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- Summary
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- Over the past few weeks, Russia and China
have engaged in intense, manic-depressive foreign policy, shifting between
sullen quiet, to near war-frenzy, to friendly cooperation. Before one
prescribes medications, this behavior should be seen as the natural, terminal
maneuvers of powers that are trying to get the West's attention and are
not quite sure what to do with that attention once they get it. It is
not that the behavior is not ominous. It represents the process of great
powers going into opposition to a super-power. But the behavior is the
symptom, not the problem itself. The problem is that the structure of
the international system dictates an anti-American Russo-Chinese alliance,
and very little can stop that.
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- Analysis
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- It has been fascinating over the past
two weeks to observe the gyrations of China and Russia, as they carry out
their terminal maneuvers on the way to an anti-American, anti-Western alliance.
Right after the bombing of Kosovo began Russia went ballistic, in its
more extreme moments even threatening the United States with nuclear war.
China remained sullen but relatively quiet. Then Russia turned mellow,
trying to work with the West while China went ballistic over the bombing
of the Embassy and a host of other issues. It is amazing the extremes
at which both countries are operating their foreign policies at the moment.
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- The intense mood swings are, of course,
calculated and have rational goals. Russia and China individually are
trying to achieve three things. First, they want to get the attention
and concern of the United States and the major powers linked to the United
States, like Germany and Japan. Second, they want to generate a substantial
level of concern within the United States concerning the direction of relations
with each of them. Russia and China both hope to increase their leverage
within the relationship and ideally extract political and, more important,
financial concessions from a concerned United States that is hoping to
appease them and avoid a new Cold War. Finally, they hope to create serious
fear among America's allies, like Japan and Germany, concerning trends
in U.S. foreign policy, in the hope of being able to split the American
alliance, further weakening the United States.
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- Thus, periodically, each generates a
major confrontation with the United States in which it appears that a catastrophic
collision is about to take place. They then allow themselves to be placated
by the United States and its allies, extracting economic concessions in
return for politico-military quiescence. The trick for each is to recreate
the image of the Cold War as a reminder of the bad old days. The Russian
announcement that the Black Sea Fleet would sortie, and mobs of Chinese
hurling stones at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, all served to remind everyone
how bad things could get. That set the stage for the next phase, which
was bargaining on the price for not letting things get that bad.
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- We do not believe that Russia and China
are cooperating on this. Quite the contrary. In a certain sense, they
are now competitors for the West's limited attentions. Particularly in
Washington, where the ability to handle multiple foreign policy issues
is at a historical low point, getting priority treatment requires threats
of nuclear war and riots in front of embassies. The similarity in Russia's
and China's behavior has much more to do with the similarity of their strategic
and economic positions relative to the United States than it does to do
with conspiracy. Both need the same thing from the United States and the
West: financial help and collaboration. Neither will get as much as they
want and need, based strictly on economic considerations. Each needs to
find levers to extract more. Thus, in an odd sense, they are competitors,
posturing intensely to try to get attention and help.
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- Consider Russia's maneuvering. Immediately
after the beginning of the Serbian war, it appeared that Primakov's Russia
was about to launch a new Cold War. Yeltsin brilliantly allowed Primakov
to position Russia in complete and hostile opposition to NATO. He then
brought Chernomyrdin out of retirement. Chernomyrdin, an old stalwart of
the reform days, appeared to be a dinosaur out of the past. Chernomyrdin
delivered two messages. The first was that there was still a chance at
reform in Russia. The second was that Russia would help NATO in Kosovo
in return for financial aid. Suddenly, $4.5 billion was shaken loose;
not enough to bring Milosevic to the peace table, but enough to cause Yeltsin
to dump Primakov and appoint a new Prime Minister of ambiguous ideology.
Outmaneuvering the communists in the Duma by getting Zhironovsky to double
cross them (the price for that is not yet clear), Yeltsin is now in a position
to bargain with the West. Indeed, Michael Camdessus, head of the IMF,
said on Sunday that the IMF was now ready to work with Russia on additional
funding.
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- Of course, Camdessus also said that Russia
would have to institute new reforms in order to get that money. The new
Prime Minister said on Sunday "Everything is simple here. Once the
Duma passes legislation and endorses the new government, loans will start
coming." Stepashin, of course, is still euphoric at the prospect
of becoming Prime Minister, and he is not thinking as clearly as he should.
Obviously, the Duma must pass new legislation in order to get the IMF
to grant new loans. But that legislation will include massive austerity
in an already impoverished Russia, as well as a battle for taxes with oligarchs
busy shipping money to the West. If it were really that easy, it would
have been done months ago.
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- This is the problem with all of this
maneuvering. It is pointless. No matter how much money the West provides,
Russia cannot recover from its problems because those problems are deeply
rooted structural and cultural defects in the Russian system that make
it impossible for it to, if you will, metabolize money effectively. Put
differently, if it doesn't turn into capital, it doesn't become productive.
Money sent to Russia remains money to be spent on imported luxuries, used
to bribe opposition politicians, or stolen. It does not create economic
growth. Thus, the maneuvering gets the West's attention followed by ineffective
assistance, inertia, and the return to the crisis stage.
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- China is a similar case, albeit far from
as hopeless economically. Nevertheless, after a series of entirely unsatisfactory
bilateral meetings at several levels, tremendous criticism from the United
States on human rights, the investigation of Chinese financial aid to Bill
Clinton, the espionage scandal and a general decline in relations, the
Chinese saw the bombing of their embassy as a marvelous opportunity to
redefine their relations with the United States. Taking a page from Moscow's
book, they recreated the world prior to the rise of Deng Xiaping, complete
with howling mobs and resolutions condemning American hegemonism. The
bombing of the Embassy, had it happened in 1991 in Baghdad, would have
been managed with a harsh protest and an apology. In 1999, it was turned
into opera by a China hoping to make its point.
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- That got the U.S.'s attention but, as
with Russia, it was not clear what the Chinese wanted that the U.S. and
the West could give them. Everyone rushed forward to see what could be
done about World Trade Organization membership for China. However, given
the structural dynamics of 1999 as opposed to 1995 and given China's unofficial
economic crisis, it was not clear what WTO membership would do for China.
It was also unclear what else could be rationally offered. Massive new
investments on the order of the earlier years of the decade are hardly
likely when the U.S. economy is so attractive and investors in China are
merely hoping to break even at some point.
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- Nevertheless, China's Cold War posturing
is every bit as impressive as was Russia's. For example, the May 13 South
China Morning Post reported that China is abandoning the low- key foreign
policy established by Deng Xiaoping and moving toward a more aggressive
approach. The shift in policy, unnamed sources said in the report, was
made following the NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. It
was partially in response to student demonstrations against the U.S. Embassy
in China. The source said, "In internal talks, Politburo members
expressed fears that the students would next stage protests against a 'weak
central Government' unless Beijing counters threats to national security."
The idea that China would take a knee-jerk decision in reaction to a group
of students throwing rocks at a foreign embassy and totally reverse a foreign
policy that has stood for ten years is unlikely. Instead, China is using
the opportunity presented by the anti-American demonstrations to declare
to the world that the U.S. and NATO are forcing China into a new role,
despite the fact that it has already been pursuing this new policy for
some time.
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- In response to China's overstated warnings
of being forced by its own citizens into a more aggressive stance, the
U.S. is planning to send in a former admiral as the new ambassador to China.
The choice of a military man to take the position reflects the administration's
view of the potential Chinese threat. More importantly, the prospective
nominee for ambassador to China is Admiral Joseph Prueher, commander of
the U.S. Pacific Force from 1996 to March 1999. While Prueher was instrumental
in expanding Chinese-U.S. military cooperation and exchanges, he was also
in charge in 1996 when the U.S. sent carriers into the Taiwan Strait to
demonstrate U.S. resolve vis-Ö-vis Chinese interference in Taiwan's
elections. This makes Prueher a prime candidate in dealing with China
who is unlikely to be strenuously opposed by the Republican-dominated Congress.
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- The real danger here is that during these
periodic, ritual chest- thumping episodes, the situation might genuinely
get out of hand. Yeltsin skillfully reigned in the anti-Western forces
he helped unleash. The old fox never ceases to amaze us. However, he
will go to the well one time too many, and unleash forces that even he
can't control. The same is true in China. The leadership can whip up
anti-American frenzy on demand. It is not clear that they will always
be able to control it. In the end, it won't matter. The tendency toward
anti-Americanism and therefore to some form of alliance is, we believe,
irreversible. The path toward that end, however, is twisted and quite noisy.
The noise, whether from Moscow or Beijing, is not the real issue. There
is lightning behind the thunder.
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