Should Obama Cancel Xi's Visit - Or Serve Him a Big Mac?
With the U.S.-China relationship on tenterhooks, experts say smart diplomacy is key.
By Evan A. Feigenbaum Sophie Richardson Orville Schell Robert A. Kapp Arthur Waldron
The central problem in Asia today is the collision between economics and security. In “Economic Asia,” a dynamic group of countries, including China and the United States, trades, invests, and increasingly innovates together. This Asia is a prosperous $21 trillion juggernaut and, especially since the 2008 global financial crisis, has become the center of gravity in the world economy. But another Asia, “Security Asia,” has locked many of these same countries into an increasingly debilitating cycle of competition, arms buildups, and clashing security concepts. Instead of an “Asian century,” the region’s story resembles a “Tale of Two Asias,” with economics and security colliding, not running in parallel.
That is precisely the dynamic that confronts Xi and Obama. The United States and China have never been so economically integrated: Two-way trade has reached nearly $600 billion, and the total value of Chinese investments in the United States, once minuscule, has passed a staggering $54 billion, with (very) considerable room to grow. Yet despite that integration, security tensions have escalated apace.
At the simplest level, the problem involves choices and policies in the South China Sea, cyber-related tensions, and so on. But there are four deeper problems that exacerbate security tensions and, more strikingly, make coordination difficult even on issues where the two sides share interests.
First, Washington and Beijing have some clashing security concepts in Asia and, as a result, increasingly are talking past each other. In the South China Sea, for example, Beijing asserts maritime rights and interests, while Washington talks mostly about international norms, rules, and law. The two governments disagree, fundamentally, on how to interpret some important aspects of international law. Indeed, the United States perceives that China acts as if its interests trump international law.
Second, even when the two sides share interests, these are, too often, overly general in nature — “peace,” “stability,” “security,” “non-provocation,” and so on.
Third, the two sides often view one another’s policies as undermining their ostensibly shared interests. Take North Korea: some Americans argue that Chinese policies have shielded Pyongyang from the effects of the international sanctions Beijing voted for. Or look at Central Asia, where the two sides repeatedly have declared a shared commitment to “stability” and “security.” As Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the region in 2006 and 2007, I heard Chinese officials argue ad infinitum that U.S. actions to promote political reform would undermine this shared interest and, ultimately, destabilize these countries.
Fourth, the United States and China have had trouble turning abstract common interests into concrete complementary policies because of countervailing interests that, too often, obstruct cooperation. In Afghanistan, for example, China certainly has shared America’s core interest for over a decade: a stable Afghan state that does not harbor, nurture, or export terrorism. But cooperation proved elusive for much of this period because Beijing never relished a path to victory that might yield a long-term NATO presence on China’s western border or require U.S. access agreements in Central Asia.
What does this mean for the Xi visit? For one, the United States and China need to thicken economic cooperation, and soon, especially around two-way investment. This will not overcome security competition, but at least it will help to anchor it in a strengthened framework. This would mean, for example, making real gains toward a serious Bilateral Investment Treaty and demonstrable progress on the cyber problem, which threatens to ride the relationship off the rails and, in collateral damage, undermine support for U.S.-China ties in corporate America.
Similarly, the United States and China badly need a track record of concrete successes in places where shared strategic interests exist but remain too abstract. This doesn’t require joint projects and actions, merely complementary ones. Take, for example, counternarcotics in Afghanistan and Central Asia: China works bilaterally and through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization; the United States works mostly bilaterally through security assistance and capacity building. But Washington and Beijing don’t need joint efforts, just to coordinate areas of focus, direct their financial assistance at similar drugs-related goals, and build complementary capacity while maintaining separate efforts.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/21/obama-xi-jinping-cancel-visit-china-cyber-diplomacy/
