Strategic Trust-Building

On August 20, EWI Perot Fellow and Vice President for the Strategic Trust-Building Initiative and Track 2 Diplomacy David Firestein appeared on New Tang Dynasty Television's (NTDtv) Focus Talk to speak on the evolving 2016 U.S. presidential election. In particular, he was invited to comment on the rise of Donald Trump in the Republican Party primary field and the impact of the "Trump Phenomenon" on the overall race. Firestein made his comments in Mandarin for this program.

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Firestein also appeared on NTDtv's Zooming In on August 7 to comment on the Republican Party presidential primary debate, the impact of Donald Trump's candidacy and prospects for Republican candidates in next year's general election.

NTDtv interviewed Firestein in English for this program.

Firestein's commentary begins at 8:06. 

In the article, Nye suggests that "The American Century will continue in the sense of the centrality of the United States to the balance of power and the production of global public goods, but a successful foreign policy will look different from what it was in the latter half of the last century."

To read the article published by The National Interest, click here.

In the article, Nye suggests that "Indian economic success is an American interest on its own." Given these interests, he notes that "It would be a mistake to cast the prospects for an improved US-India relationship solely in terms of China’s rising power."

To read the full article published by Gulf News, click here.

This piece has been republished on The Diplomat.

The U.S.-China relationship is arguably one of the most important—if not the most important—bilateral relationship in the world. The presidents of both countries have made statements to this effect, not to mention similar pronouncements by countless other officials and scholars from the two nations. But in spite of this professed interdependence, a recent spate of publications by U.S. think tanks on the bilateral relationship have all been negative in nature, calling for a toughening of U.S. policy towards China. 

David Shambaugh has publicly pointed out this trend, labeling the current situation in U.S.-China relations—that of increased tension between the two countries—as the “new normal.” “Hardly a day passes when one does not open the newspaper to read of more—and serious—friction. This is the ‘new normal,’” Shambaugh declared, “and both sides had better get used to it—rather than naively professing a harmonious relationship that is not achievable.”  

Generally well known and often-cited polling data show that the U.S. public is largely in agreement with U.S. experts’ pervasive negativity towards China. A periodic Gallup survey, for example, asks Americans which country they consider to be the United States’ “greatest enemy.” Since 2008, China has consistently placed in the top three and topped the list of responses last year, putting it ahead of Russia, Iran and North Korea.  In other words, a significant number of Americans consider China—the country with whom the United States has arguably the most important bilateral relationship—to be on par with and sometimes even more antagonistic than North Korea, a nation with whom the United States has no diplomatic or economic relations and that regularly threatens the U.S. with impending “final doom.”  

The various sources of negativity in U.S. policymaking circles are relatively easy to pinpoint, with the South China Sea dispute recently serving as the most alarming disagreement between the two countries. Although some of the negativity emanating from those issues may have trickled down to affect the opinions of the American public, the matters that trouble political elites and avid China-watchers are by and large not the ones that average Americans would point to as the sources for their antagonistic perception of China. Despite the potential for dangerous conflict posed by the current situation in the South China Sea, most Americans may not know where the South China Sea is, much less able to detail China’s reclamation activities there or its nine-dash-line claims. The terms “ADIZ,” “Senkaku,” or “Diaoyu” probably do not resonate with most Americans. Many in this country likely have difficulty locating Taiwan on the map; even fewer are aware that China has missiles pointed at Taiwan. 

The China-related ideas and concepts that leave many Americans these days with a bad taste are of a different nature. When one mentions China, people in the U.S. tend to think of government censorship, the lack of voting rights, pirated goods, air pollution and food safety issues—all of which are frequently highlighted by Western media¹. Additionally, the media—including major U.S. news outlets such as The New York Times—regularly highlights socio-cultural factoids such as incidents of backwards and rude behavior by Chinese tourists² and a dog meat festival in China,  which no doubt also contribute to American’s negative impressions of the country. The list goes on, but the one characteristic shared by these examples are that they are largely domestic, not foreign policy, issues. They have very little direct effect on the average American, no matter how much they evoke negative perceptions. Americans may find it disturbing to think of people in China eating dog meat, but no one could claim that any of these conceptions of China are on the scale of the South China Sea dispute in terms of their ability to move either side towards a significantly more hostile relationship.

Even the topic of trade and the notion that “China steals our jobs”—which is the one in recent years that has routinely troubled both policy elites and the general public alike—is not on that scale. Outsourcing of jobs is not blamed exclusively on China—Indian call centers, for example, come to mind just as quickly or more apparently than Chinese factories. Furthermore, the extent that trade with China and the outsourcing of jobs to that country has truly hurt the U.S. economy more than it has helped is an assertion that in and of itself is up for debate; to whatever extent it actually holds true, it still directly affects only a portion of the population—those who have actually lost jobs because of it—while leaving the vast majority of Americans unaffected. Safety problems with products “made in China” is perhaps the one trade-related issue that does affect large swaths of Americans in some form or another. However, the relatively small number of fatalities caused by unsafe Chinese goods combined with the fact that most in this country do not have to buy Chinese-made products minimizes both the pervasiveness of direct impact and the severity on individual Americans. 

One issue has emerged, however, as a concern to both policy elites and the general public alike and is becoming increasingly more prevalent and unavoidable: hacking. Average Americans may not know what China is up to in the South China Sea—despite policy elites ominously declaring that the problem “threatens to drive U.S.-China relations permanently in a far more adversarial, zero-sum direction and destabilize the region” — but they likely know that the Chinese are allegedly hacking into their private information. The key characteristic about hacking that sets it apart from other issues that previously shaped Americans’ perceptions of China is its ubiquitously undiscerning individual impact. People in general do not have the ability to “opt out” of a hacking attack the way one can choose to simply not buy products made in China. All hacking attacks, whether the perpetrator is Chinese, American, or of another origin, affect every person directly. Notices from various companies—whether it is Target, JP Morgan, eBay or others—informing people that their personal information may have been compromised seem to be an increasingly routine affair. Anyone who has an email account, smart phone, or any kind of online presence knows that his or her personal information is at risk. 

The Chinese are, of course, not responsible for all of the breaches in cybersecurity that affect Americans, but with each new high-profile, significant report of a hacking attack by China—such as the recent Office of Personnel Management breach³ —negative perceptions of China in the minds of Americans become more and more engrained. If conceptions of China for generations of average Americans were defined by the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, the accumulation of alleged Chinese cyber attacks could become then the new defining issue for generations too young to remember Tiananmen. Images from Tiananmen Square were gripping because of the way television enabled the violence to play out in Americans’ homes, but hacking grabs Americans’ attention today because each attack violates individuals’ privacy. 

Ten-year tourist visas, landmark climate change deals and a multitude of student exchange programs will not change many Americans’ views of China if they see the country as one that consistently hacks into their personal data. The U.S. public may not be in a position to influence foreign policy the way policy elites will, but it is hard to imagine the United States building a constructive relationship based on mutual trust with a country that ordinary Americans view as an “enemy” intruding into their most private information. Hacking could be the issue that brings average Americans’ opinions of China to a new low that has not been seen since the Tiananmen Square massacre. And this reality is part of the “new normal” in the U.S.-China relationship that both countries need to get used to and find a way to address—if they truly consider this bilateral relationship to be the most important in the world.

^1. See, for example: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/13/AR200811... http://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-milk-tainted-with-melamine-again-are-w... http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/business/worldbusiness/19toys.html?pag... http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/19/us/chinese-toys-seized/.

^2.   See, for example: http://blog.sfgate.com/sfmoms/2014/07/28/child-poops-on-airplane-seat/; https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/04/30/chinese-to..., http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/28/world/la-fg-wn-china-tourists-ba..., http://thediplomat.com/2015/01/from-ugly-americans-to-ugly-chinese/. 

^3. Also see: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/06/04/obama-office-of-per....   

Публикуемый в переводе на русский язык доклад «Афганский наркотрафик: сценарии развития ситуации после 2014 года» продолжает серию публикаций, отражающих анализ и рекомендации российско-американской Рабочей группы по проблеме афганского наркопотока, организованной Институтом Восток-Запад в 2011 году. С прекращением мандата Международных сил содействия безопасности (МССБ) и выводом из Афганистана значительной части иностранного военного контингента страна сталкивается с вызовами переходного периода, существенно повышающими риски военно-политической дестабилизации и роста производства опиатов.

Учитывая значительную степень неопределенности дальнейшего развития событий внутри и вокруг Афганистана, авторы доклада приняли за основу анализа сценарный подход, основанный на комбинации двух базовых факторов, определяющих уровень безопасности в стране и, соответственно, потенциал развития наркоэкономики как способа выживания в кризисных условиях: степень политического единства и уровень внешней поддержки (прежде всего в отношении Афганских сил национальной безопасности). Примечательно, что в рамках каждого из четырех получившихся сценариев, от более-менее оптимистичного до самого негативного, российские и американские эксперты находят возможности для развития сотрудничества России и США в борьбе с наркоугрозой. К сожалению, подготовка и выпуск доклада (оригинал на английском языке увидел свет в феврале 2015 года) совпали с периодом резкого обострения российско-американских отношений, вызванного украинским конфликтом, а также более глубокими расхождениями во взглядах на современный миропорядок между политическими элитами двух стран. Взаимодействие России и США в сфере противодействия афганской наркоугрозе стало одной из жертв этого обострения, оказавшись фактически замороженным в результате введенных Западом антироссийских санкций.

Однако к моменту выхода в свет русского текста доклада появились признаки растущего понимания руководителями обеих стран того факта, что для решения ряда приоритетных международных проблем сотрудничество России, США и их союзников является насущной необходимостью в интересах их обоюдной национальной и глобальной безопасности и должно быть защищено от влияния политических разногласий по другим вопросам. Так, в телефонном разговоре 15 июля 2015 года президенты В.Путин и Б.Обама выразили «взаимный настрой на продолжение совместной работы в интересах устойчивой реализации венских договорённостей [по иранскому ядерному досье], а также по некоторым другим актуальным международным темам, включая противодействие угрозе международного терроризма.» (http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/49999). Сотрудничество в борьбе с терроризмом и экстремизмом неизбежно создает предпосылки для возвращения к активному взаимодействию России и Запада в противодействии наркоугрозе, в частности в свете все более очевидных попыток ИГИЛ распространить свое влияние на Афганистан и другие страны центрально-азиатского региона. Как отмечалось в первом докладе Рабочей группы «Афганский наркотрафик: совместная оценка угрозы», «связи между наркотрафиком и организованным вооруженным насилием (и транснациональными сетями криминального и террористического толка) служат источником новых типов угроз безопасности на региональном и глобальном уровнях.» (http://www.ewi.info/idea/afghan-narcotrafficking-joint-threat-assessment-russian-edition). Более подробный анализ этой связи, в частности в сфере использования финансовых доходов от мировой торговли афганскими наркотиками, Рабочая группа планирует представить в одном из своих очередных докладов в 2016 году.

Ties between Russia and Japan are slowly picking up steam again after a 16-month chill following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014. Earlier this month, Shotaro Yachi, Japan’s national security adviser, traveled to Moscow and met with his Russian counterpart to discuss President Vladimir Putin’s plans to visit Japan later this year. And despite ongoing tensions over Ukraine, there are also signs that Japan’s foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, may travel to Russia in the coming months to prepare for a potential Putin visit. Japan-Russia cooperation is also continuing on the security front with bilateral maritime security drills, focused primarily on border security, slated to take place later this month near Russia’s Sakhalin Island.

Since his election in late 2012, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has expended considerable diplomatic energy toward repairing Tokyo’s relationship with Moscow. Abe has met with Putin on numerous occasions, including two official visits to Russia. Indeed, Abe’s policy shift on Russia was so dramatic that his visit to Russia in 2013 marked the first official trip by a Japanese leader in a decade. Nevertheless, Japan still maintains a need to balance its desire to improve ties with Russia with its obligations, as a member of the G-7 and chief regional ally of the United States, to sanction Moscow for its involvement in the continuing fighting in eastern Ukraine. After Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Tokyo fell in line with its G-7 partners and implemented a limited set of economic sanctions on Moscow.

Now, even with Ukraine unresolved, Abe is looking to reinvigorate his policy embrace of Russia and maintain a nuanced approach to Putin. This push for engagement is premised on three main pillars. First, Abe remains convinced of his need to resolve the longstanding territorial dispute with Russia over the southern Kuril Islands, known as the Northern Territories to Japan. Second, both Tokyo and Moscow share a desire to enhance their energy partnership. And, finally, both sides have a strategic interest in closer relations as a potential balance or hedge against China’s rapid rise in the region.

On the island spat, there appears to be momentum toward a resolution after decades of failed discussions between the two sides. While Abe has prioritized Japan getting the islands back, he has subtly indicated his desire to compromise on Tokyo’s longstanding insistence that all four of the disputed islands be returned to Japan. Indeed, in early 2013, Abe sent former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori to Moscow as a special envoy on territorial issues. Before his trip, Mori floated the idea of a compromise: “splitting” control of the four disputed islands. Abe has officially stepped back from such an idea, maintaining the position that all of the islands be fully returned to Japan. However, Abe knows that such a one-sided resolution would never be backed in Russia. Japan and Russia continue to have backroom discussions on a potential resolution to the islands dispute, which has resulted in the two sides failing to officially sign a peace treaty ending hostilities from World War II. The stage appears set for a grand bargain on the islands during Abe’s tenure; both sides indicate that the conditions have never been better for a breakthrough.

Moreover, in addition to talks on the island row, Abe and Putin have each announced plans for stronger economic cooperation, with a focus on bolstering Japanese investment in Russia’s far east. The two also have agreed to a more enhanced bilateral energy dialogue. Since Japan shut down its nuclear power plants after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, it has looked to Russia for energy imports, most of all liquefied natural gas. Russia quickly became one of Japan’s top energy trading partners, and plans for a gas pipeline, which have been mooted for decades, were reportedly revived last fall. That has carried over to the security front. Last year, Abe pledged Japan’s support for Russia’s counterterrorism concerns while seeking Moscow’s understanding about Japan’s defense and security reforms.

Before Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Tokyo and Moscow had agreed to regular “2+2” dialogues between their respective ministers of defense and foreign affairs. The first such meeting took place in November 2013 in Tokyo and marked a significant improvement in bilateral ties. During that meeting, both sides agreed to increase cooperation in a number of strategic areas as an initial step toward elevating the partnership. But the Ukraine crisis put a temporary moratorium on these high-level exchanges.

There is a broader strategic element to Japan-Russia relations, too. Abe’s sustained engagement with Russia is based on the conviction that improved ties with Moscow will help Japan’s economy and guard against China’s growth and assertiveness. Tokyo sees this as even more of an imperative, considering the shifting geostrategic environment in the region brought by closer ties between Moscow and Beijing. Russia, for its part, also has an interest in improving relations with Japan in order to balance its complex relationship with China and continue its own stated goal of a Russian “pivot to Asia.” 

Abe and Putin will continue to be challenged in their attempts to bolster their relationship due to external pressures created by the Ukraine crisis. But there is a new opening for a grand bargain involving the Kurils, especially as Abe suffers in the polls because of his contentious legislation to expand the role of the military, currently in the Japanese Diet. Abe may look for a diplomatic win with Russia to help soften the blow of the security bills domestically and distract critics from his polarizing security policy. 

Indeed, Abe appears to be pursuing a similar agenda with China, by improving ties with Beijing and looking for a visit there later this fall. The biggest challenge for Japan and Russia in the coming months will be for both sides to retain at least some of the momentum despite Tokyo’s sanctions against Moscow, which aren’t likely to subside anytime soon, unless in concert with its other G-7 partners. Without that larger change, Japan will be forced to maintain a balanced line with Russia going forward, one that is compartmentalized and issue-specific, but could still yield results.

To read the article published by World Politics Review, click here. 

In the discussion of China’s intentions on its ocean frontier, little attention is paid to the evolution of the academic underpinnings of its policy, especially in the field of international law. When I was writing my 1998 book, China’s Ocean Frontier: International Law, Military Force, and National Development, there was really only one place to go ─ the State Oceanic Administration of China. That book pointed out that when China participated in the UN Conference on the Law of the Sea from 1973-1982, which resulted in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the country’s international law institutions were virtually non-existent. Most law schools had been closed during the Cultural Revolution that began in 1966 and did not reopen until after 1976.

Since the turn of the century, there has been a growth industry in China for the study of maritime law and policy. For example, the Journal of the Ocean University of China was launched in 2002. This was a product of the Ocean University of China, an institution with a long history after 1959, which has been upgraded several times, most recently in 2002.

There are now also several institutes specializing in the South China Sea. The most visible has been the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, set up as such in 2004, at its predecessor, the Hainan Research Institute of South China Sea, which was founded in 1996. This research center, based in Haikou, has produced a range of studies that are never too far from the government’s lines of policy. For example, its published research and occasional statements by its researchers have vacillated on the meaning of the nine-dashed line in the South China Sea, but most have leaned toward giving it some sort of legal effect. This reflects the unresolved ambivalence in the Chinese government to this line left over from history.

A more interesting organization may be the South China Sea Institute set up in 2012 in the Center for Oceans Law and Policy in Xiamen University.

Xiamen is one of the four original Special Economic Zones announced in 1979, but one which never took off in the same way that Shenzhen did. The main reason for the difference was that Shenzhen was designed to exploit its proximity to Hong Kong’s booming economy, while the Xiamen zone was aimed at exploiting its proximity to Taiwan. Though the latter had a booming economy as well, the evolution of the Xiamen zone remained hostage to the painfully slow development of direct contacts in cross-strait relations in the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, Hong Kong and Shenzhen remained the main transit point for Taiwan commerce into China for most of the time since 1979.

The rapid pick-up of direct links between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan in recent years has seen Xiamen boom. This progress, and its strategic significance, can be captured in an anecdotal way by the emergence in 2005 of the China Oceans Law Review, a typical academic research publication. What makes this law and policy journal special is that it is a collaborative effort between two mainland university centers (the Xiamen University Center for Oceans Policy and Law, and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Center for Oceans Law and Policy), and centers from Taiwan (Sun Yat-sen University Institute of Marine Affairs), Hong Kong (the Polytechnic University C. Y. Tung International Center for Maritime Studies), and Macau (University of Macau Institute for Advanced Legal Studies). The journal is bi-lingual and is published in Hong Kong. A selection of 60 papers can be viewed here.

As might be expected from a more cosmopolitan enterprise, this journal reflects a certain maturing of the academic debate in China on matters of ocean policy and law. Several articles on the South China Sea are worth noting, including one by Shih-Ming Kao and Nathaniel S. Pearre (“Potential Alternatives to the Disputes in the South China Sea: An Analysis”, No.1, 2013, pp.262-290) and one by Zhao Wei (“Resolving Maritime Delimitation Disputes by Agreement: Practices of States Bordering the South China Sea and Their Implications for China”, No.1, 2013, pp.156-181).

In spite of the uncertainty created about possible new clashes in the South China Sea because of activities by claimants in the past five years, the maturing of Chinese views of ocean law is worth further study. A diplomatic source has suggested to the author that a new initiative by Indonesia, the sponsor of the first effective Track 2 process on the South China Sea beginning in 1990, which led to the 2002 Code of Conduct, may be about to bear fruit. One test of this will be the outcome of a Philippine case in the Permanent Court of Arbitration which convened last Friday, July 10, to deliberate the jurisdiction phase of a Philippines’ case against China’s declaration of its rights to the continental shelf in the South China Sea.

To read the article published by The Diplomat, click here.

In the podcast, Miller discusses the obstacles that prevent North and South Korea from achieving peaceful political reunification and examines China's perspective on the divisions between Seoul and Pyongyang. 

For the podcast by Asia News Weekly published on The Korea Observer, click here. 

In the article, Miller outlines the extent of security cooperation between Japan and the Philippines. He explains how "Manila and Tokyo have joined hands on the security front to add weight to their joint narrative that Beijing is looking to use might to alter well-established norms and laws."

For the full article published by The Asahi Shimbun, click here.