Bush and Asia
Another new feature on the Foreign Policy website is a group blog of Republican worthies called “shadow government” a collection of Republican heavyweights who’ll be critiquing the new administration. Except for now the new administration’s not in office yet. So they’ve been doing some looking back on the Bush years. And I think this from Peter Feaver is pretty strained:
Well-calibrated “great power” strategies. The “realist” tradition of foreign policy has traditionally emphasized evaluating great powers based on how they manage their relations with other great powers. More recently, those who call themselves realists have focused their attention narrowly on what used to be called the periphery, such as conflicts in the Middle East. But if you use a traditional realist yardstick, then the Bush Administration has done pretty well.
The Bush years boasted the best-ever relations with the following major centers of power: Japan, India, and China — and managed to advance all three relationships at the same time, even though each of those states views the other as a major threat. The Bush team developed a workable plan for integrating the rising BRIC powers into the world system; the collapse of the Doha round was a big blow to this effort, but the blame for that failure spreads far beyond the Bush Administration. Bush had as cooperative a working relationship with our closest allies — Britain, Australia, Canada, and Mexico — as any previous administration. Relations with other key NATO allies were stormy in the first term, but relations with France and Germany improved markedly with the change of leadership there. And relations with the new NATO allies were extraordinarily fruitful.
Rather than a detailed rebuttal here, let’s observe that Feaver’s counting India and China (the “I” and “C” in BRIC) twice — a good indication that he’s reaching. And it’s true that relations with France and Germany improved from their “worst in the modern era” baseline after the election of center-right governments, but by the same token the periods when Australia and Canada have had center-left governments have been full of tensions. What’s more, the new NATO allies aren’t major powers any more than Australia, Canada, and Mexico are.
You’re left here with two claims. One that the US relationship with the UK and Japan is so strong that even George W. Bush couldn’t break those bonds. The other thing, the claim that I think Feaver should have advanced in the first place, is that to an underappreciated extent the Bush administration has had a successful approach to Asia.
The rise in Chinese power and prestige is a situation that’s fraught with peril, and under Bush’s stewardship no real peril has materialized. And he’s managed to bring us closer to India in a useful way without provoking problems with China, and do this while maintaining healthy relationships with Japan and basically all the other countries in the region. It winds up being difficult for Bush to claim credit for this, because basically it’s a story of things not happening. But oftentimes the most important things presidents can do are make sure that there’s no story. The absence of giant blow-ups between the United States and our main NATO allies ought to count as a real accomplishment of the Clinton years. Similarly, simply maintaining an atmosphere of cooperation and respect between the United States and rising Asian powers is important. The past few years have seen a lot of proposals floating around that would, among other things, have the effect of making a big US-China Cold War-style standoff much more likely. That would be a bad thing.
48 Responses to “Bush and Asia”
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January 6th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I think a valid point can be made that the US had better relations with China during the Bush era than anytime after WWII, with, of course, the brief period of anti-Soviet triangulation during the Nixon era.
Let’s hope Obama be intelligent about this and retains this legacy.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
You are seriously underestimating the impact that the War on Terror has led to a kind of benign neglect of East Asian issues. GWB has had a good relationship because he has not ever really tried to resolve any of the fundamental tensions of American power in Asia outside of a very late, half-hearted effort in Korea (North Korea and beef).
If 9/11 had not happened, GWB almost certainly would have antagonized China–his type needs enemies.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
um, no. when Bill Clinton left office, we were highly in debt to China, and had an unsustainable trade relationship with them.
now, they own our damn country. hyperbole, but not by much. no, this was not a “success” for George Bush. how could anyone even think such a thing for more than a few seconds without realizing it’s rubbish? now, if you count Afghanistan and Pakistan as part of ‘Asia’, things degenerate much more. not to mention North Korea.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
To be fair, better relations with China were certainly facilitated in large part by the neocons being distracted by 9/11 and thus pulled off their Yellow Peril kick.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
to an underappreciated extent the Bush administration has had a successful approach to Asia.
So we are just going to pretend North Korea and Pakistan don’t exist now?
January 6th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
I respectfully note that Bush had far more comfortable relations with China than did Clinton. You can’t tag that on an omission on the neo-con’s part.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Bush did a great job with India. We have never before had positive relations with the world’s largest democracy. Now we do, and that’s a real improvement. People in India actually like Bush because of that. And somehow he did this all without angering Pakistan. He also did a good job with China while still managing to keep the Dalai Lama on his side. That’s a tricky balance. North Korea, on the other hand, was a disaster. And relations with all of the Southeast Asian countries went downhill. Especially Vietnam. It’s a pretty mixed bag, but at least he improved relations with the most important countries. Compared to his actions in the rest of the world, Bush’s Asian policies are certainly a bright spot. The only one, actually.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
When, exactly, did the realist school of foreign policy judge success in terms of keeping other great powers, particularly ones primarily defined as rivals, happy?
January 6th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
fostert,
He’s been pretty good on sub-Saharan Africa.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Bush’s failure to deal with the trade imbalance with China is the direct cause of our current economic crisis. Of course we had good relations with China – we failed to challenge them on the main point of contention we have with them, which is the over-valued yuan. I fail to see how this is a success.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
which is the over-valued yuan
Your ignorance of basic economics is hilarious and staggering.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Is “best-ever” some kind of foreign policy inside pool kind of term? Sounds ridiculous. If I was this guy’s teacher I’d give him a “POOR – SHOW WORK.”
January 6th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
“He’s been pretty good on sub-Saharan Africa.”
I guess I’ll have to take your word on that. The only countries there that I’ve followed closely are Somalia, Republic of Congo, and Zimbabwe. And things are really bad in those countries. Hopefully, the rest of the region is doing much better. I’ve heard good things about Mozambique in recent years, though.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
The improved relationship with India was *all*about*nonproliferation*.
Bush didn’t mind if India builts lots and lots of bomb. That tends to paper over alot of other things. However, that good relationship with India was a consequence of Bush trading away treaties that were in our own best interests as a country, not because he was so deft with Indians. Give anyone a couple billion dollars will make ‘em friendly. Not necessarily your friends, though.
And Subsaharan Africa? Don’t make me laugh. I won’t dignify that with a further response.
Bush was an *utter* disaster in terms of foreign diplomacy. We lost gargantuan amounts of influence, and what friends we had gained, we *bribed* to be our friends. Worthless.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Is the European Union important?
Anyway, once we’ve figured out where Bush falls EXACTLY on the Not-All-That-Awful-With-Big-Countries Scale, can someone explain to me why Bush went full neocon in the Middle East but yet doesn’t share his cohorts’ wet dreams of awesomely nuclear, bloody wars with China or whatever? Are we just chalking this up to an incoherent perspective?
January 6th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
I’m with shah8. If ramping up nuclear tensions in South Asia is good policy, then yes, Bush did good things there. 5+ million dead in the Congo? Another success, apparently.
“can someone explain to me why Bush went full neocon in the Middle East but yet doesn’t share his cohorts’ wet dreams of awesomely nuclear, bloody wars with China or whatever?”
He did until 9/11. If you remember, the Bushies were all about undoing Clinton’s efforts in China and North Korea.
If Iraq had went the way Rumsfeld and Cheney hoped, we would have been right back at it vis a vis China.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Bush had good relations with India? Jesus Christ but that’s damning with faint praise, if ever I heard it.
Let’s look at it rationally. There were several components to the United States relationship or interests in India.
1) Nuclear proliferation – Bush pretty much tore up that Treaty and simply handed India the technology and license to modernize and upgrade its nuclear fleet. That’s got to be a worldwide boner, and more importantly, its a local boner because that adds potential for increased destabilization of Indian relations with Pakistan.
2) Regional stability – Great big “D” on this one. Again, technology and weapons transfers to India pissed off the Pakistanis. Bush tried to balance out by giving weapons to the Pakistanis. The overall effect was to help escalate tensions with a vacillating foreign policy that seemed to have no better purpose than to support an arms race.
3) Indo-Sino Relations – There’s evidence that Bush attempted to pursue a containment strategy, treating India as a strategic counterweight to help encircle China. The idea was that China’s increasing economic and political dominance could be circumscribed with alliances with local powers, and that India could then be played as China’s rival. Didn’t really work. Sino-Indo relations have evolved independently of Bush’s efforts to meddle, and in ways that facilitate joint or cooperative approaches against the United States in trade policy. Remember, what’s brought the US sponsored Globalism movement to a screeching halt has been an Indo/Sino/Brazilian axis. I have to describe Bush’s policies here as utter failures.
Seriously folks, from here on in, can we just default to the position that anything these right wingers say is simply full of shit and unworthy of further examination? Save us all a bit of time.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Things Bush Did Well (it’s a short list)
I am of the opinion that a better relationship with India had to happen — the largest democracy in the world, a booming economy, and fast rising in the international order, America was still in default mode from the Cold War. I’m not saying there may not be drawbacks, but I still think more good than harm will come of the deal, and Bush deserves credit for, in this instance anyway, erring on the side of risk.
I think references to Bush’s legacy in sub-saharan Africa are pretty much based on his AIDS record there, which, from my understanding, was laudable (emphasis on abstinence notwithstanding, the programs have, I believe, been effective).
So I’d say the nuclear deal in India and the AIDS relief in Africa are, perhaps, Bush’s only two bright spots on his legacy.
And China? It’s been a relatively peaceful rise alright, but if ignoring real conflicts of interest between the nations is how you avoid conflict, you’re just inviting more trouble later on when they’re in a better negotiating position.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Sub Saharan africa? Well, if you count ignoring the congolese civil war, as well as the involvement of Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi, Angola and Zambia in same… If you count ignoring Darfur and Sudan… If you count ignoring or being ineffectual in dealing with piracy in Somalia, while at the same time engineering and funding Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia… if you count ignoring Zimbabwe… if you count casting a blind eye on civil wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, etc.
How about predatory free trade policies that undermined Sub-Saharan economies? Sorry, no help there. Environmental protection initiatives? They were on their own.
Oh, but he kicked in a few dollars for AIDS funding… cause you know, this was heterosexual aids there in Africa… and on condition that all those africans kept their willies in their pants.
Jesus H. Christ.
Seriously, what pernicious nonsense is this. Next we’ll be treated to “During Bush’s terms Jeffrey Dahmer didn’t eat anyone.”
January 6th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
I don’t don’t think the nuclear proliferation issue with India is really a big deal. All we gave India was what they were going to take anyway. It sets a bad precedent, but it does nothing to change the amount of nuclear weapons India would have. The previous isolation of India certainly did nothing to stop them from building weapons.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Bush was a near disaster for US China relations and it was only 9/11 that prevented a potential catastrophe. From a piece I wrote on this issue at the East Asia Forum:
January 6th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Ahh… the links to my references didn’t copy over. If you want to see my sources, you have to go to the original piece at East Asia Forum, which also deals with Asia’s fear of Obama as a protectionist.
Each of the dates in the quote in my previous comment will link to a primary source.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Dude, it’s George Bush. I’m grading on a curve here.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
but if ignoring real conflicts of interest between the nations is how you avoid conflict, you’re just inviting more trouble later on when they’re in a better negotiating position.
Interests, and thus conflicts thereof, change over time. The American paranoia about Japan in the 80’s, for example, was overblown. It seems to me that given how fast China is changing, it would be advisable to take the long-term Realpolitik point of view rather than dwelling on short-term trade imbalances, which will correct themselves over time as China develops.
The far greater risk to the world would be for China and the U.S. to engage in any sort of military stand-off. Pending that, trade imbalances are solvable problems; once we get to strategic distrust and mutual dislike, no amount of money can turn the tide back.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
It was, after all, the containment theory that did the WWI in. If Britain and Germany had been a bit more pragmatist and less dogmatic about their positions, the British Empire and maybe the Kaiserliche would perhaps still exist today, and there would have been none of that capricious slaughter. Presuming that “there will be trouble later on when they are in a better negotiating position”, this sort of impatience for confrontation, is exactly the sort of mistake that ought not be repeated.
January 6th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Fostert, the isolation that was imposed on India came about *because* they had built nuclear weapons. It was an effect, not a cause or obstacle.
And given that India’s acquisition and enlargement of its nuclear fleet comes about in the context of three declared wars, numerous border incidents, terrorist attacks, covert ops and an undeclared war in Kashmir, with Pakistan, it wasn’t a good goddammed idea.
India’s nuclear weapons pretty much lead directly to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, and a nuclear arms race and ongoing cold war.
Right now, India and Pakistan are in some version of MAD, but it’s not a very good version, and the two countries damned near went nuclear on each other back in 2001, it was close. Guess what, after Mumbai, it’s getting close again.
Now, the thing with nuclear weapons balance of power is that you have to be very careful messing with this. If one country gets a strategic advantage, it has an incentive to launch its nukes before the other country catches up. If a country looks to be getting a strategic advantage then it is in the interests of the other country to launch its nukes before that strategic advantage materializes.
George W. Bush walked in like a flipping idiot and started messing around with that balance. That’s just not a good idea.
Look, here’s the thing: Nuclear proliferation under any circumstances is a bad thing. It’s pissing in the swimming pool.
And this particular swimming pool, it’s especially bad to piss in.
January 6th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
He didn’t blow up the planet. Give the man a cookie.
January 6th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
All right, I concede to Wiley.
January 6th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
ok, a cookie, but for god’s sake, lace it with Demerol, first!
January 7th, 2009 at 12:56 am
On China – Imagine you are an emerging global power. The existing superpower is in the process of accelerating its decline by fighting wars of choice in the wrong places. Why would you do anything other than sit back and eat popcorn? It is a mistake to interpret the relative calm in the US/China relationship as any sort of strategic success for the US.
January 7th, 2009 at 10:59 am
It is a mistake to interpret the relative calm in the US/China relationship as any sort of strategic success for the US.
I would just tell you to study Klemens von Metternich and Otto von Bismarck; but simply speaking, whatever the cause, the present detente between China and U.S. was very helpful. It is probably actually a good idea to overlook potential conflicts of interests between the two countries as they are mostly transitive and circumstancial (Taiwan, economic imbalances, etc.).
The point I am trying to make here is that to ignore rather impermanent problems is a good thing, not a bad thing. If Britain and Germany had done more to ignore their impermanent conflicts of interest, WWI would not have happened; and by the way, the US-China situation is a lot more dangerous; the linguistic and cultural cultural barriers make likely significant misunderstandings. After all, the King and Kaiser were cousins, and even that didn’t defuse the nastiness.
Part of Clinton’s problem was he went about trying to “solve” all these problems that don’t need solving and would sort themselves over time in any case; sometimes, as in the case of Taiwan, his busybody meddlesomeness just made things worse. Foreign policy is an area where a few decisive strokes, altering the fundamental balances, are probably sufficient; the rest are not prone to micro-management, which, in fact, induces potential for conflict.
January 7th, 2009 at 11:11 am
People don’t quite understand that the problems between Britain and Germany were actually at the cusp of addressing themselves in 1914: the colonial race was pretty much over, and the only fight, that of naval superiority, was one where concessions almost inevitably would have had to be made to accommodate exigent interests, like Germany, within the British naval scheme. As there was a policy of no colonial land conflicts in general between major European powers (thanks to the Berlin Congress of Bismarck), the settling dust of the ending colonial race meant that the imperial situation would have stabilised at some point in the near future. The naval race, if both sides had been more rational, would have been resolved at some point with Germany’s presence being permitted, under the theoretical purview of British naval superiority.
Of course, the fools in Whitehall wanted war, and so did the fools in Berlin. Farcically for Britain, not only did it not maintain its own naval superiority; it completely lost it, not to Germany, but to the U.S. It didn’t end up doing Britain a ounce of good, but whole loads of bad, starting with the desertion of the sterling as the world’s premier currency and ending with Britain, having no longer its decisive naval superiority over all seas, necessarily having to lose its empire at some point. (This is actually a lot better explanation than t deconolisation one, which is based on the very premise of British decline.)
This provides us with a historical lesson in learning to accommodate an ascendant power; the tragedy that was British history in the 20th century ought not be repeated by the supposed “vigilance”, in America, that did Britain no good and plenty of bad.
January 7th, 2009 at 11:15 am
And after all, it was the War that made possible the Communist takeover of Russia.
A war that had been thought to be a defense of Western civilisation had in effect, put in effect its long-term, life-threatening menace, communism.
Just goes to show go tragic Great Power confrontations can be.
January 7th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Quite an erudite post. The juxtaposing of Metternich and Bismarck is quite interesting, given that Metternich spent his life trying to maintain an arbitrary historical order in the face of increasingly powerful tides of change. His struggles against history were futile and arguably made things worse.
In the end, he’s reported to have said “I spent my life propping up rotting buildings.” Or something to that effect.
Bismarck, in contrast, spent his life carefully manipulating the revision of the map of Europe, and was remarkably successful.
Both Metternich and Bismark were pro-active figures. Neither of them could be taken as agreeing with or inclining towards the state of neglect that is now being touted as ‘Bush’s successful China policy.’
The trouble with drift, as both Metternich and Bismark perceived, is that its inclined to take you places you don’t want or need to go. Particularly if the currents are going in other directions. Both, in the end, chose to aggressively pursue their goals – Metternich an outmoded balance of power and false stability, and Bismark a Europe configured around Germany. To be fair, both largely succeeded during their lifetimes.
On the other hand, Bush’s policy in China amounted to little more than draft. Economic drift, political drift, drift on Taiwan, drift on Korea, drift with Japan. The long term results are probably not going to be happy. With the perception of American drift and vaccillation, there’s been a subtle realignment within the region.
If Japan begins to feel that the United States is undependable then what are its options regarding China? Accommodation? Forging a new relationship with China that sees the erosion of American influence? Repeat that through the region. As American influence fades and Chinese influence increases, America’s overall leverage with respect to China itself shifts.
It’s a mistake, I think, to pretend that Bush’s incompetence or obliviousness marked any sort of cleverness, or that his habit of negligence as a policy is bound to produce any good result. The best we can hope for is accident.
January 7th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
If Japan begins to feel that the United States is undependable then what are its options regarding China? Accommodation? Forging a new relationship with China that sees the erosion of American influence?
This is, unfortunately for the United States, an inevitable concession that it will have to make given the conditions of Chinese economic rise. Part of the reason there was a WWI was because Britain was not willing to make the sort of compromises that would reasonably reflect newfound German strength.
Look, the sort of absolute hegemony US had in the East Asian region for the last 60 years was more a result of a power vacuum than anything. Japan was under the American thumb; no one else was remotely close in strength. The economic growth of China will necessarily be reflected in its national power; that vacuum, so to speak, is filling up.
Long term, it is very much better if China and Japan can reach a modus vivendi independent of the United States. This present state of affairs, with the US acting as security conduit, is neither healthy nor sustainable. China, I think, recently became Japan’s biggest trading partner. The relationship will have to reflect that fact.
Given that China is, after all, going to be eventually almost as strong as the United States in international prestige, it makes sense for the US to at least evacuate the immediate vicinity of East Asia. The curious acrimony between China and Japan has more to do with the US than you think; as soon as Japan and China find common national interests, the resistance on China’s part for the re-arming of Japan will die away. That one of the world’s biggest economies (Japan) can have almost no role in international diplomacy and exert almost no influence in its immediate vicinity is not a sustainable condition; a post-war accident of history, one might say, but not a long-term fix. Personally, I hope China and Japan can reach the sort of understanding that was the case between Germany and France, two historical enemies.
I do support American guarantees for Indonesia and Philippines and Thailand, as well as SE Asian countries; but the reality of the matter is, East Asia (China, Japan, Korea) will one day be fully developed and industrialised; absent a comment threat like the Soviet Union, it is almost inconceivable that a faraway power will act as the perpetual guarantor of security between two of the world’s biggest economies. Plus, it is good for Japan too. Japan, despite its post-war success, is still extraordinarily insular nation, even compared to China and Korea; this is partially a result of the inward-looking mentality fostered by a national policy whose external aspect is essentially dictated by the American protectorship.
To my mind, this is something that Bismarck would recognise as being very much something one would have to deal with and accept. The American Empire, after all, is nowhere near as strong as the British Empire at its height. If Britain could not push back the inevitable, then it is inconceivable that US can. The “erosion of American influence”, as you put it, is an unstoppable development with China’s sphere of immediate influence; there is only so much influence to be accommodated, and as Chinese influence growth must necessarily reflect its extraordinary economic growth, the US, being the faraway power on the other side of the ocean, will have to contend with the reality of reduced leverage. After all, it would not be appropriate for the U.S. to maintain present levels of leverage on China; it will soon have to learn to treat China as an equal, rather than a junior partner. This was Britain’s mistake; for the sake of the U.S., and for the sake of the peace of the world, that mistake must not be repeated.
Let’s not forget that it wasn’t really just war that destroyed the British Empire; it was the U.S., seeing that the British Empire had been exhausted beyond choice by conflict and bereft of alternatives, which seized the moment and forced Britain to sign its own death-warrant; the removal of all Imperial trade preferences. Not Germany but America had destroyed the greatest empire the world had ever seen. Do we really need to see the same played out again in the 21st century?
January 7th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
And this is not something that will be solved by another Cold War; after all, America and China today have the same economic system; Capitalism, and I can hardly China being worn down by another SDI if its economy were to keep growing, not in crude Soviet projection, but in real, capitalistic growth.
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