OLD ENEMIES IN A NEW CENTURY

August 18, 2008 

The opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games attracted huge television audiences around the world. The Russian incursion into Georgia drew condemnation. Both events cast revealing light on old enemies in a new century. Both countries continue to present serious challenges for the United States. How we deal with them will determine what kind of 21st-century world we live in.

China’s phenomenal economic growth, reflected in the scope of the Games opening ceremony, and its status as a global political, economic, and eventually military power, come as no surprise. Likewise, Russia’s reemergence as an authoritarian state bent on regaining vulnerable parts of its former empire also should have come as no surprise. We’ve helped them both become what they have become.

The US has played a major role in China’s 21st-century performance on the world stage. We’ve sent the Chinese billions of dollars in exchange for their products and cheap labor. We’ve allowed them to finance our national debt. We provided them access to US technology. And despite the fact that our interests frequently diverge and they pose a growing military threat, we have sought to make them our friends, not our enemies.

Similarly, we have facilitated Russia’s resurgence under Vladimir Putin. We’ve sought to incorporate Russia in Western institutions and treated Putin as a partner in world affairs. At the same time, we’ve largely stood on the sidelines as Putin suppressed freedom of speech and freedom of the press while placing Russia’s wealth in the hands of the oligarchy. Like shareholders watching the stock market fall, we kept our money invested waiting for a turn around that never came. Making NATO members of former Warsaw Pact countries, a wise strategy given recent events, only further motivated Mr. Putin to take the actions he has taken.

Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States found itself confronted with new and different threats from those it faced during the Cold War. Radical extremists and rogue states presented different challenges and made strange bedfellows of old enemies. The Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy, released to the public on July 31, 2008, calls China and Russia, "important partners for the future" with whom "we seek to build collaborative and cooperative relationships.”

It acknowledges the fact that we need China's and Russia’s help to effectively combat radical extremism. But what price are we willing to pay for it? Can we afford to continue mortgaging our national security with loans from Chinese banks? Can we afford to stand by and allow Moscow to overthrow democratically elected governments in Eastern Europe? Can we afford to continue spending billions on foreign oil while China’s energy consumption and our refusal to drill drives up the price, pouring money into Russia's coffers they can use to finance military aggression.

The events of the past week should be a wake up call. The “long war” against radical extremists requires broad international cooperation. We must continue to pursue that cooperation aggressively. At the same time, however, we can not allow China and Russia to use that cooperation to take advantage of us.

China and Russia are not democracies. They may be someday, but until they are we should not expect them to behave like they were. Beijing and Moscow do not share our democratic vision for the 21st century. They do not share our belief in human rights. They see us as a threat to their national security and seek capabilities and relationships to counter us. 

No reasonable person seeks another Cold War or military confrontation with China or Russia. Russia’s incursion into Georgia, however, demonstrates what can happen when our foreign policy is based on unrealistic expectations of totalitarian states.

Putin took deliberate military action in Georgia to send a message to the United States, NATO, and other countries in the region. He will take similar actions in the future when he deems them necessary. Expressing his displeasure at the pending US-Poland missile defense agreement, he recently suggested that Russia should “return to Cuba,” where the Soviet Union and the United States came as close as ever to nuclear war. One of his generals threatened Poland with nuclear attack for signing the agreement. Just bluster? Perhaps not.

China currently pursues a non-confrontational policy toward the US; it’s been helpful with North Korea, and it’s pursuing a policy of détente with Taiwan. It’s showing its friendlier side to the world at the Beijing Olympics.

As George Will observed, however, the Games opening ceremony "was a tableau of the miniaturization of the individual and the subordination of individuality to the collective. Not since the Nazi's 1934 Nuremburg rally, which Leni Riefenstahl turned into the film 'Triumph of the Will,' has tyranny been so brazenly tarted up as art." 

China's media skills certainly put Russia's to shame. Last week Russians came across as pillaging thugs. But like Russia, China pursues an aggressive military modernization program to suppress dissent, project power, and regain lost territory. Taiwan-China détente notwithstanding, China continues to build up its forces and ballistic missiles along the Taiwan Strait.

Should Taiwan-China détente falter, China may again choose to intimidate Taiwan with the threat of military force as it did in 1996 when it launched test ballistic missiles at targets near Taiwan ports. If we are not careful, we could easily find ourselves in a situation similar to the one we find ourselves in today with Russia and Georgia -- suddenly confronted with a military situation we’re not prepared for.

It made sense following the fall of the Soviet Union to pursue cooperative relations with Russia and China. That bipartisan policy has reaped benefits for the US and for world peace and stability. We must, however, face reality. Such a policy has its limitations. At its core, there are fundamental incompatibilities between democracies, ruled by principles of human rights, freedom, and justice for all, and totalitarian states, regardless of the free-market economic policies they practice. Sooner or later they do things that force freedom-loving peoples to put their relationships with them on the line, or worse, stand up to their aggression with military force.

President Bush will soon leave office and his successor will inherit these challenges. How our next commander-in-chief deals with them will shape the the 21st century.