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Sigaba
10-23-2009, 02:13
Have you heard that the U.S. has a new "doctrine"? Source is here (http://www.state.gov/s/d/2009/129686.htm). The first portion of the speech is below. The balance of the speech is attached hereto in PDF format. I am attaching it because it has been my experience that the current administration tends to move statements of policy and policy preferences from one day to the next.;) But I trust this administration completely--without hesitation, reservation, rancor, nor bitterness.Secretary Remarks
Administration's Vision of the U.S.-China Relationship

James B. Steinberg
Deputy Secretary of State
Keynote Address at the Center for a New American Security
Washington, DC
September 24, 2009

DEPUTY SECRETARY STEINBERG: Well, thank you, Nate, for that kind introduction.

It’s a great pleasure to be back and to be here at this CNAS event. It’s great to see, although I had no doubt about it, that CNAS is still thriving despite the Obama Administration’s best efforts to deprive you of each and every one of your leading lights. And every meeting I go to seems to be populated by so many of the good people – not only Kurt and Michele, obviously, but Jim Miller and so many others who made CNAS so successful, and the really remarkable achievement in such a short period of time that CNAS has become an indispensable feature on the Washington landscape, no mean feat with the number of competitors that you all have out here, including some that I used to work for. And I think that this study that you’re launching today really is a reflection of the continued critical role that CNAS plays in creative and timely work that you do.

Obviously, as everyone in this audience knows, and we will be seeing a lot of it in the coming week or so, this year marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, which, of course, is part of the reason you scheduled this event now. As we think back on those 60 years, for about half of them – for about 30 – the relationship between the United States was not exactly the best, ranging from hostile at its worst, to nonexistent through much of the time.

And so in some ways, from a policymaker’s perspective and from a U.S. perspective, the more significant and momentous anniversary is not so much the 60 years since the founding of the PRC, but the 30 years since the United States and China normalized relations under President Carter and Deng Xiaoping in 1979. And I think it’s not entirely coincidental that if you look for a date, that you could roughly time the rise of China and its remarkable transformation – it’s about that time as well that the rise began – part of which having to do with the bilateral relationship and obviously largely to do with decisions China made about its own internal developments.

I think it’s fair to say that despite – I know, the great ambitions and hopes of Kurt and Michele, I don’t think even they, perhaps, would have guessed how far CNAS has come. And in the same way, I think those who were present in 1979 probably could not imagine how far China has come in those 30 years. It’s really truly a remarkable story. And for those of us who have been visiting China over the years, it’s just amazing, each time you visit, how much change you see happening right before our eyes.

It is a remarkable period to reflect back on and the decisions that were made during that period and the transformation of the U.S.-China relationship, and the great insight that began with President Nixon and followed through by President Carter was the fundamental recognition that the long-term interests of the United States were better served not by trying to thwart China’s ambitions, but rather to explore the possibility of whether China could become a partner with the United States. And while the motivations for those decisions in the 1970s were largely rooted in the dynamics of the Cold War, when we were focused on getting Chinese help encountering the Soviet Union, it is even more important in today’s reality that we recall that basic insight.

Secretary Clinton described that reality recently in her Council on Foreign Relations speech as a reality characterized by two inescapable facts, and I’m quoting her: “First, no nation can meet the world’s challenges alone,” and “Second, most nations worry about the same global threats.”

In this world, and under those circumstances, the logic of international cooperation is overwhelming. Countries have a great deal to gain if we can work together, and much to lose if we don’t. But applying this insight to our relations with China poses a fundamental conundrum. Given China’s growing capabilities and influence, we have an especially compelling need to work with China to meet global challenges. Yet China’s very size and importance also raises the risk of competition and rivalry that can thwart that cooperation.

Now, you all know I’m a part-time academic and so I can’t resist this part of the speech, but historians since Thucydides have pointed to a long string of conflicts generated by the emergence of rising powers that disturb the old order and challenge the existing power structure and predict the same gloomy future for China’s rise. Political scientists and IR theorists talk darkly of security dilemmas that lead nations to take actions to protect their own security against potential adversaries, and that, by taking those actions, fuel the very conflicts they were hoping to avert.

These academic perspectives obviously have strong resonance in the political debates we hear not only in the United States, but in China today. So how do we square this circle? Adapting to the rise of China, as well as other emerging powers like India and Brazil, while protecting our own national interests. This, I believe, is one of the key strategic challenges of our time. And the key to solving it is what I would call strategic reassurance.

Strategic reassurance rests on a core, if tacit, bargain. Just as we and our allies must make clear that we are prepared to welcome China’s “arrival”, as you all have so nicely put it, as a prosperous and successful power, China must reassure the rest of the world that its development and growing global role will not come at the expense of security and well-being of others. Bolstering that bargain must be a priority in the U.S.-China relationship. And strategic reassurance must find ways to highlight and reinforce the areas of common interest, while addressing the sources of mistrust directly, whether they be political, military or economic.

Now part of this reassurance comes from sustained dialogue. It’s important to recall, and Secretary Kissinger just reminded me of it a few days ago, that we began the new era of our relationship with China with some 25 hours of extended dialogue between Henry Kissinger and Zhou Enlai. And the importance of broad-ranging dialogue is at the core of our decision to elevate and broaden the strategic and economic dialogue between the United States and China. Part of achieving strategic reassurance comes from enhancing transparency.

Sigaba
10-23-2009, 02:20
Source is here (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/04/AR2009100403262_pf.html).Obama's Meeting With the Dalai Lama Is Delayed
Move Appears to Be A Nod to Chinese

By John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 5, 2009

In an attempt to gain favor with China, the United States pressured Tibetan representatives to postpone a meeting between the Dalai Lama and President Obama until after Obama's summit with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, scheduled for next month, according to diplomats, government officials and other sources familiar with the talks.

For the first time since 1991, the Tibetan spiritual leader will visit Washington this week and not meet with the president. Since 1991, he has been here 10 times. Most times the meetings have been "drop-in" visits at the White House. The last time he was here, in 2007, however, George W. Bush became the first sitting president to meet with him publicly, at a ceremony at the Capitol in which he awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress's highest civilian award.

The U.S. decision to postpone the meeting appears to be part of a strategy to improve ties with China that also includes soft-pedaling criticism of China's human rights and financial policies as well as backing efforts to elevate China's position in international institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund. Obama administration officials have termed the new policy "strategic reassurance," which entails the U.S. government taking steps to convince China that it is not out to contain the emerging Asian power.

Before a visit to China in February, for example, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said advocacy for human rights could not "interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate-change crisis and the security crisis" -- a statement that won her much goodwill in Beijing. U.S. Treasury officials have also stopped accusing China of artificially deflating the value of its currency to make its exports more attractive.

In explaining their reluctance to meet the Dalai Lama now, U.S. officials told Tibetan representatives that they wanted to work with China on critical issues, including nuclear weapons proliferation in North Korea and Iran, said an Asian diplomat with direct knowledge of the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. Administration officials also hinted that they were considering selling a new tranche of weapons to Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory.

"They were worried about too many irritating factors all at once," said the Asian diplomat. "They didn't want to have too many things straining the relationship." What is not clear is whether the administration was bending to specific Chinese demands or whether it decided unilaterally, in the words of one participant in the talks, "to throw the Chinese a bone."

A senior administration official denied that the Dalai Lama had sought a meeting with Obama in October and "instead he would like to see him in December." He said it was "counter-factual" to assume that a meeting had been postponed. The official briefed a reporter on the condition that his name not be used.

U.S. officials also said they are not pulling punches with the Chinese. They have, however, indicated that they want to try something new on Tibet, figuring that the old policy -- of meeting with the Dalai Lama regularly and calling for substantive talks between China and his representatives -- had achieved little. American officials told Tibetan representatives that "this president is not interested in symbolism or photo ops but in deliverables," the Asian diplomat said. "He wants something to come out of his efforts over Tibet, rather than just checking a box."

Talks between China and representatives of the Dalai Lama, who fled China in 1959 after an anti-Chinese uprising, collapsed in 2008. There are signs that they might resume soon.

What Did China Think?

U.S. officials began to express doubts about the meeting between the Dalai Lama and Obama soon after the Group of 20 meeting in April when the United States and China agreed that Obama would visit Beijing later this year, the Asian diplomat said.

Before that White House and State Department officials had told Tibetan representatives that it was simply a matter of finding the right day, the Asian diplomat said. "They said they would live with the meeting, would live with the Chinese being upset," he said. "But then there was strong push-back."

The Tibetan representatives did not bend initially. So in May, retired U.S. diplomats got involved, meeting with prominent American friends of the Tibetan movement in an attempt to get them to exert pressure on the Dalai Lama and his representatives to relent, according to sources with direct knowledge of these interventions. Meanwhile, a string of Chinese delegations began contacting American academics and others close to the Tibetan movement in an effort to gauge whether Obama would have the meeting, said people who met with the Chinese. Ironically, according to participants in these talks, the Chinese had come to the conclusion that Obama was going to meet with the Dalai Lama in October and that the only issue was how the Tibetan leader would be received in the White House.

"We've got the classic case of a Western government yet again conceding to Chinese pressure that is imaginary long after that Chinese pressure has ceased to exist," said Robert Barnett, a Tibetan expert at Columbia University. "The Chinese must be falling over themselves with astonishment at what Western diplomats will give them without being asked. I don't know what the poker analogy would be. 'Please, see all my cards and take my money, too?' "

In August, Tibetan representatives laid out the issue for the Dalai Lama. There were dangers if he gave in to American pressure, the Asian diplomat said. One, it "could set a precedent and make China feel even more arrogant than it already is," the diplomat said. Two, it could make it more difficult for the Dalai Lama to meet with the heads of state of other countries. China has launched a worldwide effort to stop heads of state from hosting the Tibetan leader. The Dalai Lama is to travel to New Zealand and Australia later this year and has yet to secure a commitment from their leaders to meet. "A lot of smaller countries will have the best excuse," he said. "They'll say, 'Give us a break. How about the big United States?' "

Finally, Tibetan officials worried about how Chinese authorities would portray the victory in China. "They would obviously tell the people of Tibet that His Holiness was rejected in Washington," the Asian diplomat said.

Nonetheless, the Dalai Lama relented, the Asian diplomat said. "He said work with the Americans," the diplomat said. "He did not want to irritate them."

Official Response

In late August, Lodi Gyari, the Dalai Lama's representative in Washington, met with Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser and assistant to Obama, before she traveled to Dharmsala, India, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile. Gyari tried again to persuade the administration to accept a meeting in October.

It didn't work. A second senior administration official pointed to Jarrett's visit to Dharmsala as a sign of how much Obama cares about Tibet.

Jarrett met with the Dalai Lama on Sept. 13 and 14. The office of the Dalai Lama issued a positive statement about the meeting. In the third paragraph from the bottom was the sentence: "His Holiness is looking forward to meeting President Obama after his visit to China." The operative word was "after."

Sigaba
10-23-2009, 02:37
So how is "Strategic Reassurance" working thus far?

Maureen Dowd, the New York Times's harridan in residence,* has offered the following view available here (http://tinyurl.com/yk3v24r).October 18, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Fie, Fatal Flaw!
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

One singular leader who wrote elegantly about his ideals, was swept into the presidency and then collided with harsh reality had some advice for another.

In an interview with Alison Smale in The Times last week, Vaclav Havel sipped Champagne in the middle of the afternoon and pricked Barack Obama’s conscience.

Havel, the 73-year-old former Czech president, who didn’t win a Nobel Peace Prize despite leading the Czechs and the Slovaks from communism to democracy, turned the tables and asked Smale a question about Obama, the latest winner of the peace prize.

Was it true that the president had refused to meet the Dalai Lama on his visit to Washington?

He was told that Obama had indeed tried to curry favor with China by declining to see the Dalai Lama until after the president’s visit to China next month.

Dissing the Dalai was part of a broader new Obama policy called “strategic reassurance” — softening criticism of China’s human rights record and financial policies to calm its fears that America is trying to contain it. (Not to mention our own fears that the Chinese will quit bankrolling our debt.)

The tyro American president got the Nobel for the mere anticipation that he would provide bold moral leadership for the world at the very moment he was caving to Chinese dictators. Awkward.

Havel reached out to touch a glass dish given to him by Obama, inscribed with the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. “It is only a minor compromise,” he said. “But exactly with these minor compromises start the big and dangerous ones, the real problems.”

Our president would be well advised to listen. Havel is looking at this not only as a moral champion but as a playwright. Obama (who, as Robert Draper wrote, has read and reread Shakespeare’s tragedies) does not want his fatal flaw to be that he compromises so much that his ideals get blurred out of recognition.

As Leon Wieseltier writes in the upcoming New Republic: “The demotion of human rights by the common-ground presidency is absolutely incomprehensible. The common ground is not always the high ground. When it is without end, moreover, the search for common ground is bad for bargaining. It informs the other side that what you most desire is the deal — that you will never acknowledge the finality of the difference, and never be satisfied with the integrity of opposition. There is a reason that ‘uncompromising’ is a term of approbation.”

F.D.R. asked to be judged by the enemies he had made. But what of a president who strives to keep everyone in some vague middle ground of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, without ever offending anyone?

White House advisers don’t seem worried yet that Obama’s transformational aura could get smudged if too much is fudged. They say it is the normal tension between campaigning on a change platform and actually accomplishing something in office.<<SNIP>>
The Wall Street Journal is also unimpressed. Source is here (http://tinyurl.com/yk6n84q).
OCTOBER 22, 2009, 1:52 P.M. ET

The Doctrine of 'Strategic Reassurance'
What does the Obama formula for U.S.-China relations really mean?

By KELLEY CURRIE

When President Barack Obama lands in China next month, he'll come carrying a new catchphrase for the U.S.-China relationship: "strategic reassurance." But like the rest of the administration's policies toward Beijing, it's hard to understand the tangible goals of such an approach.

"Strategic reassurance" appears to be the intellectual successor to the Bush administration's "responsible stakeholder" policy framework coined by former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick. That meme sought to encourage China's rise as a global economic and military power, while encouraging it to play by the established rules, whether in trade deals or military operations in international waters. While in practice this policy often was geared more toward expanding China's stake in the international system and less about inducing responsible behavior, the underlying rationale for it was rooted in an acknowledgement that China's behavior fell short of international norms, as well as a commitment to defend those norms.

The Obama administration's phrase, rolled out by Mr. Zoellick's successor, James Steinberg, at a speech in Washington last month, is presumably meant to indicate a new approach. In describing the concept, Mr. Steinberg said, "strategic reassurance must find ways to highlight and reinforce the areas of common interest, while addressing the sources of mistrust directly, whether they be political, military or economic." But neither the White House nor the State Department has said much since the speech, leaving the interpretation to China-watchers and academics.

Some have tried to portray "strategic reassurance" as a narrow formula for managing the increasing propensity for the U.S. and China to rub up against each other in security matters, such as U.S. naval operations that fall within what China claims is its exclusive economic zone, or as a mechanism for calming Chinese fears about the security of their large pile of dollar-denominated assets. But there is also a more damaging interpretation, given the administration's downplaying of human rights on the bilateral agenda, the decision not to meet with the Dalai Lama during his recent visit to Washington, and the endless chase for Chinese cooperation on a raft of other "important" issues from climate change to Iran. What if "strategic reassurance" is nothing more than a fancy way of saying "appeasement"?

Lurking under this discussion is the question of whether "strategic reassurance" dovetails with or challenges China's own policy priorities. The Obama administration urgently needs to clarify this. The Chinese have lately been calling on international partners and interlocutors to undertake relations based on respect for China's "core interests." Beijing identifies these as being, in order of priority: the stability and preservation of the current authoritarian regime; respect for the territorial integrity of China; and the preservation of a positive environment for China's continued economic and political rise.

If Washington's "strategic reassurance" means reassuring China that the U.S. will not challenge these priorities, it would mark a major change in U.S. policy, particularly with respect to Beijing's top priority of preserving the current regime. China scholar Aaron Friedberg has noted that political liberalization has long been an important underlying policy objective of U.S. dealings with China. This is as it should be, given that many of the fundamental tensions in the U.S.-China relationship arise from or are amplified by the differences in the two countries' domestic political systems. Abandonment of this policy objective would be a serious strategic error.

If "strategic reassurance" was developed primarily with China's third priority of a positive environment for its continued rise in mind it would still be a mistake. U.S. policy makers have frequently misidentified China's real priorities and, as a result, developed mismatched policy responses that failed to take full advantage of leverage that could be used to advance U.S. interests. The six-party talks on North Korea are a good example: The U.S. side has operated under a misguided belief that the Chinese cared more about helping achieve American goals than they do, and even worked to allay China's concerns about the North Korean regime's stability instead of using these to push China to act more forcefully.

There is a chance that the U.S. is starting a quiet but important strategic shift away from a policy that incorporates an understood, if often inchoate, desire to see China become a more liberal and democratic society, toward an acceptance of China as a permanent authoritarian state that the U.S. and other Western countries are encouraging to become a global superpower. This would be an important development, but it is hardly reassuring.

Ms. Currie is a nonresident fellow with the Project 2049 Institute, a think tank in Washington.
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* My apologies to the Duchess of Cornwall. Sorry.