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March 14, 2010Seeing Things Our Way
Evan Feigenbaum at Asia Unbound wonders why it's so "hard to turn common interests with China into complementary policies." His answer:
First, Beijing rarely shares American threat assessments. And China’s leaders, even when they do sense a challenge to “stability,” are far more relaxed than are Americans about the scope and nature of those threats.This is certainly true of Pakistan, where Beijing trusts the military’s instincts and senses little threat to the Pakistani state. It’s true of Iran. And it’s true of North Korea, which few Chinese believe will collapse and where a managed transition toward Chinese-style reform is the medium-term outcome China seeks to achieve.
Second, even when Beijing shares America’s sense of threat, countervailing interests still obstruct cooperation.
In Afghanistan, for example, China certainly shares America’s core interest: a stable Afghan state that does not harbor, nurture, or export terrorism. But Chinese decision-makers become uncomfortable when told that the path to victory might require a long-term NATO presence on China’s western border, U.S. bases or other military arrangements in Central Asia, and enhanced U.S. and NATO strategic coordination with neighbors that have had difficult relations with China.
Likewise on North Korea and Iran. It may well be that China doesn’t wish for a nuclear North Korea. But its emphasis on stability over and above every other objective puts it at odds with Washington and with the present government, at least, in Seoul about how to rank that objective relative to all others.
Feigenbaum later lauds the U.S. provision of "public goods" for the international system but of course the proffering of those goods is precisely why the U.S. feels threatened by things that most countries aren't nearly as concerned with. In such an environment, why would we expect other countries to put their economic interests aside to help us?
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