable relationship. Then there is the entire range of New Age issues: the environment, cultural and scholarly exchanges, among many others. A permanent dialogue is needed as the best means to create a more stable world or, at a minimum, to demonstrate to the American people and America's allies why it is not possible.

## Taiwan and China

Normally many of these issues confounding Sino-American relations would be clarified by the passage of time. The ultimate intentions of China would become evident, and a consistent American policy would develop with experience and patience. But there is lurking on the scene a wild card that could force the hand of either Beijing or Washington: the future of Taiwan. It is the subject of domestic pressure on the mainland as well as in the United States, and it is governed above all by a process with its own imperatives.

48

A part of China since the seven-
teenth century, Taiwan was annexed by
Japan in 1895 in what proved to be the
first step toward the eventual attempt to
conquer the mainland. It was returned
to China by the victorious World War II
allies in 1945 after President Franklin
Roosevelt had declared it to be part of
China in 1943. In 1949, after the
Communist victory on the mainland,
Chiang Kai-shek withdrew to Taiwan
and made it the seat of his Nationalist
government, which claimed to represent
all of China and which, until diplomatic
relations with the mainland were
restored in 1979, was recognized by the
United States as the government of all of
China. On the outbreak of the Korean
War in 1950, President Truman inter-
posed the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan

Strait, thereby preventing a Communist
conquest of the island and indirectly
making the United States a party in the
Chinese civil war.

By that time, Taiwan had become a
deeply symbolic issue for many
Americans. It was the inheritor of the
legacy of goodwill acquired by the
Nationalists for their staunch resistance
to Japanese imperialism in the Second
World War. And it became a symbol for
the so-called China lobby, which was
outraged by the Communist victory in
the Chinese civil war and was deter-
mined to prevent its culmination in the
takeover of Taiwan. Many—including
those of us who engineered the opening
to China—had great sympathy for the
effort of the Chinese on Taiwan to cre-
ate a meaningful and democratic basis
for an autonomous exis-
tence. A wide consensus

present itself. The question of which
government the United States "really"
recognized—Beijing or Taipei—was
shelved in the Shanghai Communiqué
of 1972. The United States "acknowl-
edged" that Chinese living on both sides
of the Taiwan Strait affirmed there was
only one China and did not challenge
that proposition. Since 1972, every
American president has confirmed
America's commitment to a "one-
China" policy and the rejection of a
"two-China" or a "one-China, one-
Taiwan" policy. The most explicit affir-
mation of that policy was a joint com-
muniqué with Beijing in 1982 during
the Reagan administration, which was
repeated by President Clinton when he
visited China in late June 1998. Since
1972, every American president has also
affirmed his abiding concern for a
peaceful resolution of the issue—a

has always existed in the
United States opposed to
the forcible return of
Taiwan to China.

But the issue is also
profoundly symbolic for
Beijing. Taiwan was where
the dismemberment of
China started—the first
province to be annexed by
colonialists. Its unification
with the mainland is con-
sidered even by Chinese
who do not share the
views of the governing
party as a “sacred national
obligation” which can be
defferred for practical or
tactical reasons but never
abandoned.

For the first few years
after diplomatic contact
with Beijing was reestab-
lished, this issue did not

euphemism for opposition to the use of
force—as did the Taiwan Relations Act
of 1979, which enshrined the principle
in American law.

Within this framework, Taiwan has
prospered, become democratic, and par-
ticipated in international forums that did
not require formal state-to-state relations.
At the same time, the United States pro-
ceeded in 1979 to recognize Beijing as
the legitimate government of China, as
did the vast majority of the world's gov-
ernments—most of them before the
United States had. But, unlike other
nations, the United States was also sup-
plying the bulk of defense equipment
enabling Taiwan to remain free of the
political control of what was at the same
time recognized as the legitimate govern-
ment of all of China, including Taiwan.

While insisting on ultimate unifica-
tion as a sacred principle, China never-
theless expressed on several occasions its
willingness to defer a final resolution in

PHOTO: REUTERS NEWMEDIA INC./CORBIS

49

[L]

the interest of its relationship with other countries, especially the United States, provided Taiwan did not stake a formal claim to sovereignty. (In November 1973, Mao told me that China could wait one hundred years.) For its part, the United States, while reaffirming its opposition to the use of force in every administration of both parties since 1971, did so invariably within the framework of a "one-China" policy.

This tacit bargain began to unravel

in 1995 when a visa was granted to President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan for a visit to Cornell University. This came after Secretary of State Warren Christopher had assured the Chinese foreign minister that

the existing policy of nonrecognition of Taiwan as a sovereign state would remain in force and that the ban on visits by Taiwan's top leaders would not change. The Chinese reacted by initiating military exercises and missile launches in the Taiwan Strait—carrying, however, no warheads. The United States responded by sending a two-air-craft-carrier task force by way of warning. The crisis subsided, but Sino-American relations have never fully recovered. Since then, Taiwan has elected a new president whose party platform used to advocate independence, and China has backed off a bit, hinting that it would use force only if Taiwan formally declared itself independent.

The sensitive issue of Taiwan falls into the category of problems—like the future of Palestine—that permit no definitive solution at this point. The debacle of the Camp David Middle East summit of 2000 that ended in a military confrontation demonstrates that even the best-intentioned efforts to produce a final outcome for which the parties are not ready may—indeed, almost must—lead to a blowup.

The challenge is how to live with a problem that should be alleviated but does not yet permit a final agreement. The nature of the issues is clear, and the self-restraint this imposes on all sides has become increasingly obvious. If the United States chips away at the "one-China" principle, first affirmed by Roosevelt in 1943 and reiterated by all six American presidents since Nixon, a military confrontation is probable. If China seeks to bring matters to a head

militarily, American resistance is certain. If Taiwan abandons restraint and upsets the tacit bargain that has preserved peace in the Taiwan Strait for decades, either locally or by skillful lobbying in Washington, it will unleash a conflict whose consequences cannot be foreseen but are unlikely to redound to Taiwan's long-term benefit.

All the parties involved have an interest in not driving matters to the point of combustion. The United States must resist the domestic pressures to abandon the "one-China" principle. The groups pressing for this change of policy by a series of seemingly marginal modifications need to understand that an explosion can occur because any one step in a sequence that was barely tolerated could well turn out to be a step too far. A serious effort is needed to find a way to ease the confrontational atmosphere. Indications of restraint and flexibility on Beijing's part should be credited as constructive—such as statements by Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen that Taiwan would no longer be viewed as a renegade province of the People's Republic of China but as one

of two separate (and presumably equal) components of a single China. This idea, coupled with China's previously mentioned hint that it would not use force to bring about unification short of a formal declaration of independence by Taiwan, deserves careful exploration.

At the same time, even as China rejects the proposition that the United States has a right to intervene in the future of Taiwan, it should take account of the seriousness with which successive

presidents have affirmed America's concern for a peaceful resolution of the issue. In this they express not only a personal preference but the overwhelming view of American public opinion. Whatever the legal status of these declara-

tions in Chinese eyes, Beijing must take care to not slip into a confrontation with the United States, with all its attendant consequences, through a miscalculation.

A significant measure of responsibility to exercise restraint falls on Taiwan's leaders as well. Some of their supporters act as if it is in Taiwan's interest to exacerbate tensions between Washington and Beijing and to press for congressional and administration measures implying a de facto "two-China" policy. They are skillful in devising measures which seem marginal to Americans but are certain to inflame Beijing. Such a strategy is shortsighted because the existing framework is very much in Taiwan's interest. For a key constraint on China's Taiwan policy has been China's stake in its relationship with the United States. Were Taiwan to achieve formal American recognition of a separate status, as some of its spokesmen and supporters now seem to seek, this would risk a military confrontation and guarantee a political crisis that would divide Asia and turn Taiwan's role in the resulting tensions into a global issue. Taiwan would be less, not more, secure in such an environment. ♽

> This potentially combustible combination must not be left in its present state for the sake of the stability of Asia and the peace of the world.

50

06/06/01 WED 16:47 FAX 703 243 6814

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

001

THE AMERICAN

SPECTATOR

*

Quotes marked at

Two yellow tabs
will be replaced as

the entire quotes as
HAK requested could
not fit into boxes

(not acceptable as

shortened by A.S.)

Date: $ 6/6/01

To: Theresa Limino

From: Jos L. Landau

Number of Pages (Including This Sheet): 10

Comments

All of Dr. Kissinger's edits were incorporated
in this text except as noted. Please let me know as soon as
approval is given. Again, our deadline is June 7th. Thanks.

- Josh

2020 NORTH 14TH STREET

SUITE 750

ARILINGTON, VIRGINIA 22201-2515

(703) 243-3733 PHONE

(703) 243-4318 FAX

A Gilder Publishing Company

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

# ASIA: World in the Balance

BY HENRY KISSINGER

will not join a common crusade as did the nations of Europe in opposition to a single threat. An Asian version of the containment policy of the 1980s will find few, if any, takers except perhaps in Vietnam, thus turning history on its head; much more likely, it will cause the Asian nations to move away from the United States. America's ability to influence Japan would decline. Korea would turn into a tnderbox. Nations with ambitions or territorial claims would sense new opportunities. America's European allies would eagerly step into the economic and political vacuum. A policy that is perceived as having designated China as the enemy primarily because its economy is growing and its ideology is distasteful would end up isolating the United States.

PHOTO: AP/MARCELLE FERREIRA

06/06/01 WED 16:48 FAX 703 243 6814

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

003

italics

To be sure, it is in the American national interest to resist the effort of any power to dominate Asia—and, in the extreme, the United States should be prepared to do so without allies. But a wise American policy would strive to prevent such an outcome. It would nurture cooperative relations with all the significant nations of Asia to keep open the possibility of joint action should circumstances require it. But it would also seek to convey to China that opposition to hegemony is coupled with a preference for a constructive relationship and that America will facilitate China's participation in a stable international order. Confrontation with China should be the ultimate recourse, not the strategic choice.

Americans think in terms of concrete solutions to specific problems. The Chinese think in terms of stages in a process that has no precise culmination. Americans believe that international disputes result either from misunderstandings or ill will; the remedy for the former is persuasion—occasionally quite insistent—and, for the latter, defeat or destruction of the evidдоer. The Chinese approach is impersonal, patient, and aloof; the Middle Kingdom has a horror of appearing to be a supplicant. Where Washington looks to good faith and goodwill as the lubricants of international relations, Beijing assumes that statesmen have done their homework and will understand subtle indirections;

42

06/06/01 WED 16:49 FAX 703 243 6814

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

004

[Y]

The challenge to American foreign policy is how to deal with Chinese nationalism without inflaming it—and how to stand firm when it turns to threats.

In 1971 and 1972, President Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao Zedong reestablished diplomatic contact, not because American and Communist ideologies had become more compatible but because of their respective geopolitical necessities. During the early period of renewed contacts, much innocent nonsense was disseminated about how "unnatural" the estrangement between the American and Chinese peoples had been, as if raprochement had fulfilled some deep emotional need on both sides. The facts were far more prosaic. China, in its long history, has rarely had the experience of dealing with other societies on the basis

Nor was there in 1971 any groundswell of demand for an opening to China. Whatever public pressures for it existed derived not from geopolitics but from a general idea that "good relations" were their own reward and that the Cold War could best be ended by overcoming the hostility as a kind of psychological exercise.

The new links between China and the United States flourished so long as the two sides were in a position to concentrate on the common objective of resisting what their communiqués came to describe as "hegemony." Simply put, this meant resisting Soviet attempts to upset the global or Asian balance of power and some tacit agreement on an appropriate strategy to achieve this end.

PHOTO: OAKID & PETER RUMMEN/GETTY IMAGES

43

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

005

tended to compete with Moscow in the developing world by appealing to radical movements, and this often caused it to back leaders or causes that were hardly America's favorites.

decade as a “capitalist roader,” and history is likely to treat him as a reformer who launched China on the road to modernization. The Deng reforms initiated in 1979 sent tens of thousands of Chinese students to Western countries, where they were exposed to values for which they shed their blood in Tiananmen Square. Deng abolished the agricultural communes and made China nearly self-sufficient in food. He industrialized the drab, gray, fearful China of the Cultural Revolution by emphasizing consumer goods.

PHOTO: EPI/SCIENCE

44

1

06/06/01 WED 16:50 FAX 703 243 6814

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

1

000

Deng had been perhaps too daring
in his economic reforms and surely too
cautious in the political reforms his poli-
cies made inevitable—ironically, the
opposite mistake of his contemporary,
Mikhail Gorbachev. His task was made
all the more difficult by the ambivalence
of many in the ruling Communist elite.
In most countries undergoing compar-
ble economic transitions, innovative
managers at lower levels must overcome
resistance from a more conservative sen-
ior leadership. In China, the opposite
occurred. The top leadership's emphasis
on incentives and market forces had to
be implemented by executives without
experience with such measures and no

enthusiasm for the process of reform.
Deng had to fight, therefore, on two
fronts: against the corruption tempted by
reform, and against the survivors of
Maoism insisting on their version of a
Communist economy. While he won the
battle in the economic field, he settled
for continued Communist dominance in
the political arena. Deng opted to live
with the paradox of insisting on political
stability in order to complete an eco-
nomic and social revolution. In his
mind, he was fighting chaos, not democ-
archy. "I am still a reformer," Deng said to
me six months after the suppression of
the Tiananmen Square revolt, "but if sta-
bility had been lost, it would have taken
a generation to restore it."

The Deng

(tens of)

Reforms initiated in 1979 sent thousands of students to Western countries, for which they shed their blood in Tiananmen Square.

Where they were exposed to values

45

06/06/01 WED 16:51 FAX 703 243 6814

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

> In Clinton's second term, the slogan of engagement was raised to "strategic partnership," which implied some kind of global cooperation—a proposition which proved politically controversial and substantively empty.

007

[Y]

46

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

003

[Y]

To be sure, as China develops what it calls its "comprehensive national strength," its military power will become a more significant challenge. But for the foreseeable decades, the United States possesses diplomatic, economic, and military advantages allowing it to shape the future without resorting to preemptive confrontation with China.

## Taiwan and China

48

06/06/01 WED 16:52 FAX 703 243 6814

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

0009

with its own imperatives.

A part of China since the seventeenth century, Taiwan was annexed by Japan in 1895 in what proved to be the first step toward the eventual attempt to conquer the mainland. It was returned to China by the victorious World War II allies in 1945 after President Franklin Roosevelt had declared it to be part of China in 1943. In 1949, after the Communist victory on the mainland, Chiang Kai-shek withdrew to Taiwan and made it the seat of his Nationalist government, which claimed to represent all of China and which, until diplomatic relations with the mainland were restored in 1979, was recognized by the United States as the government of all of China. On the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, President Truman inter-

By that time, Taiwan had become a deeply symbolic issue for many Americans. It was the inheritor of the legacy of goodwill acquired by the Nationalists for their staunch resistance to Japanese imperialism in the Second World War. And it became a symbol for the so-called China lobby, which was outraged by the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war and was determined to prevent its culmination in the takeover of Taiwan. Many—including those of us who engineered the opening to China—had great sympathy for the effort of the Chinese on Taiwan to create a meaningful and democratic basis for an

with Beijing was reestablished, this issue did not present itself. The question of which government the United States "really" recognized—Beijing or Taipei—was shelved in the Shanghai Communiqué of 1972. The United States "acknowledged" that Chinese living on both sides of the Taiwan Strait affirmed there was only one China and did not challenge that proposition. Since 1972, every American president has confirmed America's commitment to a "one-China" policy and the rejection of a "two-China" or a "one-China, one-Taiwan" policy. The most explicit affirmation of that policy was a joint communiqué with Beijing in 1982 during the Reagan administration, which was repeated by President Clinton when he visited China in late June 1998. Since 1972, every American president has also affirmed his abiding concern for a

## Taiwan had become a deeply symbolic issue for many Americans.

autonomous existence. A wide consensus has always existed in the United States opposed to the forcible return of Taiwan to China.

But the issue is also profoundly symbolic for Beijing. Taiwan was where the dismemberment of China started—the first province to be annexed by colonialists. Its unification with the mainland is considered even by Chinese who do not share the views of the governing party as a "sacred national obligation" which can be deferred for practical or tactical reasons but never abandoned.

peaceful resolution of the issue—a euphemism for opposition to the use of force—as did the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, which enshrined the principle in American law.

Within this framework, Taiwan has prospered, become democratic, and participated in international forums that did not require formal state-to-state relations. At the same time, the United States proceeded in 1979 to recognize Beijing as the legitimate government of China, as did the vast majority of the world's governments—most of them before the United States had. But, unlike other nations, the United States was also supplying the bulk of defense equipment enabling Taiwan to remain free of the political control of what was at the same time recognized as the legitimate government of all of China, including Taiwan.

While insisting on ultimate unification as a sacred principle, China nevertheless expressed on several occasions its

PHOTO: REISSER/LEPMIZA/VC-00006

49

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

willingness to defer a final resolution in
the interest of its relationship with other
countries, especially the United States,
provided Taiwan did not stake a formal
claim to sovereignty. (In November
1973, Mao told me that China could
wait one hundred years.) For its part, the
United States, while reaffirming its
opposition to the use of force in every
administration of both parties since
1971, did so invariably within the frame-
work of a "one-China" policy.

assured the Chinese foreign minister that
the existing policy of nonrecognition of
Taiwan as a sovereign state would remain
in force and that the ban on visits by
Taiwan's top leaders would not change.
The Chinese reacted by initiating military exercises and missile launches in the
Taiwan Strait—carrying, however, no
warheads. The United States responded
by sending a two-aircraft-carrier task
force by way of warning. The crisis sub-
sided, but Sino-American relations have
never fully recovered. Since then, Taiwan
has elected a new president whose party
platform used to advocate independence,
and China has backed off a bit, hinting
that it would use force only if Taiwan for-
mally declared itself independent.

The sensitive issue of Taiwan falls
into the category of problems—like the
future of Palestine—that permit no
definitive solution at this point. The
debacle of the Camp David Middle East
summit of 2000 that ended in a military
confrontation demonstrates that even
the best-intentioned efforts to produce a
final outcome for which the parties are
not ready may—indeed, almost must—
lead to a blowup.

The challenge is how to live with a
problem that should be alleviated but
does not yet permit a final agreement.
The nature of the issues is clear, and the
self-restraint this imposes on all sides has
become increasingly obvious. If the
United States chips away at the "one-
China" principle, first affirmed by
Roosevelt in 1943 and reiterated by all
six American presidents since Nixon, a
military confrontation is probable. If
China seeks to bring matters to a head

separate (and presumably equal) compo-
nents of a single China. This idea, cou-
pled with China's previously mentioned
hint that it would not use force to bring
about unification short of a formal dec-
laration of independence by Taiwan,
deserves careful exploration.

presidents have
affirmed America's
concern for a peaceful
resolution of the issue.
In this they express not
only a personal prefer-
ence but the over-
whelming view of
American public opin-
ion. Whatever the legal
status of these declara-

A significant measure of responsibility to exercise restraint falls on Taiwan's leaders as well. Some of their supporters act as if it is in Taiwan's interest to exacerbate tensions between Washington and Beijing and to press for congressional and administration measures implying a de facto "two-China" policy. They are skillful in devising measures which seem marginal to Americans but are certain to inflame Beijing. Such a strategy is shortsighted because the existing framework is very much in Taiwan's interest. For a key constraint on China's Taiwan policy has been China's stake in its relationship with the United States. Were Taiwan to achieve formal American recognition of a separate status, as some of its spokesmen and supporters now seem to seek, this would risk a military confrontation and guarantee a political crisis that would divide Asia and turn Taiwan's role in the resulting tensions into a global issue. Taiwan would be less, not more, secure in such an environment. ♿

If Taiwan abandons restraint, it will
unleash a conflict whose conse-
quences cannot be foreseen but
are unlikely to redound to Taiwan's
long-term benefit.

militarily. American resistance is certain.
If Taiwan abandons restraint and upsets
the tacit bargain that has preserved peace
in the Taiwan Strait for decades, either
locally or by skillful lobbying in
Washington, it will unleash a conflict
whose consequences cannot be foreseen
but are unlikely to redound to Taiwan's
long-term benefit.

All the parties involved have an
interest in not driving matters to the
point of combustion. The United States
must resist the domestic pressures to
abandon the "one-China" principle. The
groups pressing for this change of policy
by a series of seemingly marginal modi-
fications need to understand that an
explosion can occur because any one
step in a sequence that was barely toler-
ated could well turn out to be a step too
far. A serious effort is needed to find a
way to ease the confrontational atmos-
phere. Indications of restraint and flexi-
bility on Beijing's part should be credit-
ed as constructive—such as statements
by Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen
that Taiwan would no longer be viewed
as a renegade province of the People's
Republic of China but as one of two

50

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

002

# ASIA: World in the Balance

BY HENRY KISSINGER

will not join a common crusade as did the nations of Europe in opposition to a single threat. An Asian version of the containment policy of the 1980s will find few, if any, takers except perhaps in Vietnam, thus turning history on its head; much more likely, it will cause the Asian nations to move away from the United States. America's ability to influence Japan would decline. Korea would turn into a tinderbox. Nations with ambitions or territorial claims would sense new opportunities. America's European allies would eagerly step into the economic and political vacuum. A policy that is perceived as having designated China as the enemy primarily because its economy is growing and its ideology is distasteful would end up isolating the United States.

PHOTO: AP/PHOTOGRAPHY REFERENCE

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

003

42

1

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

004

In 1971 and 1972, President Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao Zedong reestablished diplomatic contact, not because American and Communist ideologies had become more compatible but because of their respective geopolitical necessities. During the early period of renewed contacts, much innocent nonsense was disseminated about how "unnatural" the estrangement between the American and Chinese peoples had been, as if rapprochement had fulfilled some deep emotional need on both sides. The facts were far more prosaic. China, in its long history, has rarely had the experience of dealing with other societies on the basis

The new links between China and the United States flourished so long as the two sides were in a position to concentrate on the common objective of resisting what their communiques came to describe as "hegemony." Simply put, this meant resisting Soviet attempts to upset the global or Asian balance of power and some tacit agreement on an appropriate strategy to achieve this end.

PHOTO: GORDON & PETER HARRIS/GETTY IMAGES

43

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

005

decade as a "capitalist roader," and history is likely to treat him as a reformer who launched China on the road to modernization. The Deng reforms initiated in 1979 sent tens of thousands of Chinese students to Western countries, where they were exposed to values for which they shed their blood in Tiananmen Square. Deng abolished the agricultural communes and made China nearly self-sufficient in food. He industrialized the drab, gray, fearful China of the Cultural Revolution by emphasizing consumer goods.

PHOTO: EIPEN SACHS/NBIS

44

1

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

006

[L]

Deng had been perhaps too daring
in his economic reforms and surely too
cautious in the political reforms his poli-
cies made inevitable—ironically, the
opposite mistake of his contemporary,
Mikhail Gorbachev. His task was made
all the more difficult by the ambivalence
of many in the ruling Communist elite.
In most countries undergoing comparab-
le economic transitions, innovative
managers at lower levels must overcome
resistance from a more conservative sen-
ior leadership. In China, the opposite
occurred. The top leadership's emphasis
on incentives and market forces had to
be implemented by executives without
experience with such measures and no

enthusiasm for the process of reform.
Deng had to fight, therefore, on two
fronts: against the corruption tempted by
reform, and against the survivors of
Maoism insisting on their version of a
Communist economy. While he won the
battle in the economic field, he settled
for continued Communist dominance in
the political arena. Deng opted to live
with the paradox of insisting on political
stability in order to complete an eco-
nomic and social revolution. In his
mind, he was fighting chaos, not democ-
ocracy. "I am still a reformer," Deng said to
me six months after the suppression of
the Tiananmen Square revolt, "but if sta-
bility had been lost, it would have taken
a generation to restore it."

45

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

007

[L]C

46

1

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

008

## Taiwan and China

48

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

009

with its own imperatives.

with Beijing was reestablished, this issue
did not present itself. The question of
which government the United States
"really" recognized—Beijing or Taipei—
was shelved in the Shanghai
Communiqué of 1972. The United
States "acknowledged" that Chinese liv-
ing on both sides of the Taiwan Strait
affirmed there was only one China and
did not challenge that proposition. Since
1972, every American president has con-
firmed America's commitment to a
"one-China" policy and the rejection of
a "two-China" or a "one-China, one-
Taiwan" policy. The most explicit affir-
mation of that policy was a joint com-
muniqué with Beijing in 1982 during
the Reagan administration, which was
repeated by President Clinton when he
visited China in late June 1998. Since
1972, every American president has also
affirmed his abiding concern for a

But the issue is also
profoundly symbolic for
Beijing. Taiwan was where
the dismemberment of
China started—the first
province to be annexed by
colonialists. Its unification
with the mainland is con-
sidered even by Chinese
who do not share the
views of the governing
party as a "sacred national
obligation" which can be
deferred for practical or
tactical reasons but never
abandoned.

PHOTO: REID VAZQUEZ/REUTERS

49

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

010

willingness to defer a final resolution in the interest of its relationship with other countries, especially the United States, provided Taiwan did not stake a formal claim to sovereignty. (In November 1973, Mao told me that China could wait one hundred years.) For its part, the United States, while reaffirming its opposition to the use of force in every administration of both parties since 1971, did so invariably within the framework of a "one-China" policy.

assured the Chinese foreign minister that the existing policy of nonrecognition of Taiwan as a sovereign state would remain in force and that the ban on visits by Taiwan's top leaders would not change. The Chinese reacted by initiating military exercises and missile launches in the Taiwan Strait—carrying, however, no warheads. The United States responded by sending a two-aircraft-carrier task force by way of warning. The crisis subsided, but Sino-American relations have never fully recovered. Since then, Taiwan has elected a new president whose party platform used to advocate independence, and China has backed off a bit, hinting that it would use force only if Taiwan formally declared itself independent.

presidents have affirmed America's concern for a peaceful resolution of the issue. In this they express not only a personal preference but the overwhelming view of American public opinion. Whatever the legal status of these declarations

> If Taiwan abandons restraint it will unleash a conflict whose consequences cannot be foreseen but are unlikely to redound to Taiwan's long-term benefit.

50

1

PAGE 47:

2

1st column; 3rd ¶

After "Partly because of the difficulty the two sides have had in understanding each other's culture and code of conduct, they have rarely succeeded in getting Sino-American relationships into a stable balance for any extended period." -

The remainder of this paragraph was deleted. Dr. Kissinger said that it would be okay for the ideas contained in this paragraph to be condensed into fewer lines. However, he does *not want the entire section deleted*.

[ In the early 1900s, America's approach to China was heavily influenced by missionaries and traders, both largely oblivious to the humiliation Chinese society felt when subjected to the colonialist pressures of the European powers. In the 1930s and during the Second World War, China was idealized as a victim of Japanese aggression and as a heroic democratic ally. After the Communist victory in the civil war, China was transformed in the American public mind into the incarnation of ideological and strategic hostility. A combination of Maoist militant ideology, China's intervention in the Korean War, American distaste for Beijing's domestic institutions, and the interposition of the American Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait produced a period of nearly a quarter-century in which the two countries had no diplomatic relations and very little contact of any kind. ]

PAGE 49:

1st column; 1st ¶

After "The collapse in Moscow destroyed the common fear" -

The following is to be restored:

"while the domestic upheaval in Beijing undermined domestic American support for a policy based on common purposes."

Then picks up with "The anti-Communist right, always..."

3

relations. Nor should the issue be decided by the domestic imperatives of budgetary battles.]

The following entire paragraph was then deleted:

Defining the national interest regarding China is complicated by the vast cultural differences between the Chinese and American approaches to foreign policy and the changes in the international environment since American emissaries first visited Beijing in 1971. American leaders emphasize personal goodwill and personal relationships. In its continuous history spanning five millennia, China has witnessed too many upheavals and tragedies to rely on the goodwill of individuals who, in the context of history, are by definition transient. The United States, in its national experience of two hundred years, has been able to overcome its challenges by a combination of idealism, willpower, organization, and a benign geograpphy. China has many great achievements to its credit, but it has also frequently encountered problems that could be overcome only by endurance. China's approach to policy is skeptical and prudent, America's optimistic and missionary. China's sense of time beats to a different rhythm from America's. When an American is asked to date a historical event, he refers to a specific day on the calendar; when a Chinese describes an event, he places it within a dynasty. And of the fourteen imperial dynasties, ten have each lasted longer than the entire history of the United States. ]

1st column; 3rd ¶

Partly because of the difficulty the two sides have had in understanding each other's culture and code of conduct, they have rarely succeeded in getting Sino-American relationships into a stable balance for any extended period. The remainder of this paragraph was then deleted:

2nd column; last ¶

Nor was there in 1971 [Nor can it be said that, in 1971, there was] any groundswell of demand for an opening to China.

Page 48

2nd column; 2nd ¶

The weakening of executive authority in the US due to Watergate and its aftermath reduced Beijing's confidence in America's ability to resist Soviet pressures and blandishments [complicating America's ability to navigate the complex triangular passage of the relationship among Washington, Moscow, and Beijing].

3rd column; 2nd ¶

Despite its complexity, this balancing act was carried out successfully for 20 years by five presidents of both parties—an extraordinary bipartisan achievement. [Some of these presidents justified the triangular policy on an explicitly conceptual basis, others in a more pragmatic case-to-case manner.] Despite differences, an unusual coordination of strategies and, on the whole, of policies was achieved.

3rd column; very last ¶ (and continuing onto page 49)

This bipartisan consensus was shattered by two events: the [first was the] collapse of Communism [starting in 1989 with revolutions in Eastern Europe and culminating two years later with the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The second was] and ("and" added by A.S.) the bloody repression of the students in Tiananmen Square. The collapse in Moscow destroyed the common fear [while the domestic upheaval in Beijing undermined domestic American support for a policy based on common purposes].

Page 49

1st column; 4th ¶

5

economic stagnation of Mao's China which had fallen prey to the inevitable diseases of modern Communism, [Its incentives rewarded] rewarding stagnation and [discouraged] discouraging initiative [In a centrally planned economy, capital goods and services are allocated by bureaucratic decision. Over a period of time,] as ("as" added by A.S.) prices established by administrative fiat lose their relationship to costs. [So long as the system is run as a police state, the pricing system becomes a means of extorting resources from the population. However, as soon as terror eases, prices turn into subsidies and are transformed into a method of gaining public support for the Communist party.] In the end, everything from food to housing is subsidized without any criterion for efficiency [and hence turns into an obstacle to a rising standard of living].

> [ Placing wide discretionary authority in the hands of bureaucrats leads to corruption. Jobs, education, and most perquisites depend on some kind of personal relationship. It is one of history's ironies that Communism, which claimed to be the harbinger of a classless future, in the end generated a privileged class comparable to that of traditional feudalism. ]

2<sup>nd</sup> column; 2<sup>nd</sup> ¶

Embracing market economics and decentralized decision making, Deng combined initially [When Deng and his associates chose to overcome this trend by embracing market economics and decentralized decision making, they combined --in the initial stages of reform-] the problems of central planning with those of a free market. The attempt to make prices reflect real costs leads to price increases, at least in the short term. [A burst of inflation was one of the triggers of the unrest.]

2<sup>nd</sup> column; 3<sup>rd</sup> ¶

Unscrupulous bureaucrats and entrepreneurs could [were thus in a position to] shift assets [and commodities back and forth] between the two sectors for personal gain.

3<sup>rd</sup> column; 3<sup>rd</sup> ¶

[Y]

6

in the US. [where] The human rights issue [was on home ground and] quickly became the dominant theme of America's relations with China. [All other issues were both submerged by the concern with China's domestic structure and distorted by it because] Disagreements that before that time had been considered the normal by-product of relations between two great powers now came to be treated in much of American public discussion as conflicts with a totalitarian evil.

### Enlarged quote in box

Sir: It seems to me that the deletions in this quote somewhat change the meaning of what you said. Therefore, I would recommend restoring what they removed:

[The Deng] Reforms initiated in 1979 sent [tens of] thousands of students to Western countries, [where they were exposed to values] for which they shed their blood in Tiananmen Square.

Page 50

2nd column; last ¶

[While these questions apply to some degree in every part of the world, they are particularly relevant to relations between the world's most powerful industrial nation and the world's most populous nation. China has the longest uninterrupted history of any country in the world and is controlled by the last major government to call itself Communist. It is the state with the greatest potential to become a rival of the US at some point in the new century—though, in my view, not in the first quarter.]

The answer to these questions will resolve [not some theoretical debate but] the shape of the twenty-first century world.

******************* -COMM.JOURNAL- ******************* DATE JUN-06-2001 **** TIME 15:45 *** P.01

MODE = MEMORY TRANSMISSION

START=JUN-06 15:44

END=JUN-06 15:45

FILE NO. = 115

| NO. | COM | ABBR/NTWK | STATION NAME/ TELEPHONE NO. | PAGES | PRG.NO. | PROGRAM NAME |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 001 | OK | @ | 17032436814 | 004/004 | | |

-KISSINGER ASSOCIATES -

************************************************** - ************************ 212 759 0042- ***********

Wednesday, June 06, 2001

TO: Josh London, Senior Editor, <u>The American Spectator</u>
FAX 703/243-4318 , -6014

FROM: Theresa Cimino, Office of Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
FAX 212/759-0042 ⑈

RE: <u>The American Spectator</u> draft

Dr. Kissinger has reviewed *The American Spectator* draft which you faxed to us. He instructed me to tell you his understanding was that the three sections taken from Chapter 4 of his new book, *Does America Need A Foreign Policy?*, would be printed in *their entirety*.
Dr. Kissinger therefore requests that the following deleted material be restored to the draft. In addition, he would like to review the next draft incorporating the changes herewith and asks that he be consulted on any further modifications made to the text.

**MATERIAL DELETED FROM DRAFT**
**WHICH IS TO BE RESTORED, PER DR. KISSINGER:**

PAGE 46:

3rd column; 3rd ¶ (very bottom of the page)

After "The challenge to American foreign policy is how to deal with
Chinese nationalism without inflaming it while standing firm when it
turns to threats" -

The following entire paragraph is to be restored:

[ In a mood of fatalism, the emergence of China is often compared to that of Germany in the nineteenth century, which ultimately led to World War I. But there was nothing foreordained about that war. History has recorded it above all as a failure of statesmanship, a blunder that produced costs out of proportion to any conceivable gains for all the parties. Which of the statesmen who went to war in 1914 would not have jumped at the chance to revisit their decision when they looked back a few years later and saw the catastrophe they had inflicted on their societies, on European civilization, and on the long-term prospects of the entire world? ]

06/04/01 MON 16:04 FAX 703 243 6814

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

002

Relations with China: The Historical Context

At the beginning of a new American administration, two schools of thought dominate the American debate over China: The view of the Clinton administration was summed up in the slogans "engagement" and "strategic partnership." Based on the Wilsonian premise that a world of democracies can hold no enemies—at least none prepared to vindicate their views with force—the multiplication of contacts on trade, environment, science, and technology is believed to strengthen the forces favoring international cooperation.

The opposing point of view regards China as a morally flawed inevitable adversary—at the moment with respect to Taiwan, eventually the Western Pacific, and, in time, the global equilibrium. The United States should therefore treat China as it treated the Soviet Union during the Cold War: as a rival and a challenge, reducing trade wherever possible to non-strategic items, creating an alliance of Asian states to contain China or, failing that, building up Japan to help America share the burden for the defense of Asia and the containment of China. Advocates of this view would treat Taiwan as an independent country and a military outpost and, in practice, scrap the "one-China" policy on which Sino-American relations have been based since diplomatic contacts were reestablished in 1971.

The fundamental question is whether either of these approaches meets America's needs, it is one thing to reject a strategic partnership that never functioned; it is another to treat China as a permanent adversary. The conditions of Asia are not

Unless their own survival is directly and clearly threatened, the Asian nations will not join a common crusade as did the nations of Europe in opposition to a single threat. An Asian version of the containment policy of the 1980s will find few, if any, takers except perhaps in Vietnam, thus turning

ASIA:

World in the
Balance

BY HENRY KISSINGER

history on its head; much more likely, it will cause the Asian nations to move away from the United States. America's ability to influence Japan would decline. Korea would turn into a binderbox. Nations with ambitions or territorial claims would sense new opportunities. America's European allies would eagerly step into the economic and political vacuum. A policy that is perceived as having designated China as the enemy primarily because its economy is growing and its ideology is distasteful would end up isolating the United States.

To be sure, it is in the American, national interest to resist the effort of any power to dominate Asia—and, in the extreme, the United States should be prepared to do so without allies. But a wise American policy would strive to prevent such an outcome. It would nurture cooperative relations with all the significant nations

From Does America Need a Foreign Policy by Henry Kissinger. Copyright © 2001 by Henry Kissinger. Published by arrangement with Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York.

The approach of the Clinton admin. avoided the geopolitical challenge of the rel. w/China.

46

06/04/01 MON 16:05 FAX 703 243 6814

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

003

Whole # deleted: p. 136-137
"In a mood of fatalism... world?"

Of course, the choice is not entirely
up to the United States. Faced with a
threat of hegemony in Asia—whatever the
regime— America would resist as it did

went on to pursue a broadly bipartisan pol-
icy based on Sino-American cooperation.
It was only in the 1990s that the idea of
confrontation between the two countries

gained momentum
again, threatening to
return the relation-
ship to the tensions
of half a century
before. At this point,
a digression tracing
that evolution may
help to define the
nature of the existing
choices.

The challenge to American foreign policy is how to deal with Chinese nationalism without inflaming it—and how to stand firm when that turns to threats.

the issue was decided by the
domestic imperatives of badgefary battles.

Japan's in the Second World War and the
Soviet Union's in the Cold War. But inso-
far as the choice depends on American
action, it should be made with great care.

Americans think in terms of concrete
solutions to specific problems. The
Chinese think in terms of stages in a
process that has no precise culmination.
Americans believe that international dis-
putes result either from misunderstandings
or ill will; the remedy for the former is
persuasion—occasionally quite insistent—
and, for the latter, defeat or destruction of
the evildoer. The Chinese approach is
impersonal, patient, and aloof; the Middle
Kingdom has a horror of appearing to be
a supplicant. Where Washington looks to
good faith and goodwill as the lubricant
of international relations, Beijing assumes
that statesmen have done their homework
and will understand subtle indirections;
insistence is therefore treated as a sign of
weakness, and good personal relations are
not themselves considered a lubricant of
serious dialogue. To Americans, Chinese
leaders seem polite but aloof and conde-
scending. To the Chinese, Americans
appear erratic and somewhat frivolous.

Partly because of the difficulty the two
sides have had in understanding each
other's culture and code of conduct, they
have rarely succeeded in getting Sino-
American relationships into a stable balance
for any extended period. Yet after diplo-
matic contact was restored in 1971, five
American administrations of both parties

Deleted:
"In the early 1900s... of any kind." p.138

In 1971 and 1972, President Richard
Nixon and Chairman Mao Zedong
reestablished diplomatic contact, not
because American and Communist idcolo-
gies had become more compatible but
because of their respective geopolitical
necessities. During the early period of
renewed contacts, much innocent non-
sense was disseminated about how "unnat-
ural" the estrangement between the
American and Chinese peoples had been,
as if rapprochement had fulfilled some deep
emotional need on both sides. The facts
were far more prosaic. China, in its long
history, has rarely had the experience of
dealing with other societies on the basis of
equality. For the greatest part, it was domi-
nant in its region; in the nineteenth centu-
ry and the first half of the twentieth, it was
humiliated by the imperial powers. Before
that, it had felt most comfortable when it
was able to stand aloof and self-contained,
as a culture whose uniqueness placed it
beyond the reach of outsiders—and, until
approximately 1500, also as the most
advanced nation in science and technology.
For China, there was nothing unnatural
about living apart from the United States.

can it
be said
Nor was there,
any groundswell
demand for an opening to China.

PHOTO: DAVID & PETER LEAHY PAGANOSI

5

47

06/04/01 MON 16:06 FAX 703 243 6814

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

004

Y

Despite its complexity, this balancing act was carried out successfully for twenty years by five presidents of both parties—an extraordinary bipartisan achievement.

consider, emphasized tactics that would give Moscow an opportunity to settle or shift to it the onus for confrontation. China was suspicious of any negotiation between Washington and Moscow—explicitly concerned that the appearance of progress would undermine the West's willingness to stand up to the Soviet Union, implicitly fearful that it might lead to some unspecified U.S.-Soviet arrangement at China's expense, if only by permitting the Soviet Union to direct its attention to Asia. For its part, Beijing tended to compete with Moscow in the developing world by appealing to radical movements, and this often caused it to back leaders or causes that were hardly America's favorites.

The weakening of executive authority in the United States due to Watergate and its aftermath reduced Beijing's confidence in America's ability to resist Soviet pressures and blandishments, complicating America's ability to navigate the complex triangular passage of the relationship among Wash., Moscow and Beijing.

PAUL ELLIS/REUTERS

8

48

06/04/01 MON 16:07 FAX 703 243 6814

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

005

Communism and the bloody repression of the students in Tiananmen Square. The collapse in Moscow destroyed the common fear. The anti-Communist right, always uncomfortable with close ties with a Communist country, began to treat the Beijing government as the new evil to be extirpated. And the American left, always uncomfortable with a policy based on geopolitics, returned to its emphasis on human rights and the promotion of democracy as the main priorities in American foreign relations.

The events in Tiananmen Square had been more complex than a simple anti-Communist revolt, having at least three causes: the revolt of students based on Western principles of democracy; workers rebelling to remove, or at least to alleviate, the inequities, abuses, and dislocations generated by economic reform; and the internal struggle within the Communist Party. largely about the political consequences of the reform of the economy.

For Deng Xiaoping, who ruled China at the time and for the decade preceding it and who was excoriated by the Western media, the Tiananmen Square uprising represented an ironic reversal. Mao had imprisoned him for a decade as a "capitalist roader," and history is likely to treat him as a reformer who launched China on the road to modernization. The Deng reforms initiated in 1979 sent tens of thousands of Chinese students to Western countries, where they were exposed to values for which they shed their blood in Tiananmen Square. Deng abolished the agricultural communes and made China nearly self-sufficient in food. He industrialized the drab, gray, fearful China of the Cultural Revolution by emphasizing consumer goods.

What Deng and his associates did not foresee—or thought they could avoid—was the political consequences of overcoming the economic stagnation of Mao's China which had fallen prey to the inevitable diseases of mature Communism.

The second was rewarding stagnation and discouraging initiative as prices established by administrative flat lose their relationship to costs. In the end, everything from food to housing is subsidized without any criterion for efficiency.

Embracing market economics and decentralized decision making, Deng combined initially the problems of central planning with those of a free market. The attempt to make prices reflect real costs leads to price increases, at least in the short term.

The shift to a market economy actually magnified opportunities for corruption, at least initially. A still very large public sector coexisted with a growing market economy, and two sets of prices resulted. Unscrupulous bureaucrats and entrepreneurs could shift assets between the two sectors for personal gain. In short, the beginning of reform can—and, in China,

reruption tempted by reform, and against the survivors of Maoism insisting on their version of a Communist economy. While he won the battle in the economic field, he settled for continued Communist dominance in the political arena. Deng opted to live with the paradox of insisting on political stability in order to complete an economic and social revolution. In his mind, he was fighting chaos, not democracy. "I am still a reformer," Deng said to me six months after the suppression of the Tiananmen Square revolt, "but if stability had been lost, it would have taken a generation to restore it."

I have sketched the circumstances surrounding the upheavals of Tiananmen Square because they marked the turning point at which China began to be perceived by many as an ideological and geopolitical adversary. In fact, they grew out of the dilemmas of reform as much as

did—produce severe short-term dislocations among the constituencies at the core of the discontent.

Deng had been perhaps too daring in his economic reforms and surely too cautious in the political reforms his policies made inevitable—ironically, the opposite mistake of his contemporary, Mikhail Gorbachev. His task was made all the more difficult by the ambivalence of many in the ruling Communist elite. In most countries undergoing comparable economic transitions, innovative managers at lower levels must overcome resistance from a more conservative senior leadership. In China, the opposite occurred. The top leadership's emphasis on incentives and market forces had to be implemented by executives without experience for such measures and no enthusiasm for the process of reform. Deng had to fight, therefore, on two fronts: against the cor-

out of Communist ideology. They were almost totally dominated by considerations of Chinese domestic politics and did not represent a philosophy meant to be applicable elsewhere.

But whatever Deng's motives, the brutality of the repression at Tiananmen Square witnessed on television by the entire world stigmatized China as a repressive regime. This coincided with a period (beginning in the mid-1970s) of increased emphasis on human rights in the industrial democracies and especially in the United States. The human rights issue quickly became the dominant theme of America's relations with China. Disagreements that before that time had been considered the normal by-product of relations between great powers now came to be treated in much of American public discussion as conflicts with a totalitarian evil.

"All other issues... because."

49

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

006-

At the same time, China's military modernization, which had been postponed during the first decade of Deng's reforms, attracted growing attention. Chinese moves were increasingly interpreted in terms of a geopolitical and ideological design on its neighbors. A cycle of self-fulfilling prophecies followed, accelerated not a little by occasionally heavy-handed Chinese tactics.

During the George H. W. Bush and Clinton administrations, the political and psychological basis for constructive Sino-American relations was gradually weakening. President Bush, who, in the mid-1970s before the establishment of diplomatic relations had served as head of the United States Liaison Office in Beijing, sought to keep the relationship on some sort of even keel even after the events in Tiananmen Square. Bill Clinton began his term with rhetoric that made improvement in

Chinese human rights practices the key to Sino-American ties even in the economic field. By 1995, his administration had, however, returned to the pattern of regular dialogue established by predecessors even while justifying it with slogans that evoked a more Wilsonian theme.

While the Clinton administration did consolidate the economic relationship with China by supporting World Trade Organization membership for China and normal United States-China trade relations, it never did settle on a convincing geopolitical rationale. Applying to China policy its domestic tactics of co-opting the goals of critics while claiming it had a better way of accomplishing them, the Clinton administration proclaimed a policy of "engagement." It asserted that it would bring China over to the American perception of human rights and domestic governance by multiplying contacts in all fields but especially in trade.

As a result, at the end of the Clinton administration, China policy remained hostage to domestic politics. What has been lacking is a definition of the nation-

al interest that gives the relationship some geopolitical content. Trade and other New Age issues such as the environment and narcotics are not enough to distill a sense of direction or to overcome the mixture of cooperation, suspicion, mutual misunderstanding, and stagnation that characterize Sino-American relations at the turn of the century. This potentially combustible combination must not be left in its present state for the sake of the stability of Asia and the peace of the world.

Should the United States use all the means at its disposal to delay as long as possible the emergence of China as a major power? Or should it attempt to bring about an Asian structure open to cooperation with all states, a structure based not on the assumption of any one country's inherent aggressiveness yet sup-

ple enough to resist any country's hegemonic aspirations? "While . . . first quarter, p. 146

The answer to these questions will resolve the shape of the twenty-first century world. And that world has few analogies to the Cold War. Soviet ideology had insisted on its universal applicability, and every Soviet leader until Mikhail Gorbachev proclaimed the worldwide triumph of Communism as the ultimate goal. Soviet armies occupied Eastern Europe. The Brezhnev Doctrine affirmed Soviet determination to maintain Communist parties in power, by force if necessary, and the Soviet Union intervened militarily in Hungary and Czechoslovakia and threatened to do so in Poland and—indirectly—in China. The Chinese Communist leadership conducts no such policies abroad and makes no such universal claims; it does not have at its beck and call a worldwide network of Communist parties or radical organizations

50

1

06/04/01 MON 16:08 FAX 703 243 6814

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

007

China's foreign policy is patient and long-range. Viewed from Beijing, the geopolitical challenge is likely to be perceived not as the conquest of neighboring countries but as preventing a combination of them against China. Least of all can it be in the interest of China's leaders to provoke the United States, the most distant country, which historically has never threatened China's unity and integrity. To be sure, Chinese public statements often criticize American military alliances in Asia, giving credence to the view that China's long-term objective is to undermine the American role and presence in the region. Yet one need not postulate Chinese goodwill or permanent peaceful intentions to conclude that prudent Chinese leaders will not lightly risk confrontation with the world's dominant military power at this stage of China's evolution. In addition, modern China has a huge stake in the international economic system—more than the Soviet Union ever had—generating powerful incentives not to challenge the status quo in Asia.

Conflict with the United States would free all the countries around the vast Chinese periphery to pursue their various ambitions and claims. A far more prudent course for China would be to implement the basic maxim of its traditional statecraft—of pitting the far-off barbarians against those close by. In such a context, the United States is cast in the role of a geopolitical option for China—even as a potential safety net—rather than an innate adversary. On the whole—and despite some ups and downs, largely over Taiwan—this has, in fact, been the thrust of Chinese policy. What is to be the strategic goal?

As for Chinese ground forces, they are capable of defending the home country through a strategy of attrition but not suitable for sustained offensive operations against a major opponent. And around its periphery, China is obliged to cope with a strategic situation far more difficult than the Soviet Union experienced in Europe. The Soviet Union threatened weak neighbors unable to resist Soviet ground forces, either alone or in combination. China faces militarily significant neighbors, including India, Vietnam, Japan, Russia, and the two Koreas, each of which would be difficult to overcome individually and even more so in combination. At a minimum, this imposes on China a diplomacy that does not threaten all its neighbors simultaneously.

To be sure, as China develops what it calls its "comprehensive national strength," its military power will become a more significant challenge. But for the foreseeable decades, the United States possesses diplomatic, economic, and military advantages allowing it to shape the future without resorting to preemptive confrontation with China at a moment when the capacity for it does not exist.

The issue is not whether to oppose Chinese attempts to dominate Asia. If they occur, they must be resisted. But what is the purpose of a confrontational strategy conducted for its own sake? In what way does America gain by conducting relations with China by analogy to the Cold War unless Beijing gives the United States no other choice? To what extent is America alone in a position to impede China's growth in the face of the near-certainty that such a policy would find no significant international support? A prudent American leadership should balance the risk of stoking Chinese nationalism

If China remains domestically cohesive, it is destined to become a major power and, as such, will have an enhanced capacity to challenge the United States. But it will not be the only one: India, Brazil, and Russia have options similar to China's and, in some respects, face less daunting obstacles. Is the United States to define its security in terms of preventing the emergence of any possible major power? This would make it the policeman of the world and eventually turn most of the other nations against it. It would exhaust America's resources and psychological equilibrium if permanent inter-ventions and crusades became the defin-ing characteristics of American foreign policy. a Subject I shall discuss in the concluding chapter. ✓OK

## Tiawan and China

52

1

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

008

Y

China and which, until diplomatic relations with the mainland were restored in 1979, was recognized by the United States as the government of all of China. On the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, President Truman interposed the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait, thereby preventing a Communist conquest of the island and indirectly making the United States a party in the Chinese civil war.

By that time, Taiwan had become a deeply symbolic issue for many Americans. It was the inheritor of the legacy of goodwill acquired by the Nationalists for their staunch resistance to Japanese imperialism in the Second World War. And it became a symbol for the so-called China lobby, which was outraged by the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war and was determined to prevent its culmination in the takeover of Taiwan.

For the first few years after diplomatic contact with Beijing was reestablished, this issue did not present itself. The question of which government the United States "really" recognized—Beijing or Taipei—was shelved in the Shanghai Communiqué of 1972. The United States "acknowledged" that Chinese living on both sides of the Taiwan Strait affirmed there was only one China and did not challenge that proposition. Since 1972, every American president has confirmed America's commitment to a "one-China" policy and the rejection of a "two-China" or a "one-China, one-Taiwan" policy. The most explicit affirmation of that policy was a joint communiqué with Beijing in 1982 during the Reagan administration, which was repeated by

Many—including those of us who engineered the opening to China—had great sympathy for the effort of the Chinese on Taiwan to create a meaningful and democratic basis for an autonomous existence. A wide consensus has always existed in the United States opposed to the forcible return of Taiwan to China.

President Clinton when he visited China in late June 1998. Since 1972, every American president has also affirmed his abiding concern for a peaceful resolution of the issue—a euphemism for opposition to the use of force—as did the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, which enshrined the principle in American law.

PHOTO: REUTER/AGENCE-DAM/CFOORS

53

06/04/01 MON 16:09 FAX 703 243 6814

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

009

Y

Y

While insisting on ultimate unification as a sacred principle, China nevertheless expressed on several occasions its willingness to defer a final resolution in the interest of its relationship with other countries, especially the United States, provided Taiwan did not stake a formal claim to sovereignty. (In November 1973, Mao told me that China could wait one hundred years.) For its part, the United States, while reaffirming its opposition to the use of force in every administration of both parties since 1971, did so invariably within the framework of a "one-China" policy.

visit to Cornell University. This came after Secretary of State Warren Christopher had assured the Chinese foreign minister that the existing policy of nonrecognition of Taiwan as a sovereign state would remain in force and that the ban on visits by Taiwan's top leaders would not change. The Chinese reacted by initiating military exercises and missile launches in the Taiwan Strait—carrying, however, no warheads. The United States responded by sending a two-aircraft-carrier task force by way of warning. The crisis subsided, but Sino-American relations have never fully recovered. Since then, Taiwan has elected a new president whose party platform used to advocate independence, and China has backed off a bit, hinting that it would use force only if Taiwan formally declared itself independent.

The challenge is how to live with a problem that should be alleviated but does not yet permit a final agreement. The nature of the issues is clear, and the self-restraint this imposes on all sides has become increasingly obvious. If the United States chips away at the "one-China" principle, first affirmed by Roosevelt in 1943 and reiterated by all six American presidents since Nixon, a mili-

status of these declarations in Chinese eyes, Beijing must take care to not slip into a confrontation with the United States, with all its attendant consequences, through a miscalculation.

54

00/04/01 MON 10:04 TAX 703 243 0814

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

00/02

history on its head; much more likely, it will cause the Asian nations to move away from the United States. America's ability to influence Japan would decline. Korea would turn into a tenderbox. Nations with ambitions or territorial claims would sense new opportunities. America's European allies would eagerly step into the economic and political vacuum. A policy that is perceived as having designated China as the enemy primarily because its economy is growing and its ideology is distasteful would end up isolating the United States.

To be sure, it is in the American national interest to resist the effort of any power to dominate Asia—and, in the extreme, the United States should be prepared to do so without allies. But a wise American policy would strive to prevent such an outcome. It would nurture cooperative relations with all the significant nations

# ASIA:
World in the
Balance

BY HENRY KISSINGER

From Does America Need a Foreign Policy by Henry Kissinger. Copyright © 2001 by Henry Kissinger. Published by arrangements with Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York.

46

In 1971 and 1972, President Richard
Nixon and Chairman Mao Zedong
reestablished diplomatic contact, not
because American and Communist ideolo-
gies had become more compatible but
because of their respective geopolitical
necessities. During the early period of
renewed contacts, much innocent non-
sense was disseminated about how "unnat-
ural" the estrangement between the
American and Chinese peoples had been,
as if rapprochement had fulfilled some deep
emotional need on both sides. The facts
were far more prosaic. China, in its long
history, has rarely had the experience of
dealing with other societies on the basis of
equality. For the greatest part, it was domi-
nant in its region; in the nineteenth centu-
ry and the first half of the twentieth, it was
humiliated by the imperial powers. Before
that, it had felt most comfortable when it
was able to stand aloof and self-contained,
as a culture whose uniqueness placed it
beyond the reach of outsiders—and, until
approximately 1500, also as the most
advanced nation in science and technology.
For China, there was nothing unnatural
about living apart from the United States.

PHOTO: DAVID A. SETTLE, U.S. AIR force

47

08/04/01 MON 10:00 FAX 703 243 0814

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

0004

LC

PHOTO: USFS\DODCERS

48

1

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

00:00

[LC]

rewarding stagnation and discouraging initiative as prices established by administrative fiat lose their relationship to costs. In the end, everything from food to housing is subsidized without any criterion for efficiency.

ruption tempted by reform, and against the survivors of Maoism insisting on their version of a Communist economy. While he won the battle in the economic field, he settled for continued Communist dominance in the political arena. Deng opted to live with the paradox of insisting on political stability in order to complete an economic and social revolution. In his mind, he was fighting chaos, not democracy. "I am still a reformer," Deng said to me six months after the suppression of the Tiananmen Square revolt, "but if stability had been lost, it would have taken a generation to restore it."

49

06/04/01 MON 16:07 FAX 703 243 0814

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

00/000

[LC]

At the same time, China's military modernization, which had been postponed during the first decade of Deng's reforms, attracted growing attention. Chinese moves were increasingly interpreted in terms of a geopolitical and ideological design on its neighbors. A cycle of self-fulfilling prophecies followed, accelerated not a little by occasionally heavyhanded Chinese tactics.

50

06/04/01 MON 10:08 FAX 703 245 0014

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

2001

[L]C

## Tiawan and China

52

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

ANID ROGERS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

53

06/04/01 MON 10:03 FAX 703 243 0814

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

This tacit bargain began to unravel in 1995 when a visa was granted to President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan for a visit to Cornell University. This came after Secretary of State Warren Christopher had assured the Chinese foreign minister that the existing policy of nonrecognition of Taiwan as a sovereign state would remain in force and that the ban on visits by Taiwan's top leaders would not change. The Chinese reacted by initiating military exercises and missile launches in the Taiwan Strait—carrying, however, no warheads. The United States responded by sending a two-aircraft-carrier task force by way of warning. The crisis subsided, but Sino-American relations have never fully recovered. Since then, Taiwan has elected a new president whose party platform used to advocate independence, and China has backed off a bit, hinting that it would use force only if Taiwan formally declared itself independent.

2000

[lc]

54