Strategic reassurance starts with small steps

• Source: Global Times
• [00:06 November 17 2009]
• Comments

By Da Wei

American officials have an impressive ability to invent catchwords that dominate the discourse of China-US relations.

In his speech in late September, US Deputy Secretaryof State James Steinberg made "strategic reassurance" a buzzword in Beijing.

Many Chinese scholars have read a sense of equality. For them, the first reaction to the speech is, "Yes, we can reassure the US, but what will the US do to reassure us about American intentions?"

Steinberg provided a partial answer in his speech. "We are ready to accept a growing role for China on the international stage, and in many areas, we have already embraced it."

The US's relative openness to a rising power is perhaps the most important difference between the US and previous European hegemons and great powers.

China and the US would have been doomed to great power rivalry or even conflict if the US had adopted a more exclusionary strategy toward a rising China.

From a Chinese perspective, however, the US view of strategic reassurance remains disturbingly one-sided. The US has not been prepared to assure China that it recognizes and accepts a basic and core Chinese interest: the integrity of Chinese territory and Chinese sovereignty.

The US has never officially recognized that Taiwan is a part of China. The US has assured China to reduce the quantity and quality of arms sale but has never delivered on the promise.

Of course, these are complicated issues. But it remains the case that strategic reassurance can only be successful when it is reciprocal.

Surely, the US would be less willing or able to o. er any strategic reassurance that China might seek if, for example, China sold advanced weaponry to Cuba or supported radical organizations that undertook, or even encouraged and advocated, insurgency in Afghanistan or Iraq.

China is not expecting or demanding a dramatic policy reorientation from the US during US President Barack Obama's visit or in the near term thereafter. But small steps from the US to show some respect for China's basic, core interests of territorial integrity and sovereignty can be important demonstrations of good will.

One useful example is Obama's decision not to meet with the Dalai Lama before his visit to Beijing.

This is still far from satisfying from a Chinese perspective, but it was a welcome, if modest, signal that China recognized and understood clearly.