Flirting with trouble
April 11, 2001
It was an ominous incident on late Saturday March 31. A high tech American spy plane EP-3 was circling over a new Russian-made high tech destroyer in probably international waters but fairly close to the Chinese air space and waters in South China Sea. It was gathering particular of, and data on, what that destroyer has or is capable of. The Chinese were incensed. They sent up two fighters to intercept. While the fighters asked it to land on a Chinese airfield, the US surveillance plane suddenly veered and deliberately or accidentally rammed into one of the Chinese fighters, sending it into the sea, the pilot of which remains untraceable, presumed dead despite having parachuted. The naval reconnaissance aircraft, failed to dodge the fighter which had to fire warning shots to make it comply with his command. It landed on a Chinese island airfield (Hainan) unannounced and in a slightly damaged state.
The US authorities, unused to such temerity, were furious. They said the aircraft was US sovereign territory and no non-American may enter it. They preemptorily demanded the release of the aircraft, unvisited by the Chinese, and the 28 member crew forthwith without questioning. The Chinese laughed and joked about US sovereign territory having landed at Hainan airfield without seeking permission. The Chinese duly visited the plane and must have closely examined what it contained, what was it capable of and may have found out what it was looking for in the Chinese destroyer. They also must have adequately grilled the crew. The American bluster gave way, after a few days, to a somewhat more realistic frame of mind.
The Chinese were neither amused nor over-awed. They rejected the US demands and called the American attitude arrogant and overbearing. The crew and aircraft are still in China over a week after the incident and the crew may be tried. The US Secretary of State later wrote a letter to his Chinese counterpart to defuse the crisis. Doubtless a via media will have to be found to meet the Chinese demand for a formal apology from the US to the Chinese people. The Americans are not used to complying with such demands; they violate their ideas and assumptions about themselves. No doubt if it were not China, there would be little crisis: either a minor state would have complied with US demand or the US would have ordered a more or less military punishment for not complying with its demands. China is a different kettle of fish. The Chinese Foreign Minister wrote back to Powel that your regret over the loss of a Chinese fighter and its pilot is a step in the right direction. A formal apology is still a precondition of resolving the crisis in Sino-American relations.
Thus the crisis continues. It has the gravest of potential. It includes a military conflict in theory though there is no realistic chance of this. Not after American experiences in Korea and Vietnam last century. The US will never again want to engage in a land war in Asia. Although the time for it has passed, the maximum military response from the US would not have exceeded aerial bombardment and naval battering, if that. But China is not a pushover even in high tech warfare, though it is way behind the US. It can still inflict wholly unacceptable damage. Happily none of it is likely.
But other ugly potentialities of the Crisis have to be faced. Its fallout is sure to be largely political, though it can extend to much else. Primacy however goes to the Sino-US relations and the impact of this incident on them can have serious consequences. There is a veritable battle royal being waged in the US media, academia, Congress and Administration itself. On one side is a school backed by big business, or a big section of it, that wants to engage China, keep it on the quest for achieving prosperity through capitalist methods, earning high profits from exports of consumer goods of acceptable quality to the US and joining the WTO before long. The US has been paying a pretty penny: it has run a trade account deficit ranging from $30 to 55 billion a year for more than two decades. Stet the other side of this ledger more than compensates for it. The US businesses invest in the expanding Chinese market anything like $25 to 30 billion in a year. Prospects for profits in future are good. Liberals and Democrats have supported this engagement policy of former President Bill Clinton.
There is another school in the US, especially vociferous in the Congress. It comprises hardliners and wants to go all out to demonise China as a major threat to US security and other interests. They dub China as a hard unreconstructed communist dictatorship with a horrible human rights record. If these people have their way, they will let loose a new east-west cold war - necessitating a heavy defence build up, all high tech and expensive, including NMD (national missile defence). Trillions of dollars will thus be spent over the next few decades. War industries and all others who profit from such high defence expenditures will have profits guaranteed for long into the future. This is the most powerful business lobby in the US today and probably includes the oil and gas interests (the source of Bush fortune) through an incestuous relationship.
If the hardliners win out and an all out cold war between the US-led west and PRC (Peoples Republic of China) breaks out, it will mean heavy pressures on almost all Asian states to line up on one or the other side. It will pose a nasty dilemma for many. No one in Asia will welcome such a cold war, certainly not Japan, Russia or even the two Koreas. It will present South Asia with an unwelcome choice. To begin with, South Asia is already hobbled by the animosity between India and Pakistan. The initial consequences are a heavy reduction in the stature and importance of both these countries - well below what their peoples' numbers and accomplishments entitle them to. This has forced both states to go to the sole superpower as mutually antagonistic supplicants. Both are demeaned. None gets what it wants - certainly not in the measure either could, if the two had not been quarrelling with, and cancelling - up to a point - each other.
What may be more likely however is neither an all out 1946-90 like cold war nor an unreserved US engagement with China. The US, whether or not it has other willing allies, is sure to undertake a big spending programme to keep the US Number One in the military field. The cold war might remain unavowed and rather restrained. But still the pressures on the others, somewhat more suave and indirect, will be the same in substance. On the plane of what is likely, we can visualise the happy pursuit by India of the status Britain enjoyed during the previous cold war. The US will be only too happy to confer it, even if it causes heartburns in Australia, Japan and even South Korea. Russians are likely to end up in the Chinese corner, as will be central Asian republics (barring a few) and Iran. The Arabs will not count. What of Pakistan?
In terms of desires, Pakistani rulers may want to give anything for the chance of climbing onto the American bandwagon. But India might preempt them. The Pakistanis are likely to remain caught up in the cobwebs they have woven with the help of Taliban in Afghanistan and beyond in central Asia. The danger is that Americans in their dispatch may leave Pakistan mired in the 'achievements' of Taliban. The Americans can ignore the many low key and long-range benefits that the Pakistanis might point out. Anyway the US does not appear to have kept any particularly honourable place reserved for Pakistan. It is quite likely that Pakistan may remain out of the charmed circle it may want to join.
What seems to be in nobody's mind is that there should be an Asian response to the crisis kicked up by the US and China - in Asia. Another global or all Asian cold war cannot be attractive to the common peoples of the vast and populous Asian continent. Why should not we in Asia learn from the Europeans who had started to lessen the cold war pressures on themselves? They devised the Helsinki process of an all-European Conference on Security, Cooperation and Human Rights. They now have the OSCE that transcends all divisions in European unity that reduces outsiders role in European affairs. The dangers to them have thus been reduced.
Doubtless Asia is a huge continent with complex problems. But no one is yet aware of either the need for an all-Asian vision or is conscious of the dangers of not having one. Divisions do not benefit those who are divided, though their divisions are always of advantage to outsiders. It is a simple lesson but few seem to have comprehended it in Asia - not even Japan and Russia that are likely to face mountains of pressure. Problems in Europe were not less complex. If they could tackle them in Europe so sophisticatedly and in such a civilised way, so can the Asians. No one has mooted it yet. It is time it is mooted.
The author is a well-known journalist and freelance columnist