As the White House prepares for President Obama's inaugural visit to
China in November, it's faced with two possible approaches in planning
for what the trip can achieve.
The first is to follow the
safe "laundry list" technique, which identifies a long, sometimes
unwieldy set of policy objectives, but which China may or may not view
as being in its own national interest.
This list would include
important topics such as environmental, energy and monetary issues.
Raising these at the presidential level could well result in
incremental progress, but they and other themes can also be advanced
through the ongoing Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) at a
ministerial level.
President Obama is in a unique position to
break the mold of presidential summitry. Three overarching
"deliverables" could be identified that if implemented would
significantly reshape the U.S.-China relationship and address serious
challenges the two countries face together.
1. Establish a
formal mechanism among the leaders of the United States, China and
Pakistan
China is Pakistan's most important supporter both because of their geographic proximity and China's perception of Pakistan as a counterweight to India.
Coordinating policy and economic support for Pakistan would yield a higher return for all three nations. The interests for the United States and China are consonant in Pakistan: removing extremist fundamentalist activity, stabilizing the leadership and encouraging economic growth.
While Pakistan and
Afghanistan remains a pivotal challenge to U.S. policy, "AfPak" policy
should not be commingled in the context of China, as these two
countries mean two entirely different things for Beijing and
Washington.
For China, Pakistan holds geostrategic, political
and economic importance. Afghanistan is for China primarily an economic
opportunity with less, if any, strategic value.
The United
States should make clear it does not want to displace Beijing's
influence in Islamabad, but a tripartite approach would advance shared
interests and deliver more tangible results in Pakistan.
2. Support Chinese Economic Engagement in Afghanistan
Obama should accelerate the proposed mining schedule for development of the Aynak
Copper Reserve in Afghanistan, where the state-owned China
Metallurgical Group holds the concession and where Afghan authorities
are protecting the copper fields.
Aynak is located about 20 miles southeast of Kabul and is the site of one of the world's largest undeveloped copper deposits.
With
a bid of approximately $3 billion, which includes infrastructure
upgrades in Logar Province, where Aynak is situated - and that is known
to Afghans as the "gates of jihad" - there is the opportunity for
development in this critical region.
Breaking ground at Aynak
with American and Chinese officials present would be of great symbolic
value. Moreover, China possesses the actual wherewithal to develop the
concession in these forbidding lands. Any progress toward increased
stability by generating employment would have ripple effects throughout
the community.
3. Support the "Sanya Initiative"
This little
known but important program that brings together retired service chiefs
from each of the armed forces of the U.S. and China. The first meeting
was held last year in the resort town of Sanya in China, and this year,
it was held in Hawaii, with follow-up trips to Washington and New York.
The initiative is important because it opens up new channels of
communication. Furthermore, by its very existence, it is creating
greater military transparency and could lead to a better understanding
on both sides.
In potential crisis situations, this channel could be even more valuable if official communications were blocked.
The Sanya Initiative is currently funded entirely by private donations.
For the program to really succeed, however, it must have support from
leaders of both China and the United States. Hence strengthening
military ties must be a deliverable, particularly since both sides
agree that military-to-military relations are not where they should be.
The
United States and China should also strive to build and use other
informal contacts on security issues. These could allow discussion of
topics that might be difficult or sensitive to raise in formal
government channels.
Today one often hears the refrain that America is becoming an economic satellite of a rising China.
The
Obama trip to Beijing provides an opportunity to elevate the
relationship to include constructive engagement in concentric areas of
shared interest - stabilizing Pakistan, advancing soft power interests
in Afghanistan, and cooperating on security matters and shared
challenges in East Asia.
Mark
Brzezinski, a partner at a law firm in Washington, served on the
National Security Council in the Clinton Administration, and is a member of the Atlantic Initiative's advisory board.
Mark Fung,
associate in research at the Fairbank Center at Harvard University, was
general counsel of the China-Africa Development Fund in Beijing.
This article was originally published on October 30th in The New York Times and is republished here with kind permission from the authors.
Related materials from the Atlantic Community:
- Joshua Posaner on Does China Matter? A Reassessment
- Ting Xu on China's Rise and the Emerging G3 Global Framework
- Parag Khanna on Obama Needs the Unusual Suspects to Pacify South-Central Asia
- 17
November 6, 2009
Adam K. Svensson, Lund University, Bronze Contributor (22)
China's economic interest in Afghanistan is also potentially a good thing. If Afghanistan really gets its economic system working, it will entail development in many other areas as well.
Both China's and the US's involvement in this region is, hence, in many ways good. Simultaneously I see potential problems that need to be considered. As mr. Brzezinski and mr. Fung hints at, the two great powers' interests in the region can quite naturally be derived from their respective domestic needs. The US wants to prevent terrorism from rising, and China wants to make money.
In the long run, the Afghanistan and Pakistan region must develop their own way of achieving and keeping a stable society (hopefully of the democratic kind). Abundant influence of great powers like the US and China will, again in the long run, if anything slow down that process. If the peoples of the region don't feel that they can create their own futures and always are dependent on other parts of the world in too many respects, the development of the region will be significantly delayed.
National autonomy is utterly important to us in the West. It is equally important to the peoples of the rest of the world.