Seize the Moment (22 page)

To assume its rightful place in the world, China must modernize. It cannot succeed without contact with the countries of the West, but its success depends ultimately on the Chinese people themselves. We should provide moral and material support to those who favor economic and political reform, but we must not try to force through changes before China itself is ready to make them work. Our two countries have very different political systems, economies, cultures, and even national interests. China will reform, but change must come from the Chinese, in their own way, according to their own traditions, and at their own pace. This change will be brought about by the two-thirds of China's population who were born after the 1949 revolution. They have no memories of warlords, foreign exploitation, wartime occupation, or civil war. Instead, they will be influenced by the success not only of the West but also of their neighbors in Taiwan and
Hong Kong. At this defining moment, America should not walk away.

After forty years of competing for top billing among the major powers in the world Communist movement, China finds itself starring in a one-man show. The fall of Communist systems around the world has raised the hopes of the Chinese people and the fears of the Chinese leadership. In the August 1991 revolution, the Chinese people witnessed the overthrow of the world's first Communist government. The Chinese leaders interpreted the same event as the consequence of Moscow's fatally flawed policy. Gorbachev allowed political liberalization but stumbled in economic reform. Deng promoted economic reform but stifled political change. With the demise of Soviet communism, the Chinese hard-liners may escalate their repression and retreat further into isolation. It therefore becomes doubly important that the United States and the West maintain economic contacts with Chinese society in order to nurture the growth of peaceful change.

It is imperative that we work with China as an equal partner rather than work against China as a bitter enemy. To restore the momentum to our crucial bilateral relationship requires skillful statesmanship by leaders on both sides. Despite Tiananmen Square, the United States should reestablish a working relationship in order to move forward in all areas of common interest. Until China redresses the worst of its human rights violations, however, our two governments can be partners but they cannot be friends. While we cannot yet be friends, we cannot afford to be enemies. We must avoid the animosity and isolation of the first twenty years of our relationship, which produced two Asian wars that cost both our nations dearly. But the burden for resurrecting the close cooperation we had before June 1989 lies in Beijing, not Washington.

The Great Wall of China is one of the Seven Wonders of the World. While it is difficult enough to be heard when you are inside the wall, it is impossible to be heard when you are on the outside. Cooperation might work only slowly in bringing about change, but isolation would not work at all. In the long run, China will become part of the great changes that have swept Communist regimes from power in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the underdeveloped world. It will not be able to cling to the failed revolution of communism if it continues to have contacts with the new revolution of freedom. Because of the communications revolution, instead of going through or burrowing under the Great Wall, ideas will travel into China over the Great Wall—and no ideological SDI exists to shoot them down.

The Chinese are a great people with an incredibly rich cultural heritage. When Europe was mired in the Dark Ages, China was the most advanced nation in the world. In the eighteenth century, Voltaire called it “the finest, the most ancient, the most extensive, the most populous and well-regulated kingdom on earth.” We need only see the economic miracles that Chinese people have achieved in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and in their overseas communities all over the world to appreciate the enormous potential of the over 1 billion people in China itself once their energies are unleashed from the dead hand of Communist economic and political repression.

Almost two centuries ago, Napoleon observed, “China? There lies a sleeping giant. Let him sleep! For when he wakes, he will move the world.” The giant is awake. Which way he moves the world will primarily depend on the Chinese people but will also depend on us. To isolate China now would be a historical tragedy of inestimable magnitude.

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With the world's attention riveted on Soviet actions in Europe, Moscow's policies along the Pacific rim have traditionally been overlooked. A longtime expansionist power in the region—the Russian flag flew over settlements in Alaska in 1784 and California in 1811—the Kremlin never slackened its eastern push into the Pacific. As a Eurasian power, it has treated Europe as its most visible front, but Asia has always been an equally vital one.

Even with the rise of a noncommunist government in Moscow, the prospects for a rapid improvement in Soviet relations with other members of the Pacific triangle are limited. Before August 1991, the Soviet Union and China were divided by ideological differences. Today, they still stand on opposite sides of an ideological chasm. Japan, wary of the uncertain political situation in Moscow and adamant about the return of the Northern Territories, wants to keep Moscow at arm's length at this time. Both China and Japan have known the Kremlin as the seat of power of not only the Soviet Union but also the Russian Empire. They respect—and fear—the potential influence Russian nationalism can have on Moscow's foreign policy. And they know that in the postcommunist Soviet Union, this traditional nationalism could eventually come to the fore.

Zhou Enlai remarked to me in 1972 that Moscow seeks “to fish in troubled waters.” With its political turbulence, the Pacific has always been a rich fishing ground. After expanding its territorial control across Eurasia to the Pacific three centuries ago, Russia clashed with the other two principal regional powers. It participated in the European division of China into spheres of influence. It engaged in a fierce rivalry with Japan, which culminated in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, a conflict settled through the mediation of the United States under President Theodore Roosevelt. In the postwar
period, not only did Moscow fail to sign a peace treaty with Japan to end World War II, but the Sino-Soviet bloc collapsed amid mutual recrimination, with Brezhnev at one point even toying with the idea of a first-strike attack on Beijing's nuclear forces.

When Gorbachev came to power, he cast his line into the politics of the Pacific. The partnership between Japan and the United States, united by a security treaty but divided by economic bickering, had an uncertain future. China and the United States, brought together by the Soviet threat and the Chinese need for modernization but driven apart by China's human rights record, had clouded the prospects for their long-term relationship. In addition, Indochina and the Korean peninsula continued to be hotbeds of great-power rivalries, while the large-scale presence of U.S. and Soviet naval forces added an explosive element to the region.

Until the revolutionary events that brought noncommunist governments to power in the Soviet Union on August 24, 1991, Gorbachev's approach to the Pacific involved a mix of “old thinking” and “new thinking.” His principal goal—to increase Moscow's presence in the short term in order to set the stage for regional preeminence in the long term—dovetailed with traditional Soviet policy. But he developed a three-tiered strategy far more subtle and effective than the heavy-handed saber rattling of his predecessors. A military buildup that earned the Kremlin a voice in Pacific affairs, a political “peace offensive” that opened doors long closed to its diplomats, and an economic opening that sought to capitalize on the region's dynamism dealt Gorbachev a hand in a geopolitical game in which he had little to offer but much to gain.

While he did not want increased tensions in the region, he did seek a decreased U.S. presence. He wanted to break out
of the Soviet Union's traditional political isolation and embark on an active engagement in the Pacific. He wanted to establish beachheads diplomatically and economically that would not only help Moscow solve its domestic crisis but would also enable him to expand the Soviet sphere of influence along the Pacific rim.

Military power was Gorbachev's most concrete lever of influence in the Pacific. Without it, the other members of the Pacific triangle would not have taken the Soviet Union seriously. Because of this power, however, they could not have afforded to ignore Moscow's concerns. This leverage was earned by a comprehensive military buildup larger in many ways than Soviet efforts in Europe:

—It has doubled its deployments in the Far East since 1970 to a total of fifty-five divisions—which account for 43 percent of its ground troops east of the Ural Mountains.

—It has quadrupled its combat aircraft in the region, with its deployments accounting for 54 percent of its tactical aircraft east of the Urals and including its most advanced Backfire long-range bombers and MiG-31 fighter-bombers.

—It has developed a vast military infrastructure—bases, airfields, supply depots, roads, and railroads—in some of the world's most inhospitable terrain to support the 500,000 troops in active units in the area.

—It has modernized its Far Eastern ground forces with equipment withdrawn from Eastern Europe and areas west of the Urals.

—It has redeployed 120,000 troops removed from Eastern Europe to the Sino-Soviet border, negating the effects of its earlier withdrawals in the late 1980s.

—It has built up the Soviet Pacific Fleet—particularly its 110-strong nuclear attack and ballistic-missile submarine force—in an effort to counter the maritime power of the United States.

—It has brought its total ICBM force in the Far Eastern military districts to 493, adding 85 missiles in 1990 and 1991 and thereby enabling its planners to cover all Pacific targets assigned to SS-20 missiles before they were destroyed under the INF treaty.

—It trimmed its permanent naval deployments at Cam Ranh Bay and aircraft at Da Nang in Vietnam in the late 1980s, but Moscow's military presence in Indochina vastly exceeded its deployments in the area even during the Vietnam War.

At a time when lessening East-West tensions prompted the United States to reduce its forces in the Pacific, the Soviet Union's peaked in terms of numbers and capabilities. This did not mean that Moscow intended to launch a Pacific blitzkrieg. But it did mean that its efforts to advance its political and economic presence in the region were built upon the rock-hard foundation of military power.

Gorbachev's political “peace offensive” was the main axis of his strategy in the Pacific. Unlike his predecessors from Stalin through Chernenko, he knew that overt threats and bullying would win little ground among the region's major powers. Instead, he borrowed successful lessons from his diplomacy in Europe. Soviet officials called for the development of “an Asian common home” and “a single Eurasian area of stability and security.” Both concepts would have excluded the United States. By making political inroads now, Gorbachev wanted to tap the Pacific rim's dynamic economy to save his Communist system. His subtle tactics—which sought to address China's and Japan's demands in form but to hold back in substance—were designed to parlay diplomatic initiatives into political gains.

The centerpiece of his diplomatic offensive was the rapprochement with China in 1989. For forty years, the relationship with China served as the driving force behind
Soviet policy in East Asia. Ideological and geopolitical competition between the two major Communist powers spawned diplomatic maneuvering and even military clashes between them. When Gorbachev realized the depth of the Soviet internal crisis, he concluded that he could no longer afford the Sino-Soviet enmity. Both powers buried the ideological hatchet, accepting each other's brand of socialism as legitimate interpretations of the Marxist-Leninist canons, and began diplomatic exchanges to bridge the key issues dividing them.

Most important, Gorbachev yielded on Deng's “three conditions” for normalization of relations—a reduction in Soviet forces on the Sino-Soviet border, a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and a Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia. But he did so in measured and qualified steps. Soviet force levels still remained much higher along the Chinese border after the withdrawals than before the Soviet regional buildup began in the 1970s. Gorbachev kept a significant number of “advisers” in Afghanistan and continued to keep the Kabul regime in power through massive military and economic aid. Despite Hanoi's pullout from Cambodia and the 1989 Sino-Soviet agreement on a process to end the Indochina conflict, the Vietnamese-backed Hun Sen government continued to impede a final peace settlement. While Gorbachev got his half of the bargain up front, the Chinese have had to work to collect on theirs.

Gorbachev sought to employ the same formula—concessions in form but not in substance—to the third corner of the Pacific triangle, Japan. He knew that Moscow could not be a credible Pacific power without a cooperative relationship with Japan. In order to win normal relations with and massive economic aid from Tokyo, he tantalized the Japanese with rumors of Soviet flexibility on the crucial issue of
the four islands seized by the Soviet Union in the last days of World War II. He floated trial balloons calling for a swap of territory for billions in aid, hoping to crown his visit to Japan with a major political breakthrough. But the Soviet concessions actually put on the table, such as easing visa requirements for Japanese visiting some of the islands, left Tokyo cold. Gorbachev best encapsulated his bottom line when he remarked in September 1990 that the Soviet Union had “no land to spare” for Japan.

His economic opening to the Pacific was the element of his policy that Gorbachev most needed but for which he had the least to offer. Although Sino-Soviet trade has doubled over three years and totaled $4.5 billion in 1991, it lags far behind the $18 billion in U.S.-Chinese trade. Even though Moscow and Beijing have reached several long-term trade agreements, their trade will not exceed modest levels in the near future, particularly because much of it must occur through barter agreements. For Gorbachev, however, Japan represented the real catch. On his state visit in March 1991, Tokyo refused to rise to his bait. Genuine opportunities for investment would have hooked the Japanese, but Gorbachev had been fishing for aid, not trade.