By Richard Weitz /10.28.2012/
During
Monday's foreign policy debate, Asia's future was an important topic. Dr.
Richard Weitz breaks down the candidates' positions.
The foreign policy debate between Governor Mitt Romney and President Barack
Obama excluded certain important issues that were not among those questions
selected by moderator Bob Shieffer. The three Asian issues given the most
attention were Iran, China, and Afghan-Pakistan. And even on these issues the
debate deepened uncertainty regarding the presidential candidates’ policies.
This is only natural given the format, which requires the candidates to
describe complex policies and issues in a few seconds and in an effort to sound
forceful, reasoned, moderate, and decisive, withclever sound bites and with little opportunity to correct
mistaken utterances. So as a service to readers let me try to clarify the
differences between the public stances of the two candidates, as well as
highlight other Asian issues that will likely preoccupy the next
administration.
With respect to Iran, Obama insisted that, “as long as
I'm president of the United States, Iran will not get a nuclear weapon,” noting
how Iran could then threaten Israel, “provide nuclear technology”
to terrorists, or catalyze “a nuclear arms race in the most volatile region of
the world.” Tehran must choose, Obama insisted, between a diplomatic settlement
that would “end their nuclear program or they will have to face a united world
and a United States president, me, who said we're not going to take any options
off the table.”
Still, Iranian leaders have an “opportunity to re-enter the community
of nations” but only if they” abide by the rules that have already been
established; they convince the international community they are not pursuing a
nuclear program” through “inspections that are very intrusive,” and “over time,
what they can do is regain credibility.”
The mentioning of the inspections issue is interesting since it
implies that Iran could be allowed to continue enriching uranium as long as the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) could confirm that Iran was not
diverting the enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons. But to work any such
deal would have to see Iran also adopt at least the IAEA Additional Protocol so
that the agency could inspect any sites where it suspected nuclear activities
may be occurring, instead of only the sites that the Iranian government
declares to the IAEA as part of its standard safeguards program.
Romney sought to repudiate Obama’s assertion that “during the
course of this campaign he's often talked as if we should take premature
military action.” The governor said that “our mission is.. to dissuade Iran
from having a nuclear weapon through peaceful and diplomatic means.” He
concurred that “a nuclear-capable Iran, is unacceptable to America” but
emphasized that Tehran was “four years closer to a nuclear weapon,” which is
chronologically true, as Obama acknowledged when he insisted that the “clock is
ticking.” Romney insisted that “military action is the last resort. It is
something one would only, only consider if all of the other avenues had been —
had been tried to their full extent.”
Both men also placed a lot of faith in sanctions.
Obama argued that his administration had “organized the strongest coalition and
the strongest sanctions against Iran in history, and it is crippling their
economy.” Romney agreed that, “It's absolutely the right thing to do to have
crippling sanctions. I'd have put them in place earlier, but it's good that we
have them.” He added that Washington should “tighten those sanctions” by
targeting ships, companies, and people conveying Iranian oil. We should also
pursue “diplomatic isolation efforts” by shunning Iranian diplomats and
indicting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for trying to incite genocide.
Despite genuine efforts at engaging Tehran, however,
the Obama administration has proven unable to resolve U.S. differences with the
Iranian government over its nuclear program, regional security issues, or other
disputes. Efforts at negotiation have encountered the problem that many
influential Iranians are deeply committed to making progress in
developing nuclear technologies. In addition, the Iranian elite have been so
divided that any person that proposes major Iranian concessions is denounced as
a traitor.
Despite these setbacks, the sincerity of the Obama
administration’s engagement efforts did make it easier for Washington to induce
foreign governments, particularly those in Europe, to adopt a harder stance
towards Tehran. In addition, the disputed 2009 Iranian presidential election,
accompanied by the regime’s massive use of force against peaceful
demonstrators, sharply diminished the legitimacy and popularity of the Iranian
government.
There are indications that sanctions are having some
effects on Tehran’s behavior. Even so, the Iranian government continues to make progress
toward a nuclear weapons capability and remains securely in power despite
internal discontent. Iran’s nuclear program has progressed sufficiently far
that a limited military strike—such as the earlier Israeli
air strikes against Iraq and Syria—would probably prove insufficient.
The recent renewal of negotiations might achieve a limited
compromise settlement, but an enduring U.S.-Iran reconciliation remains
improbable until Iran has new political leaders who are unafraid of losing
power to a popular revolution, and capable of envisaging a genuine improvement
in bilateral relations.
In the segment of the debate devoted to Afghanistan and Pakistan,
both candidates stated that they will withdrawal all U.S. forces from
Afghanistan by 2014, deviating from the condition-based withdrawal that they
supported and NATO supported earlier, as well as the current Pentagon goal of
keeping some 10,000 troops in Afghanistan after 2014 to engage in training and
special counterterrorist missions.
Schieffer began that session by noting that, “The United States is
scheduled to turn over responsibility for security in Afghanistan to the Afghan
government in 2014,” when “we will withdraw our combat troops, leave a smaller
force of Americans, if I understand our policy, in Afghanistan for training
purposes.” But then he asked “what do you do if the deadline arrives and it is
obvious the Afghans are unable to handle their security? Do we still leave?”
In the U.S.-Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement, signed on May
2, 2012, the United States pledged to provide Afghanistaneconomic, security, and
diplomatic assistance for 10 years beyond the planned 2014 withdrawal date for
all U.S. combat troops. The United States does not seek permanent military
bases but can receive access to Afghan facilities. In return, the Afghanistan
government commits to strengthen accountability, transparency, rule of law, and
the human rights of all Afghans, male and female. The agreement left several
questions unresolved, including how many U.S. troops would remain after 2014
and what missions they can undertake. These issues will be specified later in a
separate and more detailed security agreement that is still under negotiation.
Romney said that “when I'm president, we'll make sure we bring our
troops out by the end of 2014.” He added that “the surge has been successful,
and the training program is proceeding apace.” Obama agreed that the U.S. troop
surge had been successful during his administration, nothing that “we are now
in a position where we have met many of the objectives that got us there in the
first place" and stating “we're now in a position where we can transition
out, because there's no reason why Americans should die when Afghans are
perfectly capable of defending their own country.”
It is too early to term the Afghan transition strategy
a success. There have been measurable progress in terms of some metrics, yet
Washington and its allies have also seen a number of recent setbacks including
the burning of Qurans inside Bagram Air Base by U.S. troops, the massacre of
more than a dozen Afghan civilians by one maverick American soldier, and the
circulation of photographs of U.S. forces defiling the bodies of dead Afghan
Taliban. These developments have contributed to a surge of incidents in which
Afghan soldiers turned their weapons on U.S. or other NATO forces in ugly cases
of “green-on-blue” fratricide. Furthermore, the ANSF have been unable to
prevent the Taliban from reestablishing a presence in regions cleared by NATO
troops, and Afghanistan’s institutions have also proven incapable of promoting
socioeconomic development or in improving diplomatic ties with Pakistan. There
was also no discussion in the debate about possibly concluding a peace deal with the Afghan
Taliban, who appear increasingly inclined to merely “wait out” the foreign
troops.
The U.S. administration also needs to develop and execute a
strategy for Pakistan. Although the Obama administration has defined detailed
goals for what they would like to achieve in Afghanistan, as well as developed
strategies and programs for attaining them, they have yet to do so in the case
of Pakistan, despite that country’s greater important in terms of population,
geography, and military potential. Establishing clear objectives is important
for ranking priorities among such goals as supporting peace and security in
Afghanistan through reducing Pakistani support for the insurgents, curbing
vertical or horizontal nuclear proliferation, strengthening civilian authority
in Pakistan, reducing tensions between India and Pakistan, and so forth. To
take one example, U.S. officials need to decide if it is worth confronting
Islamabad over its support for terrorists in Afghanistan if that decreases
Pakistan’s willingness to cooperate with Washington in securing its nuclear
materials.
The last debate segment concerned the rise of China
and future challenges for the United States. As noted in another article in The Diplomat, Obama said that “China's both an
adversary but also a potential partner in the international community if it's
following … the same rules as everybody else.” To encourage them to do so the
administration has brought cases before the World Trade Organization against
China and took other measures to create “a level playing field when it came to
trade.” As a result, American exports to China have doubled in the past four
years and China’s currency has substantially appreciated.
Romney also agreed that China and the United States share an
interest in avoiding war and protectionism. “And so we can be a partner with
China. We don't have to be an adversary in any way, shape or form. We can work
with them. We can collaborate with them if they're willing to be responsible.”
But in this respect Romney said that “China has not played by the same rules.”
In his view, “They're stealing our intellectual property, our patents, our
designs, our technology, hacking into our computers, counterfeiting our goods.”
Romney again charged that
the Chinese were “holding down artificially the value of their currency,” which
makes people buy Chinese rather than American goods. So he reaffirmed that “on
day one I will label them a currency manipulator which allows us to apply
tariffs where they're taking jobs.” Both men then tried to show how their
domestic policies would strengthen the American economy and make the United
States a more effective economic competitor with China, differing on the proper
role for the federal government in these endeavors.
The debate did not really address a larger Asian strategy. Obama
did defend his “pivot to the Asia-Pacific region” after mentioning China’s
security, arguing that the policy is “sending a very clear signal that America
is a Pacific power,that we are going to have a presence there." It was
interesting that the president used the term “pivot” rather than the new phrase “rebalancing.”
Critics have repeatedly noted that “pivot” can imply both that we were not
really in Asia before and that we are turning away from our obligations in
other regions, neither of which is true.
Fortunately, last night the Committee of 100 and
the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies sponsored a debate
between representatives of the Democratic and Republican presidential
candidates that focused exclusively on China. Dr. Jeffrey A. Bader, former
Senior Director of Asian Affairs on Obama’s National Security Council,
represented the Obama Campaign while Dr. Aaron Friedberg represented the Romney camp.
That surrogate debate made clear that the Obama
administration’s increased focus on China and the Asia-Pacific region enjoys
widespread bipartisan support in Washington and that even a Republican
president would likely continue along the same lines. The representatives stressed the importance of
China and Asia for the United States and the world given the region’s economic
and strategic importance. They concurred in the goal of achieving a peaceful
and prosperous China and Asian region that reflects U.S-supported values and
human rights. The two experts rejected the idea of
pursuing a containment strategy toward
China, noting that other Asian countries would oppose it as well, and supported
continuing the general strategy of mixing engagement and balancing that has
been pursued by Republican and Democratic administrations since the Cold War.
Like Obama and Romney in their debate, Bader and
Friedberg differed primarily on how successful the
Obama administration had been in pursuing this strategy. Bader pointed to
evidence of considerable progress, while Friedberg criticized the Obama
administration for being ineffective, inconsistent, insufficiently resourced,
and focusing on rhetoric and processes rather than results. Bader warned that
Romney’s plans to declare China a currency manipulator on the first day of his
presidency would backfire, while Friedberg argued that showing a little more
backbone on currency and other issues could produce superior results. He
insisted that we needed to find ways to exert more leverage to make the
economic relationship more balanced more rapidly than what he termed the weak
administration policies were doing.
Both men reaffirmed the importance of resumed mil-to-mil dialogue. Bader stressed
the need to engage the Chinese military, whose continued relative domestic and
international isolation could present problems given its importance in PRC
national security decisions. It needs to understand the outside world better.
Bader termed the creation of the China-U.S. Strategic Security Dialogue, which
has senior uniformed military officers join the top officials, the
accomplishment of a 25-year quest to get the Chinese military in the same room
with senior Chinese civilians and their American counterparts.
Friedberg warned that the military dialogue should not
be an end in itself and needed to produce concrete results. The same was true
with U.S. efforts to promote democracy, economic reform, and better cyber
policies regarding China. Nevertheless, Friedberg acknowledged that U.S.
leverage on these and other areas was limited and that we needed to hedge
against bad outcomes. In addition, Americans often have to place our faith in
the correctness of our values and the power of the Chinese people to force the
regime to pursue policies that more comprehensively benefited the Chinese
nation as well as its foreign partners.
Seeking to dispel concerns that Washington
was abandoning Taipei, Bader noted that the Obama administration had supported
Taiwan through one of the largest arms sales packages in history without
ruining cross-Strait relations. Friedberg said that a Romney administration
would sell Taiwan even more advanced planes to counter the PLA Air Force’s
surging capabilities. But both men agreed Taiwan was no longer in a position to
match Beijing militarily and that the United States and other countries had to
continue convincing PRC leaders than any use of force would prove disastrous to
China’s overall foreign policy,
Bader acknowledged that the administration had achieved only
modest success in inducing China to pursue more cooperative policies regarding
such contentious issues as economic and political reform, climate change, and
regional nonproliferation issues like Iran and North Korea.
The Obama administration benefited from Chinese
overreaching in 2009 and 2010, which alarmed many Asian leaders previously
lulled by Beijing’s earlier non-confrontational policies in most of Asia. The
Chinese provocations prompted newly anxious Asian countries to seek greater U.S. involvement in the region. PRC policymakers have
since tempered their approach, which over time could weaken regional demands
for a larger and more visible U.S. security presence in Asia.
Furthermore, Sino-American tensions over Taiwan, U.S. military
patrols near China, and mutual military buildups are being downplayed rather
than resolved. This year should see continued restraint in Beijing due to
domestic political preoccupations. But the long-term economic, ideological, and
military sources of Sino-American tension persist and could easily manifest
themselves in further confrontations over Iran, Korea, South China Sea, or
Taiwan.
NOTE--The writer is director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis and a
Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute. The
above article is republished from The Diplomat.
Stay tuned to TIBET
TELEGRAPH for more
news and views on Tibet and Tibetan life and on areas of interest to the
Tibetan readers
I don't care who is best for the world or America but one thing I care is our Tibet.
ReplyDeleteRomney Romney Romney though I do not like his many plans for the Nation as whole.
For Tibet, it has always been Republican Republican and Republican! I still can't forget how Obama treated His Holiness, remember that back door garbage site! Remember how former President Bush always openly fearlessly opened up Tibet issue and how boldly he admire His Holiness during the Gold Medal Celebration in front of the world. It is Bush's father who signed 1000 Tibetan Immigration! There are many more that Republican did for us. Tibetans are in India, US and different part of the world - not because of Food, Clothing and Shelter! Remember we can survive anywhere in the world and forget about unemployment and other problems of America and vote for the party who supports our cause!
Yes, Romney is as rotten as Bush is bullshit, but I bet both are better than Obama in terms of Tibet issue!
DeleteYou got it Kunga la!
Delete