If an ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country, a statesman is a man who lies from the comfort of home. Regarding China, American statesmen abound. Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord denies vehemently that America is trying to contain China as it once did the Soviet Union. Our policy is one of engagement not containment, he insists. And Newt Gingrich says on Face the Nation that we should help the Chinese people undermine the Chinese government, then spends the next five minutes explaining that he did not really mean undermining at all.
Why are these diplomatic fibs? Because any rational policy toward a rising, threatening China would have exactly these two components: 1) containing China as it tries relentlessly to expand its reach, and 2) undermining its pseudo-Marxist but still ruthless dictatorship. Responsible statesmen are not allowed to say such things. Essayists are.
Does containment mean cold war II, with China playing the part of the old Soviet Union? Not quite. There is no ideological component to this struggle. Until late in life, the Soviet Union had ideological appeal, with sympathizers around the globe. Today's China, unlike Mao's, has no such appeal. China is more an old-style dictatorship, not on a messianic mission, just out for power. It is much more like late 19th century Germany, a country growing too big and too strong for the continent it finds itself on.
Its neighbors are beginning to feel the pressure. China is extending its reach deep into the South China Sea, claiming islets hundreds of miles from China, near four of its neighbors but within the reach of its rapidly growing military. Indeed, while defense spending in Russia and the West has declined, China's is rising dramatically, doubling in the past 10 years. Those dollars are going to intercontinental rocketry, a modernized army and a blue-water navy.
Nor is China deploying its new might just locally. It is sending missile and nuclear technology to such places as Pakistan and Iran. The Pakistan connection represents a flanking maneuver against China's traditional enemy, India; Iran, a leapfrog to make trouble for that old imperial master, the West.
Containment of such a bully must begin early in its career. That means building relations with China's neighbors, starting with Vietnam. For all the emotion surrounding our decision to normalize relations with Vietnam, its significance is coldly geopolitical: Vietnam is China's traditional enemy (they fought a brief war in 1979). We must therefore make it our friend.
A map tells you the rest of a containment strategy: 1) a new security relationship with democratic India, now freed from its odd, cold war alliance with the Soviets; 2) renewing the U.S.- Japan alliance, now threatened by a U.S. Administration so hell-bent on selling carburetors in Kyoto that it is blithely jeopardizing the keystone of our Pacific security; and 3) cozying up to the Russians, who, however ornery elsewhere, have a common interest in boxing in China.