April 10, 2001

Going It Alone
by James Hall

After George W. Bush announced a reversal of Clinton's policy of constructive engagement, a collision with China was inevitable. No, not the collision of an EP-3 reconnaissance plane with an F-8 Chinese fighter--that was in every sense of the word an accident, and our hopes and prayers are for the quick return of its crew of 24 American servicemen and women. But from the very beginning Mr. Bush has regarded China with a wary eye, and his pugnacious attitude towards the world's most populous nation now reaps its harvest. Meanwhile, Bush's standoffish, America-first foreign policy elsewhere guarantees that America stands alone on this issue.

While the Bush administration deserves high marks for handling the Hainan crisis, working hard to defuse tensions and handle the crew and plane's return through diplomatic channels, it's apparent Chinese hard-liners are now in charge of the situation and are in no hurry to return them. And it's difficult for an administration that has expressed public suspicion of the Chinese during its campaign to adopt a conciliatory tone in order to get back a crew dangerously close to being held hostage. It's even more difficult for that administration to resist calls by our own hard-liners who want to ratchet up US/Chinese tensions to Cold War levels. (click here for more info)

Some conservatives blame Bill Clinton's policy of engagement for this crisis (click here for more info), ignoring a wealth of evidence that in the Cold War days of his predecessors, Chinese and Russian fighters frequently shot down reconnaissance aircraft and even airliners suspected of being reconnaissance aircraft and frequently tried and imprisoned their crews. In 1968 the intelligence ship USS Pueblo, operating in international waters, was shot at, boarded, and captured by the North Koreans, its crew released 11 months later, the ship itself never returned.

In fact, the Clinton policy of constructive engagement had done quite a bit to lower tensions and improve ties with China, Vietnam, and North Korea. Bush threw much of that out the window with statements making clear his view of China as a strategic competitor, not a strategic partner. Bush promised to consider new advanced weapons systems for Taiwan and gave the cold shoulder to continued diplomacy with North Korea, even embarrassing South Korea's President on a recent visit to Washington with tough talk about North Korea, scotching the chances to reduce tensions there.

Bush's National Missile Defense plan, which depends on colder relations with nations like North Korea for its justification, threatens to make the small Chinese nuclear deterrent force (of approximately 24 nuclear missiles) also obsolete, pushing China into a costly nuclear buildup in order to maintain its current deterrence levels. All this talk about competition, help to Taiwan, and missile shields has helped Chinese hard-liners and militarists who play on general Chinese fears that the US wants to see China carved up and weakened as the Europeans did a century ago. It also weakens the arguments of other Chinese interested in trade and engagement with the rest of the world.

If Bush had continued to make peaceful relations with China, Vietnam, and North Korea a priority, it's quite likely that the Chinese trade/engagement wing would have had the upper hand, and the Chinese would have quickly returned the plane and crew. But Bush's hard line has strengthened the hand of Chinese hard liners who want to stand up to America and who happen, right now, to be holding all the cards in the Hainan game. Partners work together, competitors take advantage of their competition's mistakes.

f Mr. Bush was counting on our allies and the world community to help pressure the Chinese into releasing the plane and crew, he obviously forgot that his administration's foreign policy has put the world on notice that today's Americans go their own way. In recent days we've told the world that we won't follow the Kyoto Accord because it might hurt our economy, that Europeans must take care of the Macedonian problem in the Balkans without much help from us, and that Arabs and Israelis must solve their conflicts themselves.

So the world's response to the US is, and ought to be, go it alone, Mr. Bush. Deal with your competitor, and get whatever you can. After all, going it alone is what American foreign policy is all about these days.

© 2001 James Hall