China ignores US entreaties of mediation

 

     by Melkulangara Bhadrakumar

 

There is an old proverb that when misfortunes come, they come in battalions. Coming on top of reports of American soldiers going down like nine-pins on a drone strike against the super secret CIA station for intelligence and covert operations on the Syrian-Jordanian border, ’nyet’ is the word from Beijing to the Biden administration’s entreaties seeking  intervention with Tehran to rein in the Houthis of Yemen, against the foreboding backdrop of the Axis of Resistance expanding its operations against American and Israeli interests. 

President Biden deputed his National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to handle this highly delicate mission with Beijing, instead of the US’s top diplomat Antony Blinken. Sullivan is uniquely placed to switch roles between the US’ domestic and foreign policies. He is a trusted hatchet man of the president and is actively involved in Biden’s re-election campaign. 

Sullivan stayed overnight in Thailand On Friday/Saturday to launch his charm offensive vis-a-vis Foreign Minister Wang Yi. But he came away with no sign that China is willing to use its influence with Tehran. 

Later, an unattributable media briefing by a senior NSC official via teleconference was hastily arranged by the White House to cover Sullivan’s back side. It brought home that reading the Chinese tea leaves is an art in itself. As the NSC official put it, “Beijing says they are raising this with the Iranians … but we’re certainly going to wait before we comment further on how effectively we think they’re actually raising it.” 

Sullivan seems to have hit a brick wall. This is curious because the Biden Administration should have learnt from previous experience with Beijing in trying to prod China to convince close ally North Korea to scale back its nuclear weapons programme or roll back its “no limits” friendship with Russia over Ukraine. 

Actually, South Korea’s military said on Sunday that North Korea fired several cruise missiles, extending a streak in weapons tests that are worsening tensions with the US and reflecting Pyongyang’s efforts to expand its arsenal of weapons designed to overwhelm remote US targets in the Pacific, including Guam!   

Evidently, the Biden administration failed to comprehend that Beijing was under no obligation to use its influence on Pyongyang for serving American interests. It is sheer naïveté to expect Beijing to fall for selective engagement on issues that aim to buy time for the president to give his best shot in the upcoming November elections. 

What does China get in return? The question doesn’t occur to the Biden Administration. The assumption in DC is that China is on an ego trip and begging for selective engagement with the No 1 military and economic power on the planet. On the contrary, China too has some legitimate demands to make — such as, for instance, the US not inciting Taiwan surreptitiously to travel on the path of independence, or allowing China a level playing field for setting new technology standards at the global level as an innovative country.

Interestingly, compared to the taciturn readout by the White House on the Sullivan-Wang Yi meeting in Thailand, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a candid full-bodied statement on Saturday to set the record straight and pre-empt the spin doctors in the Biden White House from scripting some false narrative. The relevant excerpts from the Chinese statement titled  Wang Yi held a meeting with Sullivan, assistant to the President of the United States for National Security Affairs are reproduced below: 

(Unofficial translation)

The two sides conducted frank, substantive and fruitful strategic communications around the implementation of the consensus of the San Francisco meeting between the heads of state of the two countries and the proper handling of important and sensitive issues in Sino-US relations. 

Wang Yi said that this year marks the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States. The two sides should take this as an opportunity to summarise their experiences and learn lessons, treat each other equally rather than condescendingly, seek common ground while preserving differences rather than highlighting differences, effectively respect rather than harm each other’s core interests, and work together to mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation to build a correct way for China and the United States to get along.

Wang Yi emphasised that the Taiwan issue is China’s internal affairs, and Taiwan’s regional elections cannot change the basic fact that Taiwan is a part of China. The biggest risk to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is ‘Taiwan independence,’ and the biggest challenge to Sino-US relations is also ‘Taiwan independence.’ The United States must abide by the one-China principle and the three joint communiqués between China and the United States, implement the commitment not to support ‘Taiwan independence’ into actions, and support China’s peaceful reunification.

Wang Yi pointed out that all countries have national security concerns, but they must be justified and reasonable. They cannot engage in pan-politicisation and pan-security, let alone curb and suppress the development of other countries. The two sides agreed to further discuss the boundary between national security and economic activities…

The two sides also discussed international and regional issues such as the Middle East, Ukraine, the Korean Peninsula, and the South China Sea.

The Chinese readout did not even make any specific mention of the Houthis or Tehran! Instead, it underscored the perceived threat of Taiwan independence as “the biggest challenge to China—US relations.” And, furthermore, it reiterated Beijing’s concerns that the US is using export restrictions “to contain and suppress the development of other countries” and said that the two countries will discuss “the boundary between national security and economic activities” in future meetings.

What do we make out of this? Simply put, China’s reluctance to use its diplomatic and economic heft to support US moves to address the Red Sea disruptions by reining in the Axis of Resistance (or restrain North Korea’s behaviour) underscores the limitations of the Biden administration’s diplomatic outreach efforts or charm offensive to win over Beijing and get it committed to a selective engagement over Washington’s priorities on flash points that might otherwise become raging controversies in electoral politics till November. 

By the way, the Chinese readout also acknowledged that there are areas where Beijing is indeed interested in an engagement with the US at this transformative point in time — viz., the joint implementation of the so-called “San Francisco Vision,” which translates as: 

• regular contacts between the two presidents so as to “give strategic guidance to bilateral relations”; 
• promotion of bilateral exchanges; 
• making good use of the current strategic communication channels and a series of dialogue and consultation mechanisms” in various fields ranging from diplomacy, mil-to-mil ties, economy, finance, commerce, climate change, etc.; 
• continuing the discussion over the “guiding principles” of Sino-US relations; 
• cooperation in drug control; 
• Artificial intelligence intergovernmental dialogue mechanism; and,
• cultural exchanges.

How come the US and its western allies get it all horribly wrong? For an answer, the final word must go to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov who said in New York while on a brief visit to the UN hqs last weekend:

They believe that for 500 years they have ruled the world as they wish, living at the expense of others, and they think this should continue. This logic completely ignores the objective reality, in particular the fact that the vast majority of former colonies have gained independence, become aware of their national interests, want to strengthen their national, cultural and religious identity and are growing so fast that they have left the West behind – at least the BRICS members are.

The bottom line is, Beijing will not fall for US attempts to create misperceptions in China’s relations with Iran or North Korea. China has no intentions to help the US to pull its chestnuts out of the fire in West Asia or the Far East. The international environment is rather fraught and Beijing has set its compass to be on the right side of history.

https://www.indianpunchline.com/china-ignores-us-entreaties-of-mediation/

 

 

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The West has lost the will for peace    By Jeff Rich

 

Détente would be good. Dialogue and diplomacy would be better. An end to US-led covert actions and cold wars would be better still.

And what about an enduring peace that balances interests of all concerned? Such a peace, surely, is the end to which the détente statement, led by former Foreign Ministers Carr and Evans and signed by 50 eminent, brave Australians including John Menadue, is one tentative step.

Such a peace might allow the USA to withdraw military forces from Europe and the Western Pacific, 80 years after World War Two.

Such a peace might remove the shackles from the Charter international system founded in 1945. It might end the suppression of the United Nations by American primacy.

But this peace remains a dream, even though it was the goal of détente. It inspired détente’s greatest achievements, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, leading to the 1975 Helsinki Final Act. Its principles of collective security and sovereign equality lived on in Moscow’s peace proposals to Washington in 2021. But the US refused to talk.

So this dream will not be realised, and, despite the best intentions, a call for détente will be a straw in the wind; because the West has lost the will for peace.

Not peace, not diplomacy and not even détente will be realised because American supremacists still rule in Washington, Westminster and Brussels, and their servants submit in Canberra. So despite the admirable letter, do not expect détente or diplomacy or honest dialogue on peace any time soon.

The détente statement is to be applauded. It surely beats calls for conscription, and media-intelligence confections about the Red Threat of China. But it saddens me that détente – a limited success from the Cold War – is the best that Australia’s best can offer those who govern us.

It dismays me that our leaders will not listen to anything bolder. If they had asked for more, the 50 signatories would be slurred as agents of foreign governments. But alas, even so, the insults came.

It is a sign of how far we have fallen in our ambition for peace.

The difficult admission Australia may need to make is that to expect détente, dialogue or diplomacy from the USA is a comforting delusion.

The USA does not want détente, and the world does not need the US to offer a false détente, like a dying king choosing his successor. The world needs the limited disarmament of the USA: quit some of its 800 military bases, forswear primacy, and look after its own people. But limited disarmament will only be achieved when the USA admits that defeats have diminished its status in the world to just one of five great powers.

In the last three years, the US has experienced effective defeats in Kabul, Ukraine, Africa, and West Asia. But it remains in denial. Its ranting supremacists want to forestall defeat in Taiwan, and ignore how the BRICS+ economies are larger than the G7. The US grows more isolated diplomatically, while the Global Majority asserts its voice. The US’s humanitarian interventionism has been defeated by US disgraces from Serbia to Gaza.

The greatest ever army was undone by its own vanity. The empire of democracy was defeated by inventing too many of its own realities. Even its grand alliance, NATO, is tasting defeat in Ukraine. Does anyone in Australia remember the late 1980s dream, inspired by détente, to dissolve NATO, just like the Warsaw Pact?

Détente was a brief episode of the Cold War, supported by a US President in rare moments of imperial self-doubt. It was initiated by de Gaulle, who sought Europe’s future beyond a bipolar world, in “détente, entente and cooperation”. He backed détente with action, when he withdrew France from NATO’s integrated military command in 1966. Its greatest achievement was the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which for a few years kindled hopes of peace without US missiles across all of Europe.

Yet détente lasted less than a decade, and less in America. Gerald Ford banned the term from his campaign. Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, clung to the dream to deliver the SALT treaties. But the American hawks, principally Brzenzinski, turned an evangelical President into a crusader of American supremacy. By Reagan’s election, American Supremacists ruled the roost again. As Odd Arne Westad wrote in The Cold War: A World History

“Ultimately, though, detente was defeated by politics in the United States. …. Most Americans were simply not willing to tolerate that the United States could have an equal in international affairs, in the 1970s or ever. And they elected Ronald Reagan president to make sure that such a devaluation of the American purpose would not happen again.” (p. 500)

I wonder how Xi Jinping would respond to the modest Australian proposal for détente? He might ask China’s closest strategic partner, Russia: should we trust the USA or Australia with this initiative?

We can imagine the likely response. Laughter, and a careful setting out of the record of decades of American deception and dishonesty, starting with that promise not to move NATO one inch eastward. He might suggest reading Richard Sakwa, The Lost Peace.

Xi might consult his own memory. Did I not offer to Obama to demilitarise the South China Sea, and he said, no? Did I not tell Joe Biden, in diplomatic words, that I cannot rely on his word as US President, since he does not meet his commitments? Then he called me a dictator, twice.

Xi might consult China’s history. When Henry Kissinger met Zhou Enlai secretly in Beijing in 1971, Zhou told him that the US

“must recognise the PRC as the sole legitimate government of China and not make any exceptions. Just as we recognise the United States as the sole legitimate government without considering Hawaii, the last state, an exception to your sovereignty, or still less Long Island.” 

Kissinger never delivered in full. US diplomacy frankly never does.

Xi might consult their trading partner and middle power, Australia. But why consult them when the USA holds sway over that subordinate power, and most of the world has China as its major trading partner.

Australia’s wish to conduct middle-power diplomacy, as proposed in the détente statement, is a reasonable aspiration; but an unrealistic assessment. The statement rightly refers to diplomatic achievements of the 1990s. But for three decades since, has not our great ally, who we remorselessly cheer onto war, undone unilaterally any minor progress on nuclear disarmament that was then achieved?

Australia has burned its credibility as a middle power. It is a sunken diplomatic shipwreck far off the continental shelf of the new multipolar world.

I wish there was something more I could do. I wish there was a more compelling, courageous letter that I could sign; but I see no Western leaders with the courage and skill to find the true path to peace.

I fear I have a long wait through a dark winter while America recklessly takes the world to more devastating wars that it still believes will leave America on top.

I fear this broken commonwealth will endure a long sleep until this country’s elites reverse the abasement of their minds by American imperialism and the vapid theatre of modern politics.

But I will wait, and endure; because I know that the tides of history have turned on the vengeful American empire. I will not stir from my beach to save its drowning leaders. May they go down with the USS Exceptionalism. I will stay ashore, and tend my garden, and wait for the new waves of the better world to come.

 

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