Washington Looks Foolish Warning China on Iran
I understand that with the European Union announcing new sanctions on Iran, the U.S. is worried about China strengthening its bilateral ties to the Mid-East oil producer, but this looks rather pathetic:
Washington called on China on Monday not to fill the vacuum in Iran’s struggling energy sector by taking advantage of the departure of primarily European companies that have complied with atomic sanctions.
Robert Einhorn, U.S. special adviser for non-proliferation and arms control, was quoted in the FT as saying:
We want China to be a responsible stakeholder in the international system and that means co-operating with UN security council resolutions, and it means not back-filling, not taking advantage of responsible self-restraint of other countries.
Perhaps I’m missing some of the minutiae of the agreement that was struck with China to get the first round of sanctions passed in the UN earlier this year, but calling on China’s self-restraint seems quite weak.1
When the first deal was made, a lot of the discussion focused on whether, in its desperation to get sanctions passed, the U.S. would accede to China’s demands to 1) water down the language; and 2) insert waivers that would carve out certain kinds of business done by Chinese firms. That concern was justified — China got what it wanted and agreed to the action.
So now some European companies are pulling out to comply with the sanctions and the question is what should China do about it. It sounds reasonable to tell China that since they agreed to the sanctions in the first place, they should not undermine them by filling that vacuum.
On the other hand, if China successfully got the language it wanted, I suspect it was looking to this very possibility. If they can legally get around the sanctions and ratchet up their business with Iran, then isn’t the West just as much to blame for agreeing to that language in the first place?
Seems to me that the West was not satisfied with the deal and wants another bite at the apple. If that is really what’s going on, then the U.S. is essentially telling China:
Yeah, we know you agreed to X a few months ago, but now we want X + 1. Be good sports about it and sign off on the new one.
Why would Beijing go along with that?
This reminds me of some of the complaints I hear about foreign investment. Once in a while a client will say “I’m not happy that China hasn’t opened such-and-such sector to foreign investment. They’re not living up to their promises.” When I remind them that China did not promise to open up that particular sector in its Accession Agreement, the client gets annoyed and mumbles something about the “spirit of the WTO,” whatever that means.
Filling the vacuum left by European firms may indeed violate the spirit of the sanctions, but if China can do so without violating the letter of the law, won’t it go ahead and do so? Since Mr. Einhorn’s comments about “persuading” China suggests to me that we are not looking at a violation of the sanctions, I wish him luck with the negotiations. I think he’s going to need it.
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- Disclaimer: I don’t know what went on behind closed doors during the sanctions discussions. Perhaps something was promised or an arrangement was made that makes the U.S. statement reasonable. If I’m missing something here, feel free to flame me in a comment.[↩]
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You seem to be very fond of China’s hard-nosed, realpolitik approach to its geopolitical relationship with the United States–the underlying assumption being that the United States, after all, is only trying to maintain its hegemony by containing and thwarting China’s global ambitions. China, therefore, should use all tools at its disposal thwart the geopolitical goals of the United States. If you were a foreign policy advisor to President Obama, how would you recommend that the United States approach China and traditional US allies in Asia? Would you say, “You know, Mr. President, if you don’t force the Chinese to commit to exactly what you want, word for word, in writing, then they are going to use the holes in the language to do exactly what you are trying to prevent them from doing”? If so, what would you say to the President about prospects for US-China relations, in general, over the course of the next two decades, and what he should do in the meantime to ensure that the United States remains on decent footing?
Good questions, and I wish I had all the answers. I will make a couple of further comments, though.
First, I have definitely warmed to realpolitik in the last few years, particularly since the Iraq War. I do think China is pretty good at it, although it seems to have abandoned the charm offensive that was working to great effect over the past several years.
Second, yes I do think that the US has adopted a containment approach to China, with which I disagree. I don’t see geopolitics as “zero-sum gain” and think the US could do better, even with a realist strategy, without being overtly aggressive. Ironically, China’s realist foreign policy team probably would disagree with me on that point. I don’t think the US needs to maintain its hegemony, but this is what Beijing thinks it is doing. Maintaining that dynamic is bad news.
Third, I do think that international agreements are important. I encourage the US to file WTO actions where appropriate, for example, and to avoid discussing laws and policies that are WTO inconsistent (and protectionist).
Fourth, for the future, the US and China need to find a way to trust each other. Both need to step back and find ways to demonstrate that they are not proponents of “zero-sum game” policies. In particular, the US should avoid actions (when possible) that appear to confirm the containment thesis, which breeds suspicion and countermeasures. I don’t know exactly how to get from Point A to Point B, but I know that confrontational pissing contests, driven in both countries by domestic politics, don’t seem to be a good idea.
Thanks for the response. I agree with you about the zero-sum pissing contests. The situation that is evolving is making me really, really nervous. Bickering over economic policies is one thing, and there is a relatively effective international framework for hashing those issues out. But when the gunboats start blasting, everything changes and it’s much, much harder to go back.
I guess one of the problems that I had with the title of your post was that I don’t see Washington looking any more foolish than China looks dangerous, or at least like a legitimate threat to Washington’s interests. Say what you want to say about the actual threat that Iran and North Korea pose (personally, I think the “axis of evil” was one of the silliest creations in the history of US foreign policy), the folks in Tehran and Pyongyang don’t make good bedfellows, and I’m not so sure that it is a wise long-term decision for Beijing to appear to be cozying up to them at the expense of its largest trading partners.
I also don’t buy into the theory that US foreign policy in Asia centers on the goal of containing a rising China. China grew up into a region that has historically depended on US military presence to maintain stability and prevent an arms buildup in a part of the world that has been, and still is, laced with geopolitical mistrust. China itself has benefited mightily from the US presence, whether from Japan’s willingness to remain demilitarized or from Taiwan’s willingness to engage in economic relations with the mainland, knowing that the USS George Washington was standing by in case Beijing were to decide to act on its legal obligation to reunite by force if necessary.
Any time the US bats an eye in East Asia, some knuckleheaded politician in Beijing can ramp up the rhetoric that the US is returning to its imperialist ways and trying to prevent China’s rise to its rightful place in the world. Meanwhile, the same politicians assert that Chinese territorial claims to the entire South China Sea, right up to the coast of the Philippines, are not only reasonable, but are “indisputable” and, somehow, “benevolent.” And the unfortunate reality is that the more moderate voices among Chinese policy makers tend to be silenced, or at least muffled, since anti-Americanism has been a hallmark of the CCP’s domestic politics from day one. There are such voices in the US as well, to be sure, but they are always countered by the other side, and they generally lose out.
The facts, I think, demonstrate that the US has in no way tried to contain China’s rise. No country in the world has benefited more from globalization than China has. In thirty years, China has gone from the biggest third world country to the second largest economy and the only country that poses a legitimate military challenge to the United States. Some containment policy… Even in this most recent spat, it was the US, against South Korean wishes, that advocated for holding the first round of military exercises in the Sea of Japan rather than the Yellow Sea. South Korea has gone ahead on its own with exercises in the Yellow Sea, yet we don’t hear anyone screaming and yelling about a South Korean “containment” policy. Even as US officials were saying that China is a major geopolitical presence and that the US takes its positions very seriously, official Chinese editorials were ranting that the US doesn’t accept China as a major geopolitical presence and continues to ignore its “core interests.”
The way I see it, Chinese realpolitik tries to assert China’s right to have its cake and eat it too, while the reality of the situation is that North and South Korea don’t like each other; the United States doesn’t like Iran or North Korea; Russia is ambivalent towards the entire world; India and Pakistan don’t like each other; Taiwan doesn’t want to become another province under Beijing’s sovereignty; and Vietman, Malaysia, and the Philippines don’t want to become Chinese vassal states.
I’m not an international relations scholar, but I’ve always understood realpolitik to define an approach that focuses on reality instead of ideology or moralism. How does appearing to throw a diplomatic or security umbrella over Iran and North Korea reflect such an approach, when doing so runs the risk of alienating one’s major trading partners and uprooting the anchors of the system that has brought decades of unprecedented prosperity? What does it reflect other than an irrational and politically-motivated ideological bias against all things “western” and “imperialist”–a troubling nostalgia for the days of anti-bourgeois struggle–when those same western imperialists have, for all intents and purposes, done nothing to actively prevent China’s transformation into arguably the most important country in the early 21st century?
Realpolitik was the US shifting its diplomatic allegiance from Taipei to Beijing and brining Beijing into the UN security council, or Deng recognizing that China’s future wouldn’t be based on Mao Zedong thought. Kicking and screaming about naval exercises directed at North Korea, or intentionally undermining efforts to control Iran’s nuclear program are exercises in ideological, anti-imperialist struggle, unless Beijing foresees a world in which Iran and North Korea are the other two points of a China-led triumvirate that remakes the modern diplomatic system… Personally, I don’t see how it makes any sense. I don’t see what material benefit China gains from protecting those two…
In any event, I only hope that both sides use appropriate restraint and that this all blows over. I think we’ve had a pretty good thing going for the last 20 years, generally speaking. In time, the residue of Dubya’s Administration should dissolve. China really doesn’t need anything that Iran (oil can come from somewhere else for the time being) and North Korea (?) are selling. An ounce of patience now is worth a ton of peace down the road…