Mainland China is 250 times larger than Taiwan and has 55 times as many people. But in 1992 mainland China’s economy was only 2.2 times larger than that of Taiwan. Tiny Taiwan is an economic giant. It has the largest foreign exchange reserve in the world, is the fourteenth-largest trading country in the world, and has the twentieth-largest GNP in the world—larger than the GNPs of three fourths of the nations in the U.N. It was the sixth-largest trading partner and the sixth-largest export market of the United States in 1992. Taiwan provides twice as big a market for American exports as mainland China.
Like a couple who have gone through a bitter divorce, China and Taiwan publicly have irreconcilable differences. The separation is permanent politically, but they are in bed together economically. China can never agree that Taiwan should have equal status as a member of the U.N. But economically the two need each other. Taiwan is rapidly becoming China’s biggest foreign investor. The trade between the two, much of it thinly disguised by going through Hong Kong, is enormous.
A more prosperous Taiwan serves China’s interests. A more prosperous China serves Taiwan’s interests. Beijing should drop its opposition to Taiwan’s membership in international economic organizations. While we should not risk jeopardizing our relations with Beijing by formally recognizing Taiwan diplomatically, we should recognize Taiwan economically by strongly supporting its efforts to become a member of such organizations. And we should begin extending to Taiwan government officials the diplomatic courtesies that the leaders of one of the world’s major economic powers deserve. The best guarantee of Taiwan’s security is our relationship with the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese will not launch a military attack against Taiwan as long as Beijing knows such an action would jeopardize their relationship with the United States.
Similar factors affect China’s relationship to Hong Kong. In 1984, when China pledged that for fifty years after Hong Kong again became part of China in 1997 it would preserve Hong Kong’s capitalist way of life, some observers said this was a two-China policy—with one government and two economic systems. Milton Friedman disagreed. He said, “One country with two systems is from a dream world. One country is one country.” Economically, he has proved to be right. Despite the highly publicized disagreements between Britain’s Hong Kong governor, Chris Patten, and Beijing on political issues, China and Hong Kong are one country economically and will remain so. Hong Kong is China’s biggest foreign investor, and China is Hong Kong’s biggest trading partner. The two economies are blended together and political differences will not pry them apart because each needs the other. Hong Kong’s per capita income is $19,000, compared with Britain’s $16,000. After Hong Kong again becomes part of China in 1997, their political differences will continue to appear to drive them apart, but their much stronger economic interests will inevitably draw them together. Hong Kong is one of the world’s richest societies, and in the next century, China will become one. One of the reasons China will not adopt a repressive political policy in Hong Kong after 1997 is that it knows this would destroy any hope it may have to convince Taiwan to accept a similar arrangement.
VIETNAM, CUBA, AND NORTH KOREA: THE CLOSED DOOR OR THE OPEN DOOR?
The lessons of China are directly relevant to what our policies should be toward the three remaining hard-line communist states: Vietnam, Cuba, and North Korea.
In planning the American opening to China, I set one basic threshold requirement. In the 1967 article in Foreign Affairs in which I first publicly stressed the need for such an opening, I argued that doing so the right way would require short-run pressures “designed to persuade Peking that its interests can be served only by accepting the basic rules of international civility.” For the long run, it would require “pulling China back into the world community—but as a great and progressing nation, not as the epicenter of world revolution.” In other words, China had to be brought into the world community, but it could not be allowed to shoot its way in.
When I wrote that, China was still an aggressive power and a serious threat to the security of its neighbors. On taking office in January 1969, one of the first things I did was to set in motion a series of initiatives aimed at achieving an opening to China in the right way. By the time of my initial visit to Beijing in 1972, China was still repressive domestically, but except for its brief invasion of Vietnam, it was no longer a direct military threat to its neighbors.
Of the three remaining communist states, North Korea clearly remains a serious, active threat, not only to South Korea but to the peace and security of the entire Pacific Rim. It has not yet crossed the threshold that I set more than twenty-five years ago for China. Until it ceases to be a threat, we should continue to treat it as the pariah nation that its leaders still persist in making it.
Vietnam and Cuba are like North Korea in that both are still run by repressive communist regimes. Between the two there are dramatic differences. But neither presents an active threat to the peace internationally.
Vietnam’s present leaders have turned the country’s extraordinary energies from external aggression to internal development. Like China’s leaders, they retain tight political control but are opening their economy to market forces. The result is that Vietnam is now on the verge of becoming a significant economic power. In Cuba, by contrast, Castro still gives lip service to world revolution. But his Stalinist economic policies have devastated the nation’s economy, and without his former Soviet sponsors, he no longer has the resources to pose a serious external threat.
In the cases of both Cuba and Vietnam, the question before us now is how we can best serve our own national interest, the interests of the people of those two nations, and the interest of the world community: by the closed door or the open door?
Of the two, Vietnam presents the easier choice. Though repressive, its government is solidly entrenched. Clearly, neither economic nor diplomatic pressures will dislodge it. The question is how best to open it further to the winds of freedom that are sweeping the world. Again, the China analogy is instructive. Increasing economic integration with the world brings greater economic freedoms, and economic freedoms build powerful internal pressure for political freedoms.
We should start by separating the question of our political relationship with Vietnam from that of our economic relationship, letting each develop at its own pace. Even if we are totally satisfied that the Vietnamese government has done all it can to account for Americans missing in action in the Vietnam War, we should keep the political relationship in a deep freeze as long as Hanoi continues to treat as second-class citizens the millions of South Vietnamese who were our allies in the war. We should follow the administration’s decision to lift the trade embargo with vigorous efforts to encourage investment in Vietnam and draw it further into the global economy, not to help the present Vietnamese regime but to strengthen the forces of change.
In the case of Cuba, much of the pressure to keep our economic embargoes in force derives from the long-standing belief, particularly among many in the Cuban exile community, that this is the best way to bring a swift end to the cruel and destructive Castro regime. It is true that the collapse of the Soviet government and the subsequent cutoff of Soviet economic subsidies have put heavy new pressures on Castro. The privation is brutal. Economic conditions on the island, bad before, have become far worse. His police state has nevertheless maintained its iron grip.
The plain fact, painful though it may be to face, is that after thirty-five years of Castro’s rule, the hard line against him has failed to get rid of him. It is time to shift the central focus of our policies from hurting Cuba’s government to helping its people. It is unlikely that Castro, an isolated survivor of the Soviet world, could again mount a serious subversive threat in this hemisphere, even if Cuba’s economy improves. Meanwhile, the condition of his people is desperate and growing worse. They need food, they need the basic essentials of everyday life, they need the rudiments of a functioning economy, and they need freedom.
This means we should drop the economic embargo and open the way to trade, investment, and economic interaction, while insisting that ideas and information be allowed to flow as freely as goods. Today’s global economy is essentially a market economy. Where the market system penetrates, it carries along the seeds of political and economic reform. We should put the challenge squarely to Castro: If he wants his people to prosper, then let him open the door to goods and ideas. If he insists on keeping it shut, it will be clear beyond question that only his fear of freedom stands in the way of his people’s escape from privation. If he opens it, then he opens it also to the winds of freedom.
• • •
The United States must learn to think of itself as an Asian-Pacific power in the same automatic, instinctual way that it thinks of itself as a part of the Atlantic Community. This is true not only because more and more of America’s ablest new immigrants come from Asia but also because Asia will soon be the largest market for our goods, the greatest preoccupation of our policymakers in Washington, and the likeliest arena for the application of U.S. diplomatic and even military power. Just as we were preoccupied in 1993 with the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, we may well be preoccupied in 2003 with the threat of war over which Asian country controls oil rights in the South China Sea.
If America is to play a constructive role in Asia, the American people must be comfortable with their new role as citizens of the Pacific. We must think of Asian peoples not as threats or adversaries but as worthy competitors and partners in ensuring peace and stability in a volatile region. Japan was once called the Great Britain of Asia. Our goal should be to feel the same commonality of purpose and values with the emerging superpowers of Asia as we do with the former empires of Europe.
To do so, we will have to get over our fear of the mighty new Asia of the twenty-first century. By the year 2000, 3.5 billion of the world’s 6.2 billion people will be Asians, and they will produce over half of the world’s goods. To pessimists, these facts spell a West in decline, an America relegated to the margins. These analysts proceed from the fallacy that there is only so much growth and prosperity to go around, that if “they” are up, then “we” must be down. It is true that the United States will get a run for its money from China as both an economic and a military superpower by the middle of the next century. But in purely economic terms, Asia’s skyrocketing growth, and with it the growth of a massive Asian middle class of consumers, will create incredible new opportunities for the West if we rise effectively to the challenge.
The pessimists are alarmed by the pace of Japanese investment in Asia, which has now reached an estimated $60 billion, because they fear it is designed to keep American and European investors out. This attitude is shortsighted, counterproductive, and wrong. In fact, Japanese investment is helping to create conditions in Asia that will be enormously beneficial to the rest of the world for decades to come.
These opportunities are there to be grasped. We will end up on the sidelines only if, by our own shortsightedness, we take ourselves out of the game. If we stay in, if we compete and cooperate as a full member of the Asian-Pacific community, everyone will score, and everyone will win.
Trade does not prevent wars, but it does require peace. As Lee Kwan Yew said to a joint session of Congress during his visit to Washington nine years ago, ambitious nations grow either by trading with their neighbors or, if they cannot trade openly, gobbling up their neighbors’ territory. It is profoundly in our interest that the nations of Asia grow the peaceful way.
The ideal world beyond peace—for now, almost beyond imagining—is 188 equally rich nations trading with one another in a free, fair way, each producing what it does best and buying what it needs most. A generation from now, such an outcome may be within the world’s grasp. Today, much of Asia is unimaginably richer than it was after World War II. If Asian nations that were once mired in abject poverty join the developed world in the beginning of the next century, as they are very likely to do, then the rest of the developing world—if it follows Asia’s free-market example—may also pass from poverty to prosperity.
Building New Bridges to the Muslim World
During the Cold War, Americans glimpsed the Middle East and the Persian Gulf region in the harsh light cast by two distorting prisms: the conflict between the Arabs and Israel and the threat of Muslim fundamentalism, represented by such events as the seizing of American hostages in Iran in 1979. Our overwhelming interests in protecting the state of Israel and combating extremist terrorists have left the powerful impression that the Muslim world is a ragtag conglomeration of crazy, poorly shaven Arabs and fanatical medieval Persians.
Instead it is a highly diverse community of 850 million people and 190 ethnic groups living in thirty-seven countries around the world. These nations control most of the world’s oil and possess many of its most powerful armies, and in the century to come they will wield extraordinary trading power as well. In the era beyond peace, our commitment to Israel must not and will not waiver. Nor should our opposition to extremist regimes in Iraq and Iran when they threaten our interests. But in fashioning a new Muslimpolitik for a new era, the United States must learn to view the Muslim world not as a unified, radical geopolitical force bent on confronting the West but rather as a diverse cultural and ethnic grouping bounded by a faith in Islam and a legacy of political turbulence.
Our failure to appreciate the diversity of the Muslim world and the genuine threats its populations face has already contributed to the tragedy in Bosnia-Herzegovina—one of the most disgraceful chapters of the post–World War II era.
The symbolic center of the Muslim world, the Persian Gulf region, is unquestionably a vital interest of the United States. It is a bridge between Europe, Asia, and Africa, sits atop 55 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, and contains two of the world’s most vital chokepoints—the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz. It is also the most violently unstable region in the world.
Since 1980, more than 1.4 million people in this region have lost their lives in wars and terrorist attacks. Over the last forty-five years, Israel and its Arab neighbors have fought five wars—in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982—that have claimed the lives of more than a hundred thousand people. In 1992, Israel and its closest neighbors, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, spent $11 billion for defense. In that same year, the United States provided $1.8 billion for military aid and $1.2 billion for economic aid to Israel and $1.3 billion for military aid and $900 million for economic aid to Israel’s Arab neighbors. Militarization of the region is not attributable to the Arab-Israeli conflict alone. Syria invaded Jordan in 1970; Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990; Libya invaded Chad in 1980; Syria occupied Lebanon in 1976; North and South Yemen fought a decade-long civil war before uniting. Iran has attempted to subvert democratic governments by funding terrorist groups in Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Sudan. Muslim-versus-Muslim conflicts have cost ten times as many lives as the Arab-Israeli conflict. Those conflicts would have taken place had there been no Cold War and no Arab-Israeli conflict. Peace between Arabs and Israelis will not signal the end of conflict between Muslim nations in the area.
The West has a vital interest in maintaining access to Persian Gulf oil. Europe depends on the Gulf for over 75 percent of its oil, Japan for over 90 percent. While the United States receives only 6 percent of its oil from this region, th
e ripple effect of an oil cutoff from the Persian Gulf would cripple U.S. industry. Such a cutoff would be fatal to the industries of our allies in Western Europe and Japan. As long as the West remains so dependent on Gulf oil, we must maintain the capability to defend our friends in the Persian Gulf region.
The United States also has a critical interest in the survival and security of Israel. The United States and Israel are not formal allies, but we have a moral commitment that transcends any security agreement. As I bluntly told a bipartisan meeting of congressional leaders at the beginning of the Yom Kippur war in 1973, “No American President will ever let Israel go down the tube.” Israel is the haven for millions whose families endured incredible suffering in the Holocaust. It is the only democracy in the Middle East and from its birth has been besieged by countries committed to its destruction. The depth of our commitment is demonstrated by the fact that since our recognition of Israel forty-five years ago, the United States has provided $40 billion in economic and military aid to Israel, more than twice as much as was spent under the Marshall Plan. The fact that Arab governments have finally recognized the existence of Israel is testimony to their recognition that our commitment to the survival of Israel is a pillar of America’s foreign policy which will never be shaken.
The dramatic handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat on September 13, 1993, in Washington could usher in a new era of peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. This would be a historic achievement of the greatest magnitude. Whatever diplomatic agreements Israel and its neighbors reach, it will be necessary to follow up with very substantive economic aid programs to give the parties a stake in keeping the peace. These programs must not be allowed to fail for lack of financial support. In addition to the parties involved, the United States, Japan, the nations of Western Europe, and those in the Persian Gulf region have a stake in preserving peace in the Middle East and should not hesitate to make the investment needed to preserve peace.
Beyond Peace Page 16