U.S. & the Sino-Russian paradigm

By P. S. Suryanarayana

THE U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, has erased a vision- deficit in his world view. He is now willing to engage China as it exists and not as it ought to exist. Mr. Bush's goal is to pursue U.S. global interests with a greater sense of freedom. Towards this end, he has travelled a long way from engaging Russia's President, Mr. Vladimir Putin, in `soul' games. As a result, Mr. Bush may have now waded into a revolving glasshouse of global power shift. It is a new paradigm, which consists of the U.S. as also Russia and China, and Mr. Bush is beginning to weave this in conjunction with his Secretary of State, Gen. Colin Powell, who does not always see eye to eye with the Secretary of Defence, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld. A U.S.-backed Japan will be the odd state player outside the strategic sweep of this paradigm, but Tokyo will still command a direct stake in the existence of such a trilateral framework. The emerging equation between China and Russia, besides Moscow's growing concerns in the heart of Europe, will test Mr. Bush's ideas, if Mr. Rumsfeld and other ideologues do not eventually succeed in effectively vetoing the President.

A key watchword in Mr. Bush's increasingly Moscow-centric foreign policy is trust. He says he must be able to ``trust'' Mr. Putin in order to redefine Washington's relationship with Moscow at this time. Mr. Bush's stated aim is to update this equation in tune with an assessment that the U.S. and Russia are not enemies in the current phase of global politics in the unfolding post- Cold War era of rising complexity. According to Mr. Bush, he is applying to the realities of today's Russia an essentially Reaganesque talisman of trusting the former Soviet Union but verifying its intentions at the same time. Moreover, Mr. Bush wants to emerge as the chief protagonist of America's new manifest destiny as a hyper-power which, in his view, could be wonderfully protected by a shield of missile defence. Mr. Reagan was the first to think of extending the frontiers of America's sense of total security to outer space.

The first Bush-Putin summit, held in Slovenia last June, evoked reminiscent comparisons with the Kennedy-Khrushchev encounter that occurred at a delicate moment in the U.S.-Soviet Cold War. However, in Slovenia as also Genoa, where Mr. Bush met Mr. Putin last July for the second time, the two created an impression that they managed the dynamics of their interactions much better than Kennedy and Khrushchev had done. Above all, though, some U.S. experts are now anxious that Mr. Bush, already prone to empathising with Mr. Putin whose `soul' is transparently visible to the American's eyes, should not emulate a bad example set by Franklin Roosevelt in having at one stage thought well of Josef Stalin of the Soviet Union. A lasting image of the recent Bush- Putin summitry is a cameo of the U.S. President's impressionistic diplomacy. Mr. Bush has outlined in a major press interview the circumstances in which he told a forlorn Mr. Putin that their recent meeting in Slovenia ``could (indeed) be the beginning of (their) making some fabulous history''.

In Mr. Bush's view, Mr. Putin's worries are traceable to the reality of Russia being saddled with the liabilities of the former Soviet Union in the absence of anything resembling the old state's asset-base. It is in this context that Mr. Bush is now hoping to strike a purposeful deal of coexistence with Russia. While in Slovenia, the two agreed upon little beyond feeling comfortable in the presence of each other's `soul'. In Genoa, Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin decided that Russia could enter into consultations with the U.S. over its controversial plans for a missile defence shield. As part of the same bargain, the two will also negotiate deep cuts in their respective strategic nuclear arsenals. Russia's eventual consent for an American missile defense system will benefit Washington, although such a nod by Moscow is not guaranteed at present. For an economically weak Russia, on the other hand, a scale-down of its prohibitively expensive nuclear arsenal will mark an immediate gain, though.

A rational question is why should the U.S. President be so solicitious of the leader of Russia which is no longer an equal to America in any sense. Mr. Bush's critics say derisively that he is joyous with the present `boost' phase of his missile-ride towards a `soul'-mate in a grand dream of faith. Yet, Mr. Bush's definitive calculation is not impossible to discern. To avoid a wasteful confrontation with Russia, he now wants to secure its acquiescence in his plans for a missile defence network which is explicitly forbidden under the U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. Mr. Bush's eagerness to secure Mr. Putin's consent is rooted in a reasoning that indefinitive time is indeed required to perfect the knowhow of the proposed missile defence umbrella. Some critics even argue that a missile defence system may well remain a pipe dream and that Mr. Bush is simply doing the bidding of America's military-industrial complex which has grown by leaps and bounds since Eisenhower so christened it.

Mr. Putin has taken these perceptions into account. An issue that neither Russia nor the U.S. openly talks about is whether the countries opposing Washington possess the technical skills to surpass it in the development of missile defences. So, the global spotlight lingers almost entirely on the diplomatic strategies of the major powers. Mr. Putin has been quick to strike a strategic deal with China in the name and style of a treaty of friendship and cooperation. Obviously, Russia and China are diffident of being able to match the U.S. with the kind of resources needed, quite irrespective of the parallel poser about technological resourcefulness. This should explain the cheerful manner in which Mr. Putin and Mr. Jiang Zemin of China have now made common strategic cause. The U.S. does not, of course, want to be outmanoeuvred. So, Mr. Bush has fielded Gen. Powell, less of a foreign policy hawk, to open a definitive dialogue with China for a strategic engagement that could, if carried forward, confound Russia to some extent. A variant of Richard Nixon's passage to China in the early 1970s, with the obvious difference that Russia and China are at present on friendly terms in striking contrast to the Sino-Soviet rift that the Nixon-Kissinger team then sought to exploit.

Russia, too, does not want to sit idle now. The `soul' games that Mr. Putin wants to play with Mr. Bush relate to some subtle suggestions that Russia should not any longer be the focus of the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Mr. Bush will not budge from the idea of a fresh wave of NATO expansion that could only increase Russia's sense of insecurity, but he is willing nonetheless to view Moscow as a European power.

There is, however, a no-nonsense message to Russia in the U.S. President's current assertion that no more Munichs and no more Yaltas will be countenanced. Washington will neither appease the other major entities, including the European Union, nor share power with them to create a post- modern world order. The U.S., therefore, campaigns for the inevitability of a new Washington- guided global strategic framework. So, if Mr. Putin considers it prudent to humour China, Mr. Bush is also conscious of the need to shore up America's strategic front with Japan. The Japanese leadership has also significantly welcomed the idea of playing a U.S.' surrogate once again. Tokyo's reasoning is that missile defences and defensive doctrines harmonise with post-imperial Japan's own ideology. An emerging power like India is also being consulted by the U.S., because the advantages of Washington's consensual ascension to the status of a paramount power are not lost on Mr. Bush.

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