The Monroe Doctrine, Chinese-Style

For most of the 1990s, Western and Asian defense specialists have urged their usually secretive Chinese counterparts to be more “transparent” and issue a White Paper outlining China’s military and national-security policies. With President Bill Clinton’s unprecedented nine-day visit safely behind it, Beijing has complied. The document, which has received scant media attention, is remarkably candid and, as such, poses serious questions for U.S. policymakers.

For starters, Beijing should be commended for allowing us a glimpse of its aspirations, its official--though grossly understated--defense figures and its perspective on a range of national-security issues. But the revealed vision is one of an Asian Pacific incompatible with U.S. interests and national-security policy. Worse still, it makes the guiding principle of the Clinton administration’s policy--a “strategic partnership” with China--appear naive, at best, if not downright foolish.

Consider the White Paper’s description of what it counts as factors threatening peace: “Hegemonism and power politics remain the main forces of threats to world peace and stability . . . the enlargement of military blocs and the strengthening of military alliances have added factors of instability to international security; some countries by relying on their military advantages pose military threats to other countries.”

The United States is never named outright, but there can be little doubt that “some countries” signifies, first and foremost, the United States. China is dissing a world order dominated by the United States and the idea of deterrence, which is central to U.S. strategy. More specifically, its rebuff of military alliances is a thinly veiled rejection of both expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the recently strengthened U.S.-Japan alliance, the cornerstone of U.S. policy toward East Asia.

This official Chinese view flies directly in the face of long-standing U.S. policy. In both Europe and Asia, alliances and forward-based military forces have enabled the United States to guarantee stability on the Eurasian landmass--andto respond to 911 crisis calls. In a 1995strategy paper, the Pentagon stressed that keeping 100,000 U.S. troops in East Asia was the measure of America’s commitment to it. The importance of the U.S. military presence in the region will be further underscored in a new East Asia strategy review, which the Defense Department plans to release next month.

Unlike in Europe, there are no real regional institutions to manage security in East Asia. Instead, a U.S.-led network of bilateral alliances and access arrangements has served as the region’s de facto security system for more than 40 years. Virtually every country in the region regards the United States as a stabilizing presence, helping to quell regional suspicions and distrust. Ironically, China has been a major beneficiary of this arrangement. When pressed, Chinese officials and intellectuals rarely dispute the hypothetical that if the U.S. military pulled out, rivalry between China and Japan could easily lead to a costly and destabilizing nuclear-arms race.

But as China grows comfortable and confident about its destiny as a great power and leading player in Asia, Beijing’s leaders are toying with a new concept of security in what they see as an increasingly multipolar world. “Security,” the White Paper says, “should be based on mutual trust” and promoted through “dialogue and cooperation.” These are hardly controversial ideas. Indeed, they are bromides. More important, they run counter to most of human history and certainly to Chinese behavior since the communists seized power in 1949. Beijing has never been shy to use force or the threat of force to further its objectives, most recently in 1996, when it test-fired missiles capable of ferrying nuclear devices near Taiwan. Even as its White Paper describes a more relaxed global security environment, China is one of the few countries actively building up its conventional and nuclear forces.

What Beijing is hinting at in its White Paper is displacing the United States as the predominant power in Asia. In its 5,000 years of civilization, China has experienced only two types of security systems in Asia. Until the 19th century, there was the tributary system: The region revolved around the Middle Kingdom, with countries paying it a loose fealty. “Mutual trust” and “dialogue” have meaning in such an arrangement. More recently, China has been the victim of foreign invasion by Japan and the West. Beijing certainly prefers the former system, albeit a 21st-century version.

The White Paper states that economic modernization is China’s highest priority, and that building a high-tech military depends on advances in science and technology that will result from “the increase of the country’s economic strength.” China knows that it is many decades from attaining a capacity to reimpose anything close to a tributary system. When pressed on the point, Chinese officials say the White Paper is merely their druthers.

Nonetheless, if, as advertised, China aims to realize its version of the Monroe Doctrine, becoming in Asia the preeminent power, as the United States has been in the Western Hemisphere, questions about Clinton’s “strategic partnership” need to be raised. The idea is an all too typical instance of Clintonian overpromising. One shouldn’t confuse a short-term overlap of U.S.-China interests--for example, preventing North Korea from building nuclear weapons--with long-term interests, especially when China may seek to replace the United States as security guarantor on the Korean Peninsula.

This doesn’t mean there is no common ground between the United States and China. There are a range of shared interests in the two countries’ burgeoning economic relationship and in addressing global issues, such as managing environmental degradation or organized crime. Moreover, a section in the White Paper on proliferation shows that as China begins to think more like a great power, its worries about lesser powers obtaining weapons of mass destruction are closer to those of Washington’s.

Nor does China’s ambitious vision necessarily mean Beijing is now or will become an adversary. The United States is and will continue to be a Pacific power. But the Chinese have a point. The historical record is not encouraging when it comes to adjusting patterns of relations among nations to integrate a rising great power peacefully. One does not have to accept Beijing’s views to see that the current security architecture in the Pacific doesn’t include a prominent role for China. To create one means reaching some new understanding about our respective political and military roles in the Asia-Pacific. That is a key strategic challenge to be met before there is a stable Sino-U.S. relationship, let alone partnership.*