As a general rule, a nation should avoid making threats that it cannot back up. Such gestures tend to lessen the credibility of the party making the threat, and shine a spotlight on the impotence of said nation at the same time. Neither is helpful. And yet, Secretary of State Clinton make just such a threat recently in the service of seeking to compel China to cooperate on a new sanctions regime aimed at Iran:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned China on Friday that it would face economic insecurity and diplomatic isolation if it did not sign on to tough new sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program, seeking to raise the pressure on Beijing to fall in line with an American-led campaign.
Speaking to students at the École Militaire, the prestigious French war college, Mrs. Clinton said, “China will be under a lot of pressure to recognize the destabilizing effect that a nuclear-armed Iran would have” in the Persian Gulf, “from which they receive a significant percentage of their oil supply.”
In reality, the United States is financially and economically dependent on China, a country that holds nearly $1 trillion in U.S. debt and is an indispensable trading partner. We are hardly in a position to weaken ties to China. Further, China’s far-reaching economic clout, and the its attractiveness as a trading partner, means that China has little to fear from European nations and other states that view the Iran nuclear issue as a lower order priority. And China knows this quite well.
Oddly enough, the anxiety that Clinton tried to exploit – China’s dependence on Gulf oil, and the United States’ influence with the oil producing Gulf states – is one of the very reasons that China is so reluctant to take up broad-based punitive measures against Iran. China views Iran as a uniquely valuable ally given its status as outside the U.S. orbit, and thus, not likely to be influenced by U.S. pressure in case of any increased tensions between the U.S. and China. Why would China burn its one reliable source of oil in the Gulf in an effort to hammer Iran back into the U.S. sphere of influence which would render Iran without a lifeline going forward?
Rather than showing signs of concern, China shot back at the Obama administration over the weekend, taking a swipe at the United States’ penchant for viewing any and all locales around the globe as its legitimate “spheres of influence” (the faraway Persian Gulf in this instance) while denying other powerful nations’ claims to similar prerogatives.
Just days after United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the occasion of a speech in Paris to lecture China on its national security interests and warned Beijing of “economic insecurity and diplomatic isolation” if it did not sign onto new sanctions against Iran, China hit back.
On Saturday, Beijing escalated its rhetoric against US arms sales to Taiwan, which it views as part of its territory, by suspending all military exchanges with the US, summoning the American ambassador to Beijing and using Clinton’s own language about “long-term implications”. [...]
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said of the US’s US$6.4 billion arms package for Taiwan that Washington should “truly respect China’s core interests and major concerns, and immediately rescind the mistaken decision to sell arms to Taiwan, and stop selling arms to Taiwan to avoid damaging broader China-US relations”.
The official Xinhua news agency followed this up with hints that the sales could damage diplomacy involving the US’s efforts to get China’s backing in its nuclear stand-offs with Iran and North Korea. It said the sales “will cause seriously negative effects on China-US exchanges and cooperation in important areas, and ultimately will lead to consequences that neither side wishes to see”.
A commentary in the official China Daily chimed in, “From now on, the US shall not expect cooperation from China on a wide range of major regional and international issues. If you don’t care about our interests, why should we care about yours?”
Not exactly chastened, huh? This is reminiscent of the repeatedly stymied attempts to compel Pakistan to weaken its strategic position vis-a-vis India by attacking its proxies and allies in Afghanistan, whileworking for the stabilization and consolidation of power in Kabul of an Indian friendly regime, because doing so would assist U.S. interests in one of Pakistan’s neighboring states. Remarkably, or not, Pakistan finds our entreaties unpersuasive, and puts its own interests ahead of ours in its own backyard. That Pakistan’s position was not obvious from the beginning is a testament either to our ignorance or the overestimation of our ability to dictate terms on such vital matters. Either way, the results have been a hash.
Daniel Larison has an excellent discussion of the underlying dynamic brought into focus by this episode: the unipolar world of unmitigated power and influence (to the extent it existed) has come and gone, as has the Cold War bipolar world in which the U.S. was given wide latitude by virtue of its position opposite the U.S.S.R. In its wake is a multipolar world that is not as interested in Washington’s leadership to the extent that it continues to demand compliance with its narrow, uncompromising, self-referential interests. Speaking of Clinton’s threat:
The threat and the policy behind it take for granted that there is still some united international community that is ready and willing to impose isolation on “rogue states” and their allies. As far as Iran is concerned, such a community does not exist and has not existed for over a decade. Aside from the Gulf states and Egypt, concern over Iran’s nuclear program is purely that of major Western industrialized countries. No one else cares, even if their governments publicly profess boilerplate concern over nuclear proliferation…For that matter, most European governments are not all that interested in isolating Iran, much less Iran’s more powerful allies. We have an Iran policy designed for the 1980s or early 1990s, and it is absolutely ill-suited to the world in which we now live.
Leaving aside the folly of the Iran policy that Clinton is advancing with this threat, as a matter of our relationship with Beijing this sort of talk is reckless. It’s almost as if our government had threatened the USSR with diplomatic isolation because of its support for Cuba, but it is actually much more ridiculous than that. Maintaining stable, good relations with Beijing has to be an important priority for the administration. It seemed as if the administration understood that during the President’s visit to China. Now it is unclear whether they really do understand that the U.S. has no leverage, diplomatic or otherwise, to make China do anything it does not want to do. The Chinese government probably sees Clinton’s threat as the sort of empty, desperate bluster that it is. Unfortunately, this is now what passes for a statement of administration policy towards Iran: making empty threats against a major power on which we have become financially and economically dependent. The good news is that it may have minimal effect on U.S.-Chinese relations because it is an empty threat. The bad news is that it reduces Washington’s credibility that much more in the eyes of all other states.
Mousavizadeh observes, “Conventional American leadership, it is now evident, is as unwelcome in the person of Barack Obama as in George W. Bush.” Of course, it would be. The problem was never the person or the manner in which U.S. policies were carried out, but it was first and foremost the substance of those policies. Obama has followed his predecessors in continuing U.S. foreign policy much as it has been carried out since the end of the Cold War, but he is faced with a world that neither wants nor has to put up with it as often as it once did. The best approach for a real, sustained engagement policy begins with recognition of the way the world is now.
There are multiple centers of power, their interests will sometimes diverge from ours, and the issues that we have declared to be global issues in which all states have common interests often do not matter to other major powers or these conflict with their interests in a significant way. In the future, other powers will become even more capable of advancing their interests and ignoring our demands. This means that Washington has to begin reassessing which interests are genuinely vital to U.S. security and prosperity, and which are extraneous or left over from the Cold War and the last twenty years of activist policy. Once the government does this, it should reach the conclusion that halting or limiting Iran’s nuclear program is not worth damaging or wrecking relations with major powers.
The irony is that China, through its intransigence, might be doing the world a favor. As Larison, quoting a Nader Mousavizadeh article (a very, very good read in its own right), points out, sanctions such as the ones being pursued are almost always counterproductive – citing the instance of Burma:
This is not to say that the sanctions haven’t had an impact—only that they have been entirely counterproductive. In a series of recent conversations with civil-society leaders, businessmen, and foreign diplomats in Rangoon, a grim picture emerged: a middle class decimated and forced into exile; an educational system entirely unable to develop the country’s human capital; a private sector hollowed out, with only the junta’s cronies able to profit from trade in the country’s natural resources.
This has consistently been the pattern in authoritarian regimes sanctioned by and cut off from developed nations. This is what advocates of sanctions on Iran will produce if they are at all successful in imposing a new round. The lesson is a simple one, but for many Americans it seems not to have sunk in: imposing sanctions on a state to punish the government does far more to punish the people in that country and helps to keep the people weak vis-a-vis their government. Not only do sanctions not compel targeted regimes to change their internal or external behavior, but they actually free up the regimes to become even less responsive to outside influence and grievances.
Whenever engagement with Iran is raised, there are the usual objections that the current Iranian regime needs anti-Americanism too much to ever give it up, which supposedly means that Tehran will never make a meaningful deal with our government. It has always seemed odd to me that the people who say this are also the ones most intent on seeing the current regime overthrown. One would think that nothing could be more fatal to regime propaganda and its deployment of anti-Americanism than a U.S. policy towards Iran that offers full normalization of relations, commercial and educational exchange and an end to thirty years of isolation. Few things could be more useful to the current regime than being able to portray the U.S. as it sees fit and to be able to point to ongoing U.S. policies aimed at cutting off Iran from the outside world. Not only have sanctions not worked, and not only have they made the regime stronger than it would have been otherwise, but they are an impediment to pursuing the one course of action that has some chance of undermining and/or changing the Iranian government. This change is what many in the pro-sanctions crowd always say that they want, but they have chosen one of the worst ways of achieving it.
As a political matter here at home, such extensive and full engagement with Tehran is naturally a non-starter. Too many Americans in and outside the political class remain wedded to a model of global order in which Washington proposes and the rest of the world is supposed to fall in line. Anything other than this is viewed as capitulation, weakness or appeasement. Eventually, Washington will be unable to ignore that the world does not work this way, but that may not be before our government plunges into yet another disastrous conflict or embarks on dead-end policies that will continue to strengthen all the “rogue states” it is trying to punish.
Touting the limitations of U.S. power is not exactly a means of ensuring a long and distinguished career in foreign policy making, a field in which exceptionalism, and the virtues of an iron “will” and rhetorical “strength,” receive outsized reverence. Still, we would be better served by a more realistic appraisal.
[UPDATE: Ben Katcher has more.]
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An interesting analysis. What is your take on the idea that China and the US are engaged in a bit of a diplomatic dance trying to assert their authority, and that the Obama administration may be talking tough in some cases just for the sake of talking tough. Take US arms sales to Taiwan, for instance– it is clear that Taiwan could never stand up to China militarily if the People’s Republic ever decided to push the issue, and that in the long run Taiwan’s absorption into the mainland is probably inevitable. For the nonce, though, it can be a convenient pressure point against an increasingly assertive rival.
Also, what would you make of the idea that from a self-interested US perspective, a politically repressive, anti-property-rights, anti-human-rights China bursting onto the world stage ready to take first place, is a case of engagement with a totalitarian regime gone horribly wrong?
I hope I don’t sound too reactionary with this last question, I am open-minded on the issue, but the idea occurs to me.
Also, what would you make of the idea that from a self-interested US perspective, a politically repressive, anti-property-rights, anti-human-rights China bursting onto the world stage ready to take first place, is a case of engagement with a totalitarian regime gone horribly wrong?
I think that engagement with China was preferable to a hostile stance, and the benefits have been myriad. Despite the major power rivalry that is inevitable, there is surprisingly little military tension between the two states. That is a very valuable outcome all things considered.
What is your take on the idea that China and the US are engaged in a bit of a diplomatic dance trying to assert their authority, and that the Obama administration may be talking tough in some cases just for the sake of talking tough.
Certainly a possibility. And with Taiwan, we wouldn’t want to cede that pressure point, or abandon that nation, on a whim. Even if, as you note, when push comes to shove we might just let it go its own way.