Tame the Bull in Clinton’s China Shop : *An incoherent foreign policy ignores a looming power threat.

President Clinton’s State of the Union address made it abundantly clear that foreign affairs now enjoys little more than ghetto status in the national scale of priorities. Wedged awkwardly between passages on the environment and reinventing government, the speech’s foreign policy section was merely a perfunctory recitation of some of the administration’s claimed successes in a ragbag of places like Haiti, Northern Ireland and Bosnia. Conspicuously missing was any sense that the administration is coming to grips with the truly important foreign policy challenges where--unlike Bosnia--Americans may once again have to fight a global war if things go wrong.

In this context, the absence of any reference to China was especially disturbing. For if ever there was an issue worthy of superpower attention, it is China. China’s nuclear program, its missile tests, its increased defense expenditures, its belligerency toward Taiwan, its in-your-face human rights behavior are all well known sources of concern. Lesser powers like Britain have conceded that they can do nothing to prevent China from snuffing out Hong Kong’s fledgling democracy when the territory reverts to China next year.

All in all, China is ominously reminiscent of Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany on its rise to world power. Like Germany, which felt that it had been cheated in the 19th century scramble for colonial empire, China feels, not without reason, that it has several scores to settle arising from its maltreatment at the hands of Japan and the West during its period of weakness.

To compensate for these past slights, China is now intent on asserting its rights as a world power. As the centerpiece of its foreign policy ideology, it appears to have adopted that uncompromisingly aggressive bumper sticker from the 1970s, “Don’t get mad, get even.”

As pre-1914 Germany showed, a country in this state of mind is a very dangerous animal. It has a tendency to kick out blindly, causing others to do the same. Before anyone can draw breath, an uncontrollable stampede toward war has started.

Preventing a disaster of this sort will require statesmanship of an exceptionally high caliber. Here lies the true challenge for the United States.

U.S. policy must accomplish two apparently contradictory objectives. It must both accommodate China’s great-power aspirations while at the same time setting limits on them. To do this, an integrated, long-term approach that balances the various ingredients of China policy--strategic, commercial, regional, human rights, and so on--will be indispensable.

Some pious rhetoric aside, the Clinton administration sadly shows little sign of conforming to this exacting standard. Far from achieving an integrated approach, it has been content to allow the various executive departments to pursue their own single-issue agendas with a minimum of coordination.

On occasion, this has exposed rifts within a single department, as when the State Department’s human rights coordinator has appeared at odds with the secretary of state. At other times, pressure from the U.S. trade representative over China’s unfair trade practices has collided with the Pentagon’s wish to secure China’s help on North Korea, thus shortchanging both objectives.

The administration’s bumbling is compounded by the legislative branch. Fueled by the Taiwan lobby (second only to Israel in effectiveness on Capitol Hill), Congress has been unable to resist twisting the administration’s tail over the explosive issue of Taiwan and by holding up for months the appointment of an ambassador to Beijing.

As if this state of affairs was not already sufficiently difficult, the Chinese seem determined to make it downright impossible for even their friends to support them. With their refusal to explain their increased defense appropriations, their arrogance over trade and their contemptuous refusal to entertain even mild human rights representations, the Chinese provide daily ammunition for their enemies.

Are we doomed therefore sometime in the next 20 years to blunder into war with China, not because either side wants war, but because neither side has the gumption to prevent it?

Possibly, but not necessarily.

The secret lies in realizing what is important and coming up with a plan to do that well. Great wars start because of irreconcilable competition between great powers. Moderating this competition is the true task of great-power diplomacy.

No one begrudges the accolades that U.S. officials will enjoy over the coming months in Sarajevo so long as they realize that Bosnia is secondary stuff. The true test of whether American diplomacy deserves peace prizes lies not in settling minor civil wars but in averting war with China.