A teachable moment for Pyongyang and Beijing?

After rumors that the Obama administration might back down in the face of Chinese pressure, the Pentagon confirmed on July 14 that the United States and the Republic of Korea would in fact go ahead with joint naval exercises off both coasts of the Korean peninsula in response to North Korea’s March 26 sinking of the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan. Time will tell, but this could be the moment that Barack Obama finally found his inner realist when it comes to China strategy. 

From the beginning, the Obama administration has had a schizophrenic view of China’s growing power and influence. On the one hand, realists in the administration continued the prevailing "Armitage-Nye" strategy (named after former Bush administration Deputy Secretary of State Rich Armitage and former Clinton Defense official Joe Nye) of engaging China while maintaining a favorable balance of power in the region through tighter relations with U.S. allies. Consistent with that strategy, Obama made a point of inviting Japanese Premier Taro Aso for the first bilateral summit in the Oval Office and Secretary of State Clinton made Japan her first overseas stop last March.   

At the same time, however, other senior members of the Obama administration argued that balance-of-power logic was inimical to the kind of accommodation the United States would have to make towards China in order to deal with new transnational challenges such as climate change. They argued in a formula that undermined the realists’ approach that no major international challenge could be resolved without China’s cooperation — a message that was internalized in Beijing as meaning that China had earned a veto on all major international issues from the Obama administration. When Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao issued a joint statement last November in Beijing, the two leaders acknowledged each others’ "core interests." Since then, the Chinese side has steadily expanded the list of Chinese "core interests" to include U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and suzerainty over the South China Sea while yielding virtually nothing in terms of military transparency, human rights or curbing North Korea’s nuclear program. 

When a South Korean-led multinational investigation team (including the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia and Sweden) confirmed that North Korea had torpedoed the Cheonan, Beijing showed its true colors. The Chinese Foreign Minister lectured his South Korean and Japanese counterparts on the need to forget about the incident and return promptly to negotiations with the North Koreans in the Six Party Talks. Washington was told that Beijing had confirmed directly with high level sources in Pyongyang that the North Koreans were not involved — even as the North promoted the regional commanders responsible and gave them huge medals from the Dear Leader. China continued protesting in the U.N. Security Council that there was not enough proof to implicate the North. Observers quipped that "PRC" stood for "please remain calm."

Through all of this it became increasingly obvious to even the most hopeful China watchers in the administration that Beijing was enabling North Korea’s belligerence and would only be moved by pressure. This was probably part of the motivation for Secretary of Defense Gates’ unusually blunt criticism of Chinese security policy at the annual Shangri-La defense forum in Singapore on June 7. The president himself then put the squeeze on Hu at their bilateral meeting on the margins of the G-20 summit last month. Yet in spite of the tougher talk from Washington, the most the administration could get from Beijing was acquiescence in a barely tolerable presidential statement from the Security Council that took equal note of both the South Korean report pointing to Pyongyang’s guilt and Pyongyang’s completely implausible denial.  China also succeeded in inserting language urging all sides to return quickly to dialogue. The North Korean propaganda organs and their supporters in the South chortled at Pyongyang’s diplomatic victory over the United States, Japan, and Korea.

At that point key people in the administration were clearly tempted to declare victory and announce the international community "united" against an "isolated" North Korea, rather than continue crowding out other agenda items with China. Word began leaking out that because of Chinese protests, the Pentagon might not be allowed to go ahead with joint exercises with the South Koreans, including some of the first U.S.-South Korea naval maneuvers in the contested Western coast of the Korean peninsula near where the Cheonan was attacked. It is not clear just how wobbly the administration really got, but the Pentagon’s confirmation that the exercises will go ahead appears to close the case. Let’s hope so.

Beijing will not be happy; and that is part of the point. The Obama administration appears to have realized that no matter how skillfully we articulate to Chinese leaders their own national interest in curbing the dangerous behavior of regimes like North Korea and Iran, it is ultimately U.S. actions that get Chinese attention.  Beijing does not want the North Korean regime to collapse and for several years now has been able to expand material support for Kim Jong-Il at no cost to China’s relationship with the other parties in Northeast Asia. The U.S.-South Korea maneuvers and recent U.S.-Japan-South Korea defense summits are important signals that from now on there will be consequences for China from North Korean behavior. The allies have a legitimate need to re-establish deterrence vis-à-vis North Korea.  If closer U.S.-Japan-South Korea defense cooperation complicates broader Chinese strategic planning in East Asia, then perhaps Beijing will start thinking differently about the costs of its stance towards Pyongyang.

Administration officials will privately agree that they have sent an important signal to North Korea and Beijing, but quickly protest that their China strategy has been consistent from the beginning. But there is no need to be defensive. Every new president since Nixon has had to adjust his China policy within the first 18 months. Carter promised to refocus on human rights, but ultimately normalized relations with China. Reagan vowed to move closer to Taiwan again, but signed the third U.S.-China communiqué and sold military equipment to China in order to contain Soviet expansion.  Clinton said he would not "coddle the butchers of Beijing" but negotiated China’s entry into the W.T.O.  Bush surrogates called China a "strategic competitor" but ended up building a stronger relationship with Beijing than any of his predecessors enjoyed. Obama and McCain avoided a histrionic debate about China during the 2008 campaign and Obama probably thought he had a free hand on China policy. But he has had to adjust just like every one of his predecessors did. The only difference is that in Obama’s case, he is adjusting in the direction of being tougher towards China. Beijing gave him little choice.