On another trip around the globe, Albright finds that Russian and Chinese diplomatic initiatives could curtail the U.S. security presence in Asia and in Europe.US Outflanked by Rivals?
Michael Hirsh
June 23 2000
By Washington’s lights, here’s the way things are supposed to work, post-cold-war-wise. Imagine our ever-shrinking world as a kind of giant trade convention at which globalization and democracy are continuously celebrated, and where America likes to think of itself as the glittering host and emcee.EVERY NOW AND then, a new nation is credentialed to enter the convention hall, almost always on Washington’s terms: open up your economy, make progress on “democratization,” sign on to various U.S. nonproliferation regimes, and you have your ticket in.
In the decade since the Cold War ended, this is the way the system has worked. That’s a point that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is seeking to drive home, yet again, in her latest circumnavigation of the globe. Earlier this week, in a hastily arranged visit with top Chinese officials on the heels of the historic summit between North and South Korea, Albright sought to reaffirm Washington’s central role in resolving Asia’s stickiest problems. Then on Monday, the secretary of State flies into Warsaw, Poland as the leading presence at the Community of Democracies-a U.S. orchestrated forum that evokes Woodrow Wilson’s century-old dream of lasting world peace.
But such U.S. efforts to take the lead have, increasingly, a faint air of desperation about them. That’s because two major nations that once did little more than react to U.S. initiatives-China and Russia-are aggressively claiming some diplomatic high ground for themselves. Chinese President Jiang Zemin, meeting with Albright on Thursday, was ebullient in playing up the role that Beijing took in facilitating the stunning Korea summit. He declared that China and the United States are jointly responsible for keeping the peace in the Asia-Pacific-which Washington has pretty much thought of as another American Great Lake since the end of World War II. Jiang and other top Chinese officials also took to describing North Korea’s suddenly less roguish leader, Kim Jong Il, with “a very long string of positive adjectives,” one U.S. official wryly noted.
Just as strikingly, South Korea, a key U.S ally that has rarely strayed from Washington’s shadow, made a point of acknowledging the “important role” that China played in the runup to the summit. Beijing may have savored as well Albright’s discomfort at having Iranian President Mohammed Khatemi, with whom the secretary has tried to curry favor, arriving for a state visit at the same time she was (and winning bigger headlines). China “sees itself playing a larger role over time,” concedes a senior State Department official who said he was struck by the broad range of global issues-from the Middle East to terrorism-that Jiang and others took up.
From Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin has also gone on a major diplomatic offensive since his summit with Bill Clinton two weeks ago, seeking to drive a wedge between the Europeans and the Americans over National Missile Defense. Whereas his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, once ploddingly followed Clinton’s lead, the newly elected Putin has proved to be balky and independent-minded. On the very day that Clinton departed Moscow in early June, Putin flew off to Italy before him, touting his own alternative to NMD. Now he’ll try to press his advantage by traveling to Pyongyang in the next few weeks, just before the G-8 summit in Okinawa in July, no doubt in an effort to further erase Kim Jong-Il’s fast-fading image as an irrational actor on the world stage. Putin’s game, it seems, is to undermine U.S. plans to create a National Missile Defense (for which the putative threat from North Korea has been, until recently, chief raison d’etre, at least in its first phase). Both Putin and Jiang are learning that the best defense against their Western critics is a good offense. Just as China’s role in the Korean rapprochement has made everyone forget its horrendous human rights record for a while-not to mention its threats to Taiwan-Putin’s world tour has also taken the focus off his assaults on Chechnya and Russia’s free press.
U.S. officials will admit to nothing but delight over the developments on the Korean peninsula. Albright and others freely praised the Chinese and Russian roles, even as they pointed out how carefully Seoul has consulted with Washington over the Korea issue-and how crucial U.S. money and might is to keeping the peace both on the peninsula and in Asia. But what some U.S. policymakers back in Washington now fear is that The Korean rapprochment encouraged by Beijing is already raising fundamental questions about how long it will be necessary to maintain 37,000 U.S. troops based on the Korean peninsula. That in turn could undercut the American security umbrella in Asia-it includes more than 50,000 troops in Japan and the U.S. 7th Fleet-that has, by most accounts, kept the larger region at peace for nearly 50 years. Ironically, more stability in the short run in Korea could roil the bigger Asian picture in the long run. Albright, during her trip, denied that the U.S. troop presence even came up as an issue, saying the question was “inappropriate and, uh, premature.” But she couldn’t avoid it. Back on Capitol Hill, her sometime nemesis, the arch-conservative Sen. Jesse Helms, openly wondered whether a troop withdrawal from Korea should take place. And during a news conference in Seoul on Friday, both the secretary and her counterpart, South Korean Foreign Minister Lee Joung-binn, were peppered with questions from a feisty Korean press about how long the Americans might stay. One fear already being voiced on Capitol Hill is that questions about U.S. commitment stemming from Korea will set off a chain reaction of fear that could eventually prompt both Japan and South Korea to develop nuclear weapons.
Given the enmity that still exists between those countries and China, that could create a very unstable situation, many observers say. “It’s going to require active American leadership to avoid that possibility,” says a Senate Foreign Relations committee staffer. “Otherwise we could have the Philippines stage two-where we get kicked out on our asses, causing others to doubt our commitment.” That was a reference to the forced U.S. departure from Subic Bay naval base. Sen. Joe Biden, the ranking minority member of the Foreign Relations Committee who met recently with Seoul’s ambassador to Washington, came away convinced that the U.S. had to assert its forward presence in Asia-and that the plans for NMD were sapping allies of confidence in that posture.
Concerned, the administration has scrambled in recent days to present a more powerful case to a skeptical region for the broader U.S. security presence. “The U.S. is a Pacific power as much as an Atlantic power,” Albright said on Friday, emphasizing the traditional U.S. stance that America is the linchpin to peace in the region. But with the North Korean threat somewhat blunted, that approach raises new, uncomfortable questions about exactly whom Washington expects to protect Asia from now. Especially in a newly democratized Asia, some experts fear, public opinion may well rise up against U.S. hegemony. “Just to to insist on our role is not enough,” says James Laney, the former U.S. ambassador to South Korea. “We have to help public opinion in South Korea, Japan and Russia to understand that we are not just playing the role of a hegemonic aggrandizer but a peacekeeper. That means we need to talk with them and not just at them … We need to learn how to lead, not just act unilaterally.”
Over in Europe, Putin seems to have had some success in raising questions about whether NMD might decouple the Europeans from the U.S. defense umbrella on the continent. That could accelerate Europe’s as-yet meager moves toward an independent defense capability and prompt new questions about the role of NATO, which has been largely dormant since its mixed success in Kosovo a year ago.
Both these scenarios-in Asia and Europe-are, of course, far off. President Clinton, who has never been enthusiastic about NMD-it began as a GOP policy that he co-opted-is now fretting over its diplomatic implications. He seems willing to hedge over the development of the missile defense plan, leaving a final decision to his successor. U.S. officials, meanwhile, insist that if Washington handles the diplomacy right, lining China and Russia up behind Korean amity will be a net benefit to everybody. “Let China take a lot of credit,” says Laney. “If the world sees that China and Russia and Japan are along with us, that confirms that this [Korean rapprochment] is an irreversible turning point.” In any case, Moscow and Beijing have a long way to go in building up diplomatic capital in foreign capitals, not least because both nations are deeply troubled economically and quite weak relative to Washington. But it would be an irony indeed if the ultimate impact of U.S. efforts to bring Russia and China into the world community were a less stable world.