[A-List] China: a realist salutes "geopolitical genius"

["Michael Keaney" <michael011@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The geopolitical genius of China's satellite kill
By Victor Mallet
Financial Times: January 25 2007

China's successful launch of a ballistic missile this month to destroy a
satellite in orbit has been variously portrayed by defence analysts and
commentators as a damaging blow to Beijing's relations with Washington,
a sign that China has overreached itself and just "a big mistake".

These conclusions suggest a fundamental misunderstanding of how Chinese
leaders have behaved in the past, how they will behave in the future and
how they will probably continue to get the better of their western
counterparts in the chess game of international diplomacy.

On this occasion, as before, China has put into practice a ruthless,
rational and legally defensible strategy that exploits a key weakness of
the world's biggest economy and sole military superpower.

For years - a period coinciding with the rise of China - the US has
failed to provide moral or political leadership in tackling the big
challenges facing humankind, whether they concern global warming or the
peaceful use of space. Crucially, the US has been reluctant to subsume
its national interests into multinational efforts to benefit the wider
world.

China's destruction of an obsolete weather satellite, similar to past
tests conducted by the US and the Soviet Union, exploits this failure.
Both China and Russia have for years urged the US to agree to a ban on
space weapons and the use of force against satellites, but the US
refused to negotiate, instead announcing a policy last year that boldly
asserts US national rights in space.

What is surprising about the Chinese test is that anyone was surprised.
As the office of Tony Blair, the UK prime minister, conceded, the test
"does not contravene international law".

Sure of its ground, the Chinese government - after a test whose only aim
was to prove it could obliterate enemy satellites in low earth orbit -
even had the gall to declare that "China has never, and will never,
participate in any form of space arms race". This was no more truthful
than President George W. Bush's insistence that "we do not torture"
detainees.

The militarisation of space is only the latest area in which an
increasingly assertive China has taken advantage of the typical US
approach to critical issues of global importance since the end of the
cold war. The US is so protective of its sovereignty and complacent
about its power that it often refuses to adhere to accepted
international norms or contemplate an international regime that might
constrain its room for manoeuvre.

There are at least three areas in which China is happy to ride on
America's coat-tails and the first is human rights. Until the US began
detaining people without trial at Guantánamo Bay five years ago, it was
possible for US politicians, without hypocrisy, to criticise Chinese
Communist leaders for jailing their political opponents. The US could
exert real influence on Chinese behaviour. Exchanges of presidential
visits between the two countries were in those days preceded by the
ritual release of Chinese dissidents into US care; today such visits are
more likely to be marked by the ritual purchase of Boeing aircraft as
part of China's efforts to reduce the US trade deficit.

Chinese officials are not shy to point out Washington's selective
approach to human rights. They do not see why resource-hungry China
should not support dictatorships in Burma and Zimbabwe if the US does
the same in Pakistan, central Asia and west Africa. Nor is there any
obvious reason why China should not use its United Nations Security
Council veto to protect allies such as Sudan from sanctions when the US
does the same for its protégés, including Israel.

The second issue is economic nationalism. China, along with several
other Asian nations, is rightly accused of using dubious stratagems -
including peculiar product standards and health and safety scares - to
protect its domestic market from foreign competitors. Yet whenever this
issue is raised, China has only to recall a two-year-old dispute that
still rankles with Chinese officials: CNOOC, the state-controlled oil
group, was stopped from buying Unocal, the US oil company, on spurious
national security grounds.

Third is the environment. True, air pollution from China has been
detected on the US side of the Pacific and Chinese industrialisation
threatens the global environment. But why should China take action when
the US, still the world's biggest contributor to global warming, has
refused to adopt the Kyoto protocol on climate change and has barely
begun to take the matter seriously?

Notwithstanding Mr Bush's call for lower US petrol consumption in his
state of the nation address on Tuesday, fuel economy standards for new
vehicles are more stringent in China than in the much wealthier US.

If China is to be held to account for its actions - whether in polluting
the world, persecuting its dissidents, supporting dictators or
disturbing the peace in space by blowing up satellites - the US must
re-arm itself with credibility, moral conviction and a willingness to
help craft and then submit to international law.

China is not the only nation to have taken advantage of the plight of
the US since it became obsessed by Iraq and Islamic fundamentalism.
Authoritarians everywhere - from Russia to Venezuela - have done the
same. This month's satellite kill, however, is another sign that no big
nation has learnt to play the game of geopolitics as skilfully as China.


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