The Effects of 9/11 on China's Strategic Environment: Illusive Gains and Tangible Setbacks by Marc
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Secretary Panetta meets with then–Vice President Xi Jinping of China to discuss ways to advance communications DOD (Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo) THE EFFEcts OF 9/11 ON CHINA’S StratEGIC ENVIroNMENT ILLusIVE GaINS AND TANGIBLE SETBacks By MARC KOEHLER The clear victor of the global war on terror appears to be China.1 —Anatol Lieven ome Chinese grand strategists China, therefore, would lie within a of U.S. forces into Central Asia, and the are said to have breathed sighs strategic penumbra for a number of years, exploding U.S. military footprint suggested of relief on September 12, 2001. offering it a chance to develop quietly a plans for a more enduring American presence Relations between the United variety of coercive military capabilities in China’s rear areas. It appeared to be too S soon, therefore, for leaders across Eurasia to States and the People’s Republic of China intended to expand its power in East Asia. (PRC) had been heading downhill in the This, in turn, would allow it to pressure pro- resign themselves to the Chinese hegemony months and years leading up to that day, with independence forces on Taiwan and raise that had seemed inevitable before 9/11. increasing prospects for a significant clash. substantially the projected cost to U.S. forces As the second decade of the 21st century But even before the fires at the World Trade that might be called on to react to PRC mili- begins, the global landscape is changing once Center and Pentagon were completely out, it tary provocations in the region. Such, at least, more. China is rapidly expanding a wide was immediately clear—to Chinese experts was the initial thinking among many PRC variety of military capabilities of the People’s and to most of the world—that Washing- experts and international observers. Liberation Army (PLA), which in turn is ton’s strategic focus would be shifting 3,000 But after a year or two, strategists across bringing about a new level of assertiveness miles to the west, away from East Asia and the globe started to have second thoughts. By in PRC foreign policy. Despite the multiyear the Taiwan Strait and onto the mountains the end of 2001, after a handful of U.S. special efforts of U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty and deserts of Afghanistan. U.S. strategists operations forces ousted the Taliban regime Organization (NATO) soldiers and civilians, who had been increasingly concerned about in a matter of weeks, global assessments of success in Afghanistan remains in question. China’s rising power would now be engaged U.S. power started shifting. Governments around the clock on what would become throughout the region scrambled to accom- Marc Koehler is a Foreign Service Officer with the known as the war on terror. modate the aggressive and determined entry Department of State. ndupress.ndu.edu issue 68, 1 st quarter 2013 / JFQ 91 FEATURES | The Effects of 9/11 on China’s Strategic Environment U.S. influence in the Middle East is dimin- had identified with Clausewitzian precision During the Clinton years, Sino-Amer- ished after the Iraq invasion. The measurable as the center of gravity of Taiwan’s defense). ican ties continued to be a target of critics in costs to the United States from the war on Later that year, Deng Xiaoping became the both countries. Beijing’s coercive population terror include at least $1 trillion and more first communist Chinese leader to visit the control policies were attacked by Christian than 6,000 U.S. dead; less quantifiable are the United States. His pragmatism and apparent groups while organized labor raised concerns global costs to the U.S. reputation and soft moderation impressed U.S. audiences, spark- over goods produced by PRC prisoners for power. But at the same time, U.S. alliances ing popular support for enhanced bilateral sale in U.S. markets. Tibet became a cause with Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), ties.3 China’s soft power was growing.4 célèbre in Congress and on college cam- and Australia are robust and expanding, a But Sino-American ties ruptured puses across the country. But in addition to nascent U.S.-India friendship is deepening, severely on June 4, 1989, when PLA troops concerns about human rights, U.S. worries and the U.S. military footprint in Central in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square about security issues now became much more Asia remains significant. There are several opened fire on unarmed students and other pronounced. For example, despite intensive drivers of these relationships, the most civilians protesting against corruption diplomacy, the Clinton administration failed important of which is strategic mistrust over and in favor of democracy. Western media to prevent Chinese proliferation of missile China’s intentions. In short, the PLA military coverage of China switched overnight, and nuclear technology to Iran and Pakistan. buildup, coupled with Beijing’s recent foreign portraying the Chinese leadership as bar- Washington imposed sanctions on PRC enti- policy aggressiveness, seems to be driving baric and backward.5 Parliamentarians and ties for violations of international regimes.10 Eurasian nations closer to the United States. nongovernmental organizations expressed PRC strategists assessed that U.S. and How, then, should one assess the impact revulsion at the massacre and demanded Western attacks on Moscow’s human rights of 9/11 on China’s strategic environment? their governments cease business as usual practices had been instrumental in weaken- Ten years after the terror attacks against New with “the butchers of Beijing.” Western ing the foundation of Soviet control, so they York City and Washington, DC, is China governments responded with all instru- worried about the same with regard to China. better off strategically? Or do the gains and ments of national power including canceling They viewed the imposition of sanctions as losses balance out? This article examines existing arms deals, ceasing military-to- part of an effort to “contain” China. Start- these questions, first by outlining the history military exchanges, imposing sanctions on ing in 1985, PRC leaders ordered the PLA of Sino-American relations to illustrate the the regime and travel bans on high-level to downgrade preparations for a major war downward spiral that marked the period up PRC officials, suspending loans and export with the Soviet Union and begin planning to 9/11. Next it discusses the strategic gains credits, and tightening controls on exports of for fighting local, limited wars on China’s that PRC scholars and others thought would military hardware and advanced technology periphery, such as a conflict over Taiwan.11 accrue to China in the immediate aftermath to China.6 U.S. public opinion of the PRC After the 1991 Gulf War, PLA planners of 9/11, and the PLA military buildup that government declined sharply, to this day also began to concentrate on the possibility ensued. The strategic costs to China that never returning to the positive levels that of war with the United States; war games became evident in the years that followed prevailed before 1989.7 against “the American ‘enemy’” became standard.12 The Taiwan Strait Crises in 1995 from the depths of the Korean War to the heights of and 1996 and the accidental U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 President Richard Nixon’s groundbreaking visit to China in exacerbated an increasingly antagonistic 1972, Sino-American relations have been complicated relationship.13 Debate about “the China threat” heated are analyzed in the subsequent section. This During the same period, two other up globally. Congress reacted by directing article concludes with an assessment of the global events had significant impacts on the Secretary of Defense to begin submitting situation as of 2011, arguing that ultimately Sino-American relations. First, Taiwan’s annual reports on “the current and future China lost more than it gained in the after- authoritarian regime began to give way to military strategy” of the PRC.14 Congress math of 9/11. representative democracy. In 1989, as PRC also established in 2000 the U.S.-China Eco- authorities unleashed the crackdown in nomic and Security Review Commission to Strategic and Historical Context Tiananmen, Taiwan held its first multiparty “monitor, investigate and submit to Congress From the depths of the Korean War elections, increasing support for Taiwan in an annual report on the national security to the heights of President Richard Nixon’s the United States—especially in Congress.8 implications” of Sino-American trade, and to groundbreaking visit to China in 1972, Sino- Second, the dramatic collapse of communist focus as well on Chinese proliferation prac- American relations have been complicated. regimes in Eastern Europe starting in 1989, tices and restrictions on free speech.15 Con- The shared perception that Soviet power and of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, under- gress also set up the Congressional-Executive was growing, and threatening, brought the cut the strategic rationale for collaboration Commission on Human Rights to “monitor two sides together in the early 1970s and with China. Absent an existential threat human rights and the development of the kept frictions to a minimum for nearly two from the Soviet Union, the ability of the rule of law in China” and to report annually decades.2 Diplomatic ties were established in White House to cite national security con- on these topics.16 1979, which necessitated the termination of cerns to override pluralistic U.S. domestic Against this backdrop, George W. Bush the U.S.-Taiwan defense treaty (which Beijing interests eroded.9 entered the White House in 2001 promising 92 JFQ / issue 68, 1 st quarter 2013 ndupress.ndu.edu KOEHLER to treat China not as the “strategic partner” U.S.