Chapter 7
THE FALL AND REVIVAL OF COERCIVE DIPLOMACY: SECURITY PARTNERSHIPS AND SINO-AMERICAN SECURITY RELATIONS, 1972–2009

The legacies of U.S. regional alliances, especially with the Republic of China (Taiwan), continued to complicate U.S.-PRC relations from the time of rapprochement in 1971–72 to full normalization of relations in 1979, but the dynamics analyzed in this study were not prevalent in either that period or the longer one between normalization and the end of the Cold War in 1991. The United States and the PRC were for the most part aligned on the same side in the Cold War, and coercive diplomacy was not a major issue in the two states’ relations with each other. Nor were trends in the U.S.-Japan alliance particularly sensitive in Beijing, as they were in the first two decades of the Cold War. Following the switch of recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979 and the abolition of the U.S.-ROC alliance relations, the issue of continuing security relations between the United States and Taiwan in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 remained very sensitive in Beijing, but this served more as an irritant in a generally improving and cooperative economic and political relationship between the United States and the PRC than a potential source of crisis and conflict between the two states.

With the collapse of the shared Soviet threat in 1991 and shifts in Taiwan politics toward assertions of Taiwan independence from the Chinese mainland in the 1990s, Chinese elites became much more sensitive about U.S. security relationships in the region, especially U.S. policy toward former and current allies in Taiwan and Japan, respectively. It is critically important to note, however, that U.S.-PRC relations from 1991 to the present were incomparably better in the first two decades of the post-Cold War era than they were in the first two decades of the Cold War, when the two countries were sworn enemies. Despite these large differences, there are some similarities between the two periods. Coercive diplomacy, particularly on issues related to Taiwan, has returned to U.S.-China relations for the first time since the early 1970s. As was the case in both the 1950s and the early 1970s, the United States is trying to revise and refine its burden-sharing relationship with Tokyo in a period of fast-paced international change. As in the earlier period, Beijing’s fears about changes in the U.S.-Japan alliance in a period of flux have fed into long-term concerns about the potential for conflict across the Taiwan Strait.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the United States was able to reassure Beijing that it did not support Taiwan independence and would oppose provocative unilateral assertions by Taiwan in that direction, even as it continued to offer arms sales to Taiwan and to oppose the mainland’s buildup across the Taiwan Strait and its refusal to eschew the use of force in cross-Strait relations. Washington thereby bolstered stability in both cross-Strait relations and U.S.-PRC relations. Especially after pro-independence parties and initiatives in Taiwan fared poorly in the 2008 elections, Beijing became more relaxed about cross-Strait relations and about trends in the U.S.-Japan alliance. Largely because of domestic politics in Japan, during the first two years of the Obama administration, there have been major new challenges in the U.S.-Japan security relationship related to burden-sharing. In a different context, these problems might have complicated U.S.-PRC-Japan triangular relations. But the dramatic improvement in relations between the mainland and Taiwan has seemingly rendered Beijing much less concerned about the most recent period of flux in the U.S.-Japan alliance than it had been in the past.

THE END OF COLD WAR COERCIVE DIPLOMACY: SINO-AMERICAN RELATIONS 1972–91

Following Sino-American rapprochement in 1972, and especially after normalization of bilateral diplomatic relations in 1979, many of the problems discussed in the first six chapters of this book dissipated, at least for the remainder of the Cold War. Despite some public pronouncements in China regarding “an independent line” between the superpowers in the early 1980s, for the remainder of the Cold War the People’s Republic of China remained firmly aligned, though not allied, with the United States in an anti-Soviet coalition. Moreover, the PRC underwent a major domestic transformation beginning in the late 1970s. Deng Xiaoping consolidated his power after Mao’s death in 1976 and, in late 1978 launched an ambitious and successful economic reform program that emphasized pragmatism over ideology, market incentives over communism, and foreign investment and trade over autarky. Having eschewed radical leftism even at home, Chinese leaders no longer had any incentive to compete with the Soviet Union for leadership in spreading communist revolution abroad. Moreover, since China and the United States were in the same broad anti-Soviet camp, there really was no direct coercive diplomacy between the two sides, and alterations or adjustments in U.S. security policies in East Asia were extremely unlikely to create Sino-American conflict in the period 1979–91.

Washington’s transfer of formal diplomatic recognition from the ROC in Taipei to the PRC in Beijing in January 1979, together with the abolition of the U.S.-ROC Mutual Defense Treaty the following year, was over seven years in the making, dating back to Kissinger’s secret visit in July 1971. During that period, U.S. relations with its ally on Taiwan remained the single most sensitive issue and biggest stumbling block on the road to formal diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing. Tokyo and Beijing sealed such relations as early as 1972 because the Japanese government under Prime Minister Tanaka was more able to navigate the domestic politics surrounding compromise with the PRC on Taiwan policy than were Japan’s American allies. The United States remained committed to a political and security relationship with Taiwan that would delay normalization with the PRC. That security relationship would be codified into law in the Taiwan Relations Act of April 1979 even after normalization was secured on January 1, 1979. The ongoing U.S. commitment to Taiwan includes the sale of defensive military equipment, as U.S. officials deem necessary, to help Taiwan maintain the wherewithal to defend against both invasion and coercion from the mainland, and a commitment to maintain sufficient U.S. capabilities in the theater to come to Taiwan’s military assistance if the president were so to choose.¹

Washington’s arms sales to Taiwan would remain the most sensitive in U.S.-PRC bilateral relations for the remainder of the Cold War and the issue would come to a head in 1982, when the PRC pressured Washington to accept a third communiqué on the issue of arms sales.² On the surface, in that communiqué the United States appeared to commit to reducing arms sales, with the ultimate purpose of eventually halting them. As with previous communiqués, however, the August 1982 version provided enough ambiguity to allow the United States to continue to sell defensive arms to Taiwan if tensions in cross-Strait relations did not decrease or if military developments in the PRC posed an increased security threat to Taiwan.³

Beijing never viewed U.S. arms sales to Taiwan as legitimate, and they proved an important irritant in bilateral relations in the last decade of the Cold War. But given common U.S.-PRC geostrategic interests and the improving relations across the Taiwan Strait, U.S. arms sales decisions could not cause serious tensions, let alone conflict, in the bilateral relationship. After all, in the 1980s the United States and the PRC were increasing their cooperation in the Cold War, particularly in blunting Soviet power in Afghanistan. Moreover, bilateral economic relations were blossoming and, at least until the Tiananmen massacre of June 1989, Beijing was viewed in Washington as moving in a positive direction at home. Moreover, cross-Strait relations were improving in the 1980s under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek’s son, Chiang Ching-kuo. Since there really was not much occasion for coercive diplomacy between Washington and Beijing or between mainland China and Taiwan, we did not see the kind of security dilemma dynamics that could have been exacerbated by aspects of the U.S. relationship with either Japan or Taiwan.

The End of the Cold War and the Return of U.S.-PRC Coercive Diplomacy

This stable reality would not survive the collapse of the Soviet Union and, with it, the collapse of a common threat that helped bind the United States, Japan, and the PRC. Even though Sino-American bilateral relations were still much better in the 1990s than they were in the first half of the Cold War, from a U.S. perspective some of the core challenges of coercive diplomacy returned. The political blowback in the United States from the Tiananmen Massacre, and the democratization of Taiwan further complicated the picture. Beijing lost its reform-era luster almost overnight just as Taiwan became more attractive to the United States through the legalization of a major opposition party and the holding of competitive elections. Moreover, upon his death in 1988, Chiang Ching-kuo would be succeeded by the first Taiwan-born President of the Republic of China, Lee Teng-hui, a skilled politician who would both reflect and lead the growing sentiment on the island throughout the 1990s for a sovereign existence entirely separate from mainland China. Such sentiment, always there but repressed during the authoritarian period, would find full voice in the new competitive politics on the island.

In this geostrategic and cross-Strait context, Beijing’s traditional Cold War concerns about the United States relationship with both Taiwan and Japan would return after two decades of absence. The controversy over continued U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and the prospect of U.S. intervention in a cross-Strait conflict would take on new meaning to the bilateral relationship. Similarly, any perceived or projected changes in the U.S.-Japan alliance were viewed in Beijing with much more concern than at any time since 1972. China’s increased attention to Taiwan occurred at a time in which the PLA was developing for the first time conventional military capabilities designed to coerce the island over a sustained period of time. These new capabilities were also apparently designed to raise the costs of U.S. and Japanese assistance to the island during a crisis or war.⁴

At the same time, Beijing grew increasingly sensitive about perceived slights from Taiwan and concern grew in elite circles there about the prospect that long-term trend lines might be leading toward Taiwan independence if the PRC did not prepare to take remedial coercive action to delay, halt, or reverse those trends. There was a tradition in the PRC, demonstrated first in 1954–55 in the Taiwan Strait and repeated later, to use limited force to send a coercive message about the costs enemies would pay if they continued down their current path. ⁵If this pattern were to hold in the post-Cold War world, an initially limited military conflict could occur without either a single, obvious red-line having been crossed by Taiwan (e.g., a formal, legal declaration of independence by Taiwan) or a near-term vision in Beijing of how to solve the outstanding problems in cross-Strait relations once and for all through a single military campaign (e.g., a full-scale invasion and occupation of Taiwan).

Deterring such a limited, coercive attack on Taiwan requires a delicate balance in coercive diplomacy for Washington, Taipei, and Tokyo. On the one hand, Beijing needs to be convinced and reminded that any mainland attempt to use force would fail at great cost to the PRC. Such a strategy requires not only being able to defeat PRC forces in a toe-to-toe struggle but maintaining sufficient superiority to convince Beijing that it cannot easily and cheaply raise the costs of conflict for the United States and its partners. At the same time Beijing needs to be assured that if it does not use force against the island, the PRC’s key interests in preventing Taiwan’s sovereign independence would not be harmed now or in the future.⁶ Complicating the picture is the perceived need to adjust burden-sharing roles in the post–Cold War era and to bolster Taiwan’s native defenses in the face of the mainland’s military modernization and, more specifically, the military buildup across from Taiwan in the Nanjing Military District.

The United States and its security partners have been successful in finding a proper balance in coercive diplomacy under what have been generally challenging conditions: when Taiwan domestic politics were clearly moving in a pro-independence direction. The United States continued to abide by the commitments in the Taiwan Relations Act in the face of the PLA buildup and to warn against the use of force to solve cross-Strait differences. The U.S.-Japan alliance was fortified to adjust to the post–Cold War environment that included challenges from North Korea, a changing balance of power in the region and, beginning in 2001, the Global War on Terror. These alliance adjustments included specific mention of the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait in the joint statement of the U.S.-Japan alliance in 2005. Strengthening of the alliance arguably had positive implications for deterrence, as it seemed less likely that Beijing would be able to separate the two allies in a time of crisis. But there was a concurrent danger that adjustments in Washington’s relations with Tokyo might undercut the critically important assurance component of coercive diplomacy. Fortunately, at key junctures, Washington and Tokyo were able to convey to Beijing that the point of the revitalized U.S.-Japan alliance was not to contain the growth of Chinese influence in the region and around the world, nor to promote a unilateral declaration of Taiwan independence.

THE U.S.-JAPAN ALLIANCE AND THE SECURITY DILEMMA IN SINO-AMERICAN RELATIONS IN THE 1990s

To international relations scholars of both the liberal and realist persuasion, East Asia appeared more dangerous in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War than did other areas of potential great power competition, such as Western Europe. The common bond that the Soviet Union had provided for the U.S.-PRC and even for the Sino-Japanese relationship had been removed. East Asia was characterized not only by potentially destabilizing shifts in the balance of power (especially between a rising China and its neighbors), but unlike Western Europe, it was also saddled with skewed distributions of economic and political power within and between countries, political and cultural heterogeneity, growing but still relatively low levels of intraregional economic interdependence, anemic security institutionalization, and widespread territorial disputes that combine natural resource issues with postcolonial nationalism.⁷

Beijing had to be concerned about two new potential scenarios that could harm its security environment: a shift in the U.S. relationship with Taiwan, which itself was undergoing significant domestic changes; and a shift in U.S. policy toward its regional allies, especially Japan. For its part, the United States needed to think about how to adjust and bolster its alliances in the post–Cold War world and to address remaining potential challenges on the Korean peninsula and in the Taiwan Strait, as North Korea seemed dedicated to developing nuclear weapons and China began modernizing its military and building up coercive capabilities across from Taiwan.

Back to the Future: China’s Early Post–Cold War Fears about Japan

In the first several years after the end of the Cold War I did extensive interviews in Beijing and Shanghai about Chinese security perceptions toward Japan and the United States.⁸ In the early 1990s, Chinese security analysts expressed many of the same concerns about Japan that Zhou Enlai expressed to Nixon administration officials in 1971–72. In the early 1970s the defeat in Vietnam and the Nixon administration’s strategy of relying more on Asians to provide for their own security led Chinese elites to fear a resurgent Japan that, over time, would likely challenge PRC security interests, particularly in and around Taiwan. As discussed in chapter 6, only guarantees from the United States about the sustainability of the U.S.-Japan alliance and Washington’s commitment to attempt to restrain Japan from a hawkish turn in the future would reassure Beijing about Japan’s future role within the Cold War alliance. In the early years of the Clinton administration, it was U.S. victory in the Cold War and the initial expectation of a reduction of forward deployed U.S. forces in Asia that led many Chinese analysts to fear a similar prospect. As did Zhou two decades earlier, Chinese security analysts, particularly military officers, feared that under those conditions Japan could again assert itself as a formidable military power in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. They believed that it was only natural that Japan would want to graduate from a great economic power with some real international political clout, to a nation with the full panoply of great power accessories: economic, political, and military power.⁹ Applying some of the same geopolitical economic determinism of Chinese elites in the early 1970s, more pessimistic Chinese analysts often stated that Japan’s material interests have not changed much from the 1930s to the present. They believed that, because Japan is still heavily dependent on foreign trade and investment, it could again choose to develop power projection capabilities designed to protect its economic interests far from home.¹⁰

Especially in the minds of my most pessimistic interlocutors in Beijing, the only thing that had prevented this from happening earlier was the protective umbrella supplied by the rather lopsided U.S.-Japan alliance, which allowed Japan to enjoy security at low cost and allowed moderates in Japan to keep more hawkish elements of Japanese politics at bay. But many experts in China feared that the loss of a common foe, growing economic tensions in U.S.-Japan relations at the beginning of the 1990s, and the early Clinton administration’s focus on “economic security,” might strain the U.S.-Japan alliance, leaving Japan more to its own devices. Alternatively, the United States might simply begin to ask Japan to carry a much bigger burden in the U.S.-Japan alliance and thereby transform Japan’s attitudes about defense spending and the projection of military power. Eventually, they believed, this process would lead to a more independent and dangerous Japanese neighbor for China. Especially given the emotional history between Japan and China, the notion of increased Japanese power and independence is never welcome in Beijing. But the prospect of a more assertive Japan down the road was particularly troublesome at a time when Taiwan was led by Lee Teng-hui, the Republic of China’s first Taiwan-born leader who enjoyed impeccable Japanese language skills and had friends in Japan’s most staunchly proTaiwan and anti-PRC factions.¹¹

Chinese Assessments of Japanese Military Power and Potential

In assessing Japan’s current military strength in the early 1990s, Chinese analysts emphasized the advanced equipment that Japan has acquired, particularly since the late 1970s, when it began developing a navy and air force designed to help the United States contain the Soviet Union’s growing Pacific fleet. Chinese military writings highlighted Japanese antisubmarine capabilities (such as the P-3C aircraft), advanced fighters (such as the F-15), the E-2 advanced warning aircraft, Patriot air defense batteries, and Aegis technology on surface ships.¹²Chinese analysts correctly pointed out that, excluding U.S. deployments in the region, these weapons systems constituted the most technologically advanced arsenal of any East Asian power. They also cited the Japanese defense budget, which, although small as a percentage of gross national product (GNP), was second only to U.S. military spending in absolute size (until Chinese spending overtook it at some point during the past ten years).¹³

Despite their highlighting of Japan’s existing defense budget and high levels of military sophistication, Chinese analysts in the early post–Cold War era understood that Japan could easily do much more militarily if it were so to choose. While they generally did not believe that Japan had the requisite combination of material capabilities, political will, and ideological mission to become a Soviet-style superpower, they did believe that Japan could easily become a great military power (such as France or Great Britain) in the first decades of the twenty-first century with power projection capabilities, strike weapons, and, perhaps, even a nuclear arsenal. On the one hand, analysts often argued that it was in Japan’s economic interest to continue to rely on U.S. military protection in the near future, but on the other hand, they did not think that significantly increased military spending would strongly damage the Japanese economy.¹⁴ They expressed deep suspicions about the massive stockpiles of high-grade nuclear fuel that was reprocessed in France and shipped back to Japan in the early 1990s. Many in China view Japan’s acquisition of this plutonium as part of a strategy for the eventual development of nuclear weapons, something, they point out, Japanese scientists would have little difficulty producing.¹⁵ Chinese security analysts also have stated that Japan could become a great military power even if it were to forgo the domestically sensitive nuclear option. In the mid-1990s Chinese military and civilian experts emphasized that nuclear weapons may not be as useful in the future as high-tech conventional weapons, and that Japan was already a leader in dual-use high technology.¹⁶

Chinese experts recognized that Japan practiced a great deal of self-restraint during the Cold War, in particular by eschewing weapons designed to project power far from the home islands. For example, in 1996 one military officer stated that despite the long list of current Japanese capabilities mentioned previously, Japan certainly was not yet a normal great power because it lacked the required trappings of such a power (e.g., aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, nuclear weapons, and long-range missile systems).¹⁷ For this officer and many of his compatriots, the question was simply a matter of if and when Japan would decide to adopt these systems. Chinese analysts therefore had reason to view as dangerous Japan’s adoption of even additional defensive military roles as part of the U.S.-Japan alliance. It was not because these measures were in and of themselves particularly provocative, but because they might begin to erode the constitutional (Article 9) and nonconstitutional norms of self-restraint (e.g., 1,000-nautical-mile limit on power-projection capability, prohibitions on the military use of space, and tight arms export controls) that have prevented Japan from realizing its full military potential.¹⁸

Although almost all Chinese analysts in the 1990s expressed concern about the prospect of a Japanese military buildup, they differed in their assessment of the likelihood that Japan would attempt to realize its military potential over the next few decades. The more pessimistic argued that this outcome was extremely likely or even bound to happen. Even though they were aware of arguments about why Japan would continue to restrain itself—for reasons having to do with U.S.-Japan alliance politics, Japanese domestic politics, and Japan’s economic interest—and did not dismiss them out of hand, some analysts viewed such obstacles to Japanese military buildups merely as delaying factors in a long-term and inevitable process. Other more conditionally pessimistic and cautiously optimistic analysts placed greater faith in the hypothetical possibility of preventing significant Japanese buildups and military assertiveness over the longer run, but expressed concern over the hardiness of the delaying factors that could theoretically prevent such buildups. The most optimistic analysts argued that these factors should remain sturdy and would prevent Japan from injuring its regional relations by pursuing a more assertive military role long into the future.¹⁹ The vast majority of these optimists and pessimists believed that along with the domestic political and economic stability of Japan, the most important factor that might delay or prevent Japanese military buildups was the status of the U.S.-Japan relationship, particularly the security alliance.²⁰ The common belief in Beijing security circles had been that by reassuring Japan and providing for Japanese security on the cheap, the United States had fostered a political climate in which the Japanese public remained opposed to military buildups and the more hawkish elements of the Japanese elite were kept at bay. If, however, the U.S.-Japan security alliance were to either become strained or undergo a transformation that would give Japan a much more prominent military role, Chinese experts believed that those ever-present hawks might find a more fertile field in which to plant the seeds for an eventually much more powerful and assertive Japan.²¹

THE CHINA-JAPAN SECURITY DILEMMA AND U.S. POLICY CHALLENGES

As discussed in the introductory chapter, problems of burden-sharing, abandonment, and entrapment in one alliance can create true security dilemmas in relations between the alliance and real or potential adversaries. During the Clinton administration, Chinese analysts expressed concern about almost any change in the U.S.-Japan alliance. In the early 1990s, the prospect of a breakdown of U.S.-Japan ties worried pessimists and optimists alike. Later in the decade, Chinese analysts of all stripes also worried to varying degrees whenever Japan adopted greater defense burden-sharing roles as part of efforts to revitalize the bilateral alliance. These dual and almost contradictory Chinese fears demonstrate what Snyder referred to as the complex security dilemma and posed major problems for Clinton administration officials. For their part, U.S. experts and officials saw a need for Japan to do more to shoulder the burden of the alliance: they often expressed concerns that the alliance was dangerously vague and out of date and was therefore unsustainable over the long run in its current form, but most still wanted the United States to maintain the reassurance role for Japan and its neighbors that was outlined in key documents such as the 1998 East Asia Pacific Strategy Report.²² Especially before the 1996–97 Guidelines review, the U.S.-Japan alliance had often been thought of in the United States as lopsided and unfair because the United States guaranteed Japanese security without clear guarantees of even rudimentary assistance from Japan if U.S. forces were to become embroiled in a regional armed conflict outside of that country.²³

In the first years after the Cold War ended, some U.S. elites focused on economic security over military security, arguing that the alliance was overrated and that it had prevented the United States from pursuing its economic interests in the U.S.-Japan relationship. Some even argued that the United States should use the security relationship as leverage against Japan in an attempt to open Japanese trade and financial markets to American firms.²⁴ In their view Japan had been able to ride free for too long on the U.S. economy because of Washington’s excessive concern over preserving an apparently unfair alliance relationship.

Following the North Korean nuclear crisis of 1993–94 and with the publication of the critically important February 1995 East Asia Strategy Report (also labeled “the Nye Report,” after Assistant Secretary of Defense Joseph Nye), U.S. leaders began expressing very different concerns about the U.S.-Japan relationship. The Nye Report and the broader Nye Initiative of which it was a part placed new emphasis on maintaining and strengthening the security alliance and on keeping economic disputes from poisoning it. The report reaffirmed the centrality of U.S. security alliances in Asia, placed a floor on U.S. troop strength in East Asia at 100,000, and called for increased security cooperation between Japan and the United States, including greater Japanese logistical support for U.S. forces operating in the region and joint research and development of theater missile defenses (TMD).²⁵

Despite the Clinton administration’s decision to insulate the U.S.-Japan security relationship from economic disputes, the alliance still seemed potentially vulnerable. There had been a widely held concern that, purely on security grounds, the alliance could be dangerously weakened if Japanese roles were not clarified and expanded and if the two militaries were not better integrated in preparation for joint operations.²⁶ Japan’s checkbook diplomacy in the Gulf War was considered insufficient support for U.S.-led efforts to protect a region that supplies Japan, not the United States, with the bulk of its oil. It also became clear during the 1993–94 crisis with Pyongyang over North Korea’s nuclear weapons development that, under the existing Defense Guidelines, in a Korean conflict scenario Japan was not even clearly obliged to allow the U.S. military use of its civilian airstrips or ports. In fact, if the crisis had escalated, it was at least conceivable that Japan might not have provided overt, tangible support to U.S. forces operating outside of Japan. Even U.S. access to its bases in Japan for combat operations not directly tied to the defense of the Japanese home islands was seen by some as questionable.²⁷ Aside from the obvious military dangers inherent in such Japanese passivity, Japanese obstructionism and foot-dragging could undermine elite and popular support in the United States for the most important security relationship in East Asia. So, it appeared to many American elites that the Cold War version of the U.S.-Japan alliance could be one regional crisis away from its demise. Such concerns were a major driver behind the Nye Initiative, which was designed to clarify and strengthen Japan’s commitment to support U.S.-led military operations. Fearing instability in Japanese elite and popular attitudes on defense issues, Washington also wanted to increase the number of functional links between the two militaries to tie Japan more firmly into the U.S. defense network for the long run.²⁸

Chinese security analysts followed these trends in U.S.-Japan relations with great interest and concern. Before 1995 most pessimistic Chinese analysts predicted and feared Japanese military buildups largely because they sensed the potential for trouble, not strengthening, in the post–Cold War U.S.-Japan alliance. Those analysts posited that, given the lack of a common enemy and the natural clash of economic interests between Japan and the United States, political conflict between the two allies was very likely. This conflict could eventually infect and destroy the U.S.-Japan security relationship, which in turn could lead to the withdrawal of U.S. forces and eventually Japanese military buildups. In this period some Chinese analysts also discussed how domestic factors such as U.S. neo-isolationism, rising Japanese nationalism, the inexperience and lack of security focus in the newly elected Clinton administration, and domestic instability in Japan could combine with worsening U.S.-Japan trade conflicts to speed the alliance’s demise.²⁹

By mid-1995 it seemed to an increasingly large group of Chinese analysts that U.S.-Japan trade conflict was being contained and that the Clinton administration was paying more attention to international security affairs and to Asia in particular.³⁰ Key contributors to this growing confidence in U.S. staying power were the Nye Report and the failure of the recent automobile parts dispute between Tokyo and Washington to escalate.

As one would expect when studying alliance security dilemmas, from a Chinese perspective, the news was far from all good, however. By spring 1996 the Nye Initiative led to harsh reactions in China, exposing the subtle challenges facing the United States in managing the U.S.-China-Japan triangle. China’s cautious optimism about trends in the U.S.-Japan alliance turned to pessimism, as concerns about future Japanese military assertiveness grew rapidly. But the new reasons for pessimism were quite different than in the period before 1995. The fear was no longer potential discord in the U.S.-Japan relationship, but concern that the United States would encourage Japan to adopt new military roles and develop new military capabilities as part of a revitalized alliance in which Japan carried a greater share of the burden and risk.³¹

On April 17, 1996 President Clinton and Prime Minister Hashimoto issued a joint communiqué that called for revitalization of the alliance in order to better guarantee the security of the “Asia Pacific region.” In the communiqué and in the agreements reached in the days preceding it, Japan guaranteed base access for U.S. forces and committed itself to increased logistics and rear-area support roles. In what might appear in retrospect to be a mild and rather vague commitment by Japan, the two sides also agreed to cooperate in the “ongoing study” of ballistic missile defense.³²

However mild its wording might appear in retrospect, the communiqué created significant concerns among elite experts in Beijing at the time.³³ One major catalyst of Chinese concerns in the period between the issuing of the Nye Report in early 1995 and the Clint on-Hashimoto Communiqué in April 1996 was the notion that changes in the U.S.-Japan alliance could easily facilitate U.S. intervention in a Taiwan contingency. That contingency seemed more than just hypothetical following President Lee Teng-hui’s visit to his alma mater, Cornell University, in June 1995, to give a highly political speech about Taiwan’s role in the world. Perhaps more than anything else, the issuance of a visa to Lee by the United States, after apparent high-level guarantees that such a visa would not be issued, portended long-term negative trends in the cross-Strait relationship, and PRC leaders reacted with coercive missile and surface exercises in July 1995, December 1995, and, finally, March 1996. The last of these exercises sparked a Sino-American crisis, including the dispatch of two U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups to the waters near Taiwan. This crisis played out during Taiwan’s first direct election for president, which Lee won handily.³⁴ Chinese analysts at this time believed that the United States was largely in control of the U.S.-Japan alliance’s military policy, but they also worried that Japan had stronger emotional and practical reasons than the United States for opposing Taiwan’s integration with the mainland and an even greater stake than the United States in issues such as sea-lane protection in Asia far from the Japanese home islands.³⁵

The Clinton-Hashimoto Joint Communiqué was issued one month after the most intense phase of the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait crisis. The communiqué suggested to some in China that Japan might soon begin scrapping various norms of self-restraint and begin expanding its military operations into the Taiwan area and the South China Sea. In addition to focusing on new logistics roles for Japan and the potential for future joint development of missile defenses, many Chinese observers believed (falsely) that the joint communiqué expanded the geographic scope of the alliance from the area immediately around Japan to a vaguely defined, but clearly much larger, “Asia Pacific.”³⁶ It seemed that rather than restraining Japan, the U.S.-Japan alliance was starting to foster Japan’s assertiveness. As one leading Chinese expert on Japan argued in 1998, the U.S. presence in Japan could be seen either as a “bottle cap,” keeping the Japanese military genie in the bottle, or as an “egg shell,” fostering the growth of Japanese military power under U.S. protection until it one day hatches onto the regional scene. Since 1996, this analyst argued, fears about the “egg shell” function of the U.S.-Japan alliance had increased markedly, while faith in the “bottle cap” function had declined.³⁷

In September 1997 Chinese analysts’ concerns turned to the announcement of revised Defense Guidelines for the U.S.-Japan alliance. These Guidelines put in writing many of the changes suggested in the joint communiqué. New and clarified Japanese roles in the alliance included those logistics and rear-area support roles mentioned in the joint communiqué and added “operational cooperation” missions for Japan’s Self-Defense Forces in time of regional conflict, including intelligence gathering, surveillance, and minesweeping missions. Although Washington and Tokyo quickly abandoned the most vague and therefore most provocative term “Asia Pacific” following the issuance of the joint communiqué, the 1997 revised Guidelines were not entirely reassuring to Chinese ears on this score either. They stated that the scope of the alliance covered “situations in the areas surrounding Japan,” but the definition of those areas would be determined by “situational” rather than “geographic” imperatives. This only confirmed fears among Beijing elites regarding the potential inclusion of Taiwan and the South China Sea in the alliance’s scope.³⁸ Following the issuance of the revised Guidelines, President Jiang Zemin announced that China is on “high alert” about changes in the alliance.³⁹

In 1998 Chinese concerns focused on Japan’s September agreement to research theater missile defense jointly with the United States. The initial proposal for joint development of TMD was made by Washington in 1993, long before the Nye Initiative had been launched. It was later folded into the initiative, but Japan still seemed reluctant to commit itself to the project.⁴⁰ After five years of U.S. coaxing and Japanese foot-dragging, Tokyo finally agreed to joint TMD research after the launch of a North Korean rocket across Japanese territory on August 31 1998. Although Chinese analysts do recognize the threat to Japan from North Korean ballistic missiles, they still believe that development of U.S.-Japan TMD is also designed to counter China’s conventionally tipped missile capabilities, which the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and civilian analysts recognize as among China’s most effective military assets, especially in relations with Taiwan.⁴¹

Taiwan, the U.S.-Japan Alliance, and the Offense-Defense Factor

As they did in the early 1950s and the early 1970s, strategic thinkers in Beijing linked their concerns about real or perceived changes in the U.S.-Japan alliance with their analysis of trends in relations across the Taiwan Strait. The importance of cross-Strait relations in Chinese calculations about TMD and the revised Guidelines cannot be overstated. Along with the brutal legacy of World War II and the ways in which Japan’s historical responsibility has been avoided, insufficiently recognized, or even denied by certain politicians and in certain history texts, tensions in relations across the Taiwan Strait and changes in the U.S.-Japan alliance have constituted the most critical exacerbating factor in the China-Japan security dilemma in the post–Cold War world.⁴² Also important are continuing sovereignty disputes in the East China Sea over the Senkaku (Japanese name)/Diaoyu (Chinese name) island chain and the waters and seabed around them.⁴³

The intensity of Chinese reactions to adjustments in the U.S.-Japan alliance vary in large part based on the assessment of stability or instability in cross-Strait relations and, most importantly, the positions of the United States and Japan at the time regarding support, indifference, or active opposition to attempts on the island to assert Taiwan’s sovereign independence from the mainland. In the mid-1990s changes in the U.S-Japan alliance were accompanied by what appeared to be an upgrading of Washington’s relations with an increasingly assertive President Lee Teng-hui. Both during and after the 1995–96 crisis, which began in the weeks after Lee’s heavily politicized June 1995 visit to Cornell, the Clinton administration sought to reassure Beijing that the United States did not support Taiwan independence and that the issuance of a visa to Lee Teng-hui was not a change in long-standing U.S. policy.⁴⁴ President Clinton would later publicly and famously reassure the Chinese leadership and public in Shanghai in 1998 that Washington did not support the following scenarios: Taiwan independence; “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan"; or Taiwan’s membership in international organizations for which statehood is a requirement (commonly referred to as the “3 no’s”). The Clinton administration would also quickly distance itself from President Lee’s assertion to a German journalist in July 1999 that the cross-Strait political situation could best be described as “special state to state relations,” a statement that sent high-level envoys almost immediately from Washington to both sides of the Taiwan Strait to clarify U.S. policy.⁴⁵

But it is not at all clear that Beijing was reassured enough during this period to view with equanimity the concurrent evolution of the U.S.-Japan alliance. Then NSC Director for Asian Affairs Robert Suettinger, in his magisterial recount of this era, labels the period 1999–2000 “Back to the Cold,” and a leading scholar of U.S.-China relations, David M. Lampton, calls the period the fourth major turning point in the bilateral relationship in the post-Tiananmen era.⁴⁶Lingering Chinese concerns festered in the late 1990s about U.S. Taiwan policy, including arms sales notifications in 1999–2000. These concerns were amplified greatly during the Kosovo War in Spring 1999, which included not only NATO intervention against what was viewed in Beijing as a legitimate Serbian operation against regional separatism, but also the accidental bombing of the PRC Embassy in Belgrade as part of the air operations against Milosevic’s government. Much attention understandably has been paid to that dramatic and tragic episode, but for China’s security analysts, of equal importance was the entire Kosovo operation, which seemed to carry a negative precedent for China in terms of the willingness of the United States and its allies to carve up sovereign countries on what Chinese analysts viewed as a mere pretext of humanitarian intervention.⁴⁷

It was in the months immediately following the Kosovo War and Lee’s July presentation of the “Two State Theory,” and before the Taiwan presidential election of March 2000, that Jiang Zemin is reported to have called for a significant modernization drive in the PLA with a special emphasis on the development of new options for Taiwan scenarios.⁴⁸ It was rumored in scholarly and journalistic circles in China that Jiang had grown impatient about the mainland’s lack of progress in cross-Strait relations, despite the growing economic interdependence across the Strait, and that he had, therefore, created a timetable within which Taiwan must be coerced back into accepting the broad concept of “one China” and engage in serious talks on the terms for unification.⁴⁹ Beijing’s “Taiwan White Paper” of early 2000 seemed at least consistent with these rumors if not fully confirmatory of them. The White Paper, which Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji said was explicitly a response to Lee’s “state to state theory,” added a new condition that could lead to the use of force by the PRC: Taiwan’s “indefinite” (wu xianqi) refusal to engage in negotiations on reunification.⁵⁰

This was the backdrop for a rather severe security dilemma at the end of the last century and the beginning of the new one. This security dilemma was driven by mainland China’s coercive reaction to trends in Taiwan politics, U.S. responses in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act, and ongoing Chinese suspicions about the nature and direction of the U.S.-Japan alliance in the post–Cold War world. In the cross-Strait context, security dilemma dynamics are particularly difficult to manage. The nature of the cross-Strait conflict is such that the usual remedies based in distinctions between defensive and offensive weapons and doctrines apply very poorly. The basic theoretical distinction, simply stated, is that the buildup of defensive weapons and the adoption of defensive doctrines should not fuel the security dilemma and spirals of tension, because such capabilities and methods are not useful for aggression.⁵¹ Defensive weapons are stabilizing because they shore up the territorial status quo by dissuading or physically preventing aggressors from achieving revisionist goals, while reassuring the target state that its passivity will not simply lead to aggressive attacks against its interests in the future. Offensive weapons are destabilizing as deterrent tools because they threaten that status quo and thereby undermine such assurances to the target, which are essential components of successful coercive diplomacy.⁵²

What makes offense-defense theories less applicable in the case of cross-Strait relations is that Beijing’s main security goal is to prevent Taiwan from declaring permanent independence from the Chinese nation, a de facto administrative and territorial condition that Taiwan already enjoys. In other words, the main threat to Beijing is a political change in cross-Strait relations that would legalize and thereby permanently freeze the territorial and political status quo. The PRC’s main method of countering that threat is a combination of military coercion to deter Taiwan independence and economic levers, both positive and negative, to encourage greater integration and raise the opportunity costs of alienating the mainland.⁵³ In cross-Strait relations Beijing considers traditionally defensive weapons in the hands of Taiwan and any of its potential allies to be dangerous, because they may give Taiwan officials additional confidence in their efforts to legalize the territorial status quo. In fact, given that the PRC seems willing to risk extreme costs to deter Taiwanese independence, and, if necessary, to compel a reversal of any such decision by the Taipei authorities, and that Taiwan has fully abandoned Chiang Kai-shek’s irredentist designs on the mainland, Taiwan’s ability to attack the mainland, strangely, may be only somewhat more worrisome to Beijing than Taiwan’s ability to fend off the mainland’s coercive attacks on Taiwan.

In this context, it is worth considering China’s strong reaction in the 1990s to the plans of Tokyo and Washington to jointly develop mobile, navy-based theater ballistic missile defenses as part of the Nye Initiative and the Guidelines review process. Given the Chinese concerns over Taiwan, future U.S. and Japanese TMD, if effective, and if transferred in peacetime or put at the service of Taiwan in a crisis, could reduce Beijing’s ability to threaten the island with ballistic missile attacks, the PLA’s main means of coercing Taiwan. Particularly relevant here are the ship-based systems that Japan and the United States agreed to research jointly in September 1998. Analysts in Beijing worried for the same reason that many Americans supported the choice of a ship-based TMD system.⁵⁴ As one U.S. commentator applauded, ship-based systems can be moved quickly to other regions to support out-of-area conflicts.⁵⁵ Like their U.S. and Japanese counterparts, Chinese analysts in the 1990s expressed serious doubts about the likely effectiveness of such a system, particularly given the proximity of Taiwan to the mainland and the ability of the PRC to launch a large number and wide variety of missiles. Nevertheless, they still worried about the psychological and political impact the system could have on Taipei’s attitudes about seeking more diplomatic space, and on U.S. and Japanese attitudes about cross-Strait relations.⁵⁶Although Japan’s agreement to help the United States develop defenses against theater missiles as part of a revitalized U.S.-Japan alliance was the most sensitive among my Chinese interlocutors in the 1990s, other generally nonoffensive roles such as mine-clearing and intelligence gathering included in the revised Guidelines also caused concern in Beijing, in part because those roles could come into play in scenarios in which the mainland used coercive force against Taiwan, such as a limited and punitive blockade of the island.

The Asian Alliance Security Dilemma in the Early Twenty-first Century

In a sense the first decade of this century has demonstrated very well the importance of U.S. policy in the region in maintaining positive U.S.-China relations and a stable regional security environment. There have been many challenges that, under different diplomatic circumstances, could have created instability: the unexpected 2000 election in Taiwan of President Chen Shui-bian from the traditionally pro-independence DPP and his subsequent pursuit of policies designed to move Taiwan in that direction; the fast-paced development of significant new PLA coercive capabilities, especially since 1999, including the deployment of new naval and air assets and many hundreds of missiles across from the island; the election in the United States of George W. Bush, whose campaign had portrayed China as a “strategic competitor,” and who came into office promising to support Taiwan’s defense in a robust fashion; domestic politics trends in Japan that engendered nationalist gestures by Japanese elites, including visits to the Yasukuni Shrine by Prime Minister Koizumi, all of which soured Japan’s relations with China and South Korea and precluded high-level summits and bilateral confidence-building measures between Beijing and Tokyo; a tighter U.S.-Japan alliance to include more active Japanese support roles far from the Japanese homeland after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001; the first post-Deng political transition in China from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao in 2003–4; and the growth of unruly anti-Japanese nationalism in Chinese society, made manifest in soccer riots in August 2004 in Beijing following the Japanese victory in the Asian Cup Soccer final in Beijing, and reflected in unruly protests filled with invective and vandalism in Shanghai and other Chinese cities in April 2005 as Japan pursued membership in the United Nations Security Council.⁵⁷

Despite all of these challenges, we have seen some rather positive results: U.S.-China relations blossomed in the early part of this century, especially after September 11, 2001. China has not taken direct political aim at the continued U.S. alliances and military presence in the region. Sino-Japanese relations have improved as Koizumi’s successors have eschewed trips to Yasukuni since 2005, thus enabling the restoration of summits and the deepening of lower-level security and economic dialogues between the two governments. For China’s part, President Hu Jintao adopted a decidedly less anti-Japanese posture than his predecessor, Jiang Zemin.⁵⁸ China, the United States, and two U.S. allies—Japan and South Korea—have cooperated actively on the North Korean nuclear issue in the Six Party Talks framework. Relations across the Taiwan Strait have also improved markedly since spring of 2008, following the failure of a politically provocative referendum in Taiwan on applying to the United Nations under the name Taiwan, and the election of the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou, who has rejected the pursuit of Taiwan independence and has actively sought practical cooperation with the mainland.

This book is not primarily about contemporary affairs, and I have written elsewhere more extensively on some of the topics addressed in the remainder of this chapter.⁵⁹ But I would like to draw a few conclusions about the first decade of this century that are consistent with the themes of this book. It should not be taken for granted that in a period in which China’s influence rose rapidly there would also be quite positive and deepening bilateral U.S.-China relations. A major factor in the maintenance of peace and security in the region was not only U.S. policy toward China but also the diplomacy surrounding adjustments in U.S. security policies toward its allies and security partners in East Asia. Because of careful U.S. diplomacy, the United States was able to avoid sparking excessive Chinese concern even as Washington encouraged a more active role for Japan as part of the U.S.-Japan alliance. For example, Tokyo sent engineers to Iraq and oil tankers to the Indian Ocean as part of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

There are several reasons for this successful outcome. First, after September 11, 2001, there was a clear reason for increased activity by Japan, Korea, Australia, and other U.S. allies that had nothing to do with countering the rise of China per se, and this message could be easily conveyed to a skeptical Beijing. More important, especially from mid-year in 2002 to the end of the Bush administration, Washington took private and public positions that reduced China’s concerns about U.S. and allied activity in the East Asia region and beyond. The United States clearly rejected a hostile stance toward Beijing and sought China’s cooperation in solving a range of security issues around the world, most notably the North Korean nuclear issue.⁶⁰ Perhaps more important still, both Washington and Japan handled the rising tensions in cross-Strait relations with moderation. Although the signals sent to Beijing about Taiwan from Washington and Tokyo were not always perfectly clear, and we can only know now in hindsight that the policies adopted were effective, the positions adopted by the United States and Japan arguably contained the right mix of credible threats and assurances to prevent conflict in the Taiwan Strait during what was otherwise a politically very volatile time. As in the early 1970s, because issues related to Taiwan were handled carefully in Washington, Beijing’s sensitivities about changes in the U.S.-Japan alliance were constrained. The road was not always smooth and Beijing would at times become very concerned about trends in the United States’ relationship with both Taiwan and Tokyo. In general, however, the first decade of this century has demonstrated that a strong U.S. security presence in Asia and the strengthening of U.S. alliances and nonallied security relationships need not come at the expense of improved relations between the United States and the PRC.

The Bush administration inherited a lot of the bilateral U.S.-PRC tension from the second half of the 1990s and was elected to office on a platform that was characterized by a generally increased level of suspicion about China’s increased power (summarized by the label of “strategic competitor” for China during the campaign). The Bush campaign emphasized the strengthening of U.S. alliances in East Asia (codified in the 2000 “Armitage Report,” an influential prescriptive analysis for the alliance written during the presidential campaign in the United States by several future Bush administration officials, including future Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage). The Bush team was also dedicated to improving Taiwan’s defensive capabilities (demonstrated less than three months after the adminsitration took office by the offering of a very large arms package to Taiwan in April 2001). Moreover, less than two years after the bombing of the PRC embassy in Belgrade in May 1999, the U.S.-China relationship would suffer a major setback again as a result of the EP-3 crisis of April 2001. The situation was exacerbated by the ham-fisted way in which Beijing handled the detaining of the aircrew of the crippled U.S. plane that had been rammed by a Chinese fighter jet intercepting it over international waters in the South China Sea, resulting in the loss of the Chinese pilot.⁶¹ The ability to handle that crisis through bilateral dialogue arguably facilitated the beginning of a more constructive U.S.-PRC relationship, a process accelerated by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that, in spring 2001, relations between the United States and China were worse than at any time since the 1999 embassy bombing. Following the early 2001 EP-3 crisis, the Bush administration announced the intention to offer large-scale arms package to Taiwan, and President Bush stated in an interview that the United States would “do whatever it takes” to help Taiwan defend itself.⁶²

In alliance security dilemmas, policies are rarely purely stabilizing or destabilizing and the Bush administration’s posture toward Taiwan and its regional allies, while certainly viewed as provocative in Beijing in 2001, also had real benefits in terms of long-term coercive diplomacy. That posture made clear that the United States was committed to a peaceful settlement of cross-Strait differences and emphasized to Beijing that the United States had noted the ongoing large-scale military build-up across from Taiwan and was willing to respond to it vigorously. The biggest constraining factor in this process was Taiwan’s domestic politics, which precluded the purchase of many items in the package of arms offered to Taiwan until 2007–8. During those years the Bush administration finally was able to notify Congress on an unprecedentedly large sale of arms in a one-year period (USD $3 billion in late summer of 2007 and $6.5 billion in fall of 2008). During both terms, the administration consistently criticized the massive PLA build-up across from Taiwan as a force for instability in cross-Strait relations. For its part, under Prime Minister Koizumi, Japan coordinated its policies with Washington, expressing concerns about China’s regional buildup in its defense reports. In February 2005 the “2+2” statement of the U.S.-Japan Alliance’s Security Consultative Committee (which includes leaders in the State Department, Defense Department, and their Japanese counterparts) highlighted a shared concern among the two allies about the preservation of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, signaling that neither Beijing’s nor Taipei’s actions toward the other would drive a wedge between the two allies.⁶³

Such expressions of resolve and alliance coordination are essential elements of successful coercive diplomacy, but as discussed in chapter 1, resolve, or the “credibility of threat,” is only one part of successful coercive diplomacy. What bolsters the credibility of threat can unintentionally undercut coercive diplomacy if it seems provocative and inconsistent with assurances that the key interests of the target will not be harmed now or in the future if the target foregoes the use of force in the near term. To be effective, coercive diplomacy must blend resolve with credible assurances. And while they were important parts of a long-term strategy of deterring conflict in the Taiwan Strait at a time in which China was building up its own coercive capacity toward Taiwan in potentially threatening ways, all of the policies just mentioned also caused concern and sometimes even harsh reactions in Beijing that could have potentially undercut U.S. coercive diplomacy over time if they were not accompanied with appropriate assurances from Washington and Tokyo.⁶⁴ In a period in which Taiwan’s leadership was making fairly frequent verbal assertions of Taiwan’s independent sovereignty and promoting a series of policy measures to remove historical links between Taiwan and the mainland, Beijing could have concluded that force was necessary to avoid further erosion of its long-term position in cross-Strait relations, regardless of the degree of U.S. resolve to resist such a move.

The relatively assertive policies in Washington, Tokyo, and Taipei did not, however, lead to high levels of sustained tension in the Strait or across the Pacific, let alone conflict. I would assert that this was the case in large part because the U.S. and Japanese policies described above were coupled with reassurances from Washington, Tokyo, and other allied capitals that the United States and its security partners did not support or approve of Chen Shui-bian’s divisive pursuit of pro-independence initiatives in Taiwan. Moreover, especially since mid-2002 the United States pursued cooperation with Beijing in ways that undercut any notion that the purpose of the U.S. presence in the region was to contain the growth of Chinese influence. In other words, a strong U.S. presence in the region and a strong set of alliance relationships do not foster conflict across the Taiwan Strait, or harm China’s basic relations with Washington or Tokyo, if Beijing does not view the primary purpose of those assets to be the containment of China or the promotion of Taiwan independence. On the contrary, especially when placed in the proper diplomatic context, a strong U.S. presence, a clear commitment to the peaceful resolution of differences across the Taiwan Strait in a manner amenable to both sides, and well-coordinated alliance relations all should serve as essential elements of stability in cross-Strait relations and regional security politics as PRC power and regional influence grow.

After the EP-3 incident, relations had begun to thaw with Secretary Colin Powell’s trip to China in late July 2001. That process would accelerate after the September 11 attacks on New York City and Washington, which emphasized to leaders in both capitals that, despite the two countries’ differences, the United States and China have many common interests and should not view their relations as a zero-sum game in which one actor’s pain is somehow to the other’s benefit. Beijing has not been a leading player in the Global War on Terror that followed the attacks but it did take constructive public and private positions very quickly after the attacks. One example of such a constructive Chinese policy initiative was a small but symbolically important aid program to Pakistan just after the attacks, which helped support President Musharraf’s domestically controversial decision to cooperate with the U.S. military effort to take down the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, a regime that the Pakistani security and intelligence agencies had been instrumental in creating.⁶⁵

But all was not well in U.S.-China relations at the time, in large part, I would argue, because the administration seemed very supportive of Taiwan, almost unconditionally so, at a time in which the island’s leadership seemed to place identity politics over cross-Strait peace and stability. The problem went beyond the April 2001 arms notifications and Bush’s “whatever it takes” comment on assistance to Taiwan’s defense. In a speech at Tsinghua University during his trip to China in February 2002, the president would mention the Taiwan Relations Act exclusively as the basis of U.S. policy toward cross-Strait relations, failing to mention the three U.S.-PRC joint communiqués as guiding U.S. policy toward cross-Strait relations. The deepening of U.S. defense ties with Taiwan in early 2002 also catalyzed PRC concerns about United States’ activities in the region. Perhaps the most controversial event was the invitation of Taiwan Defense Minister Tang Yaoming to Florida for a mid-March defense industry meeting attended by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Assistant Secretary for East Asia James Kelley, among other top officials. Official and unofficial protests from Beijing branded the invitation of such a high-level cabinet member from Taiwan a violation of the 1979 U.S.-PRC normalization agreement.⁶⁶ Finally, the DOD’s “Nuclear Posture Review,” leaked to the press in March 2002, led to a backlash in China because it specified a future Taiwan scenario as one in which U.S. nuclear weapons might be useful. Moreover, this section was part of a broader document that suggested that the United States should not exclude the first use of small, bunker-busting nuclear weapons.⁶⁷

In this context, other aspects of the U.S. regional presence ostensibly related to the Global War on Terror were treated with some suspicion in Beijing. While President Bush was still on his return trip from China, the PLA Daily criticized recent U.S. security initiatives with India as potentially destabilizing in South Asia.⁶⁸ In early 2002 the PRC press published a fairly steady flow of implicit and explicit criticisms of aspects of the U.S. war on terrorism as it applied to both the immediate region and Southwest and Central Asia. The United States and Japan were singled out in multiple articles for opportunistically exploiting September 11 to increase their military power-projection capacities in areas surrounding China. The underlying themes of these articles are that Tokyo had planned to break out of the constraints of its peacetime constitution and that the United States had planned to increase its presence in Central Asia and Southeast Asia even before September 11. A focus of this criticism was Japan’s decision to send Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force ships to the Indian Ocean in support of the U.S.-led effort there. The terrorist attacks on the U.S., the argument runs, only provided a pretext for the United States and its friends and allies to carry out their geostrategic plans, which are aimed as much at hegemony and countering China’s rise as they are at countering terrorism.⁶⁹

The U.S.-China relationship would begin to stabilize and improve over the course of 2002. In spring 2002 then–Vice President Hu Jintao paid a visit to Washington and had what were, by all accounts, very useful discussions with Vice President Dick Cheney. This set the backdrop for Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage’s important trip to Beijing in late August 2002. Three weeks before that trip, Chen Shui-bian made a speech that asserted Taiwan’s sovereignty and seemed to violate his promises to eschew the pursuit of Taiwan independence while in office, which he made in his moderate inaugural address of May 2000. On August 3, 2002, Chen described relations across the Taiwan Strait as “one country on each side,” (yi bian yi guo) and suggested that he would pursue a popular referendum to determine Taiwan’s status. Chen’s formulation arguably went considerably further than Lee Teng-hui’s formulation of “special state-to-state relations” (teshu de guo yu guo guanxi), which could be interpreted as two governments negotiating on an equal basis inside one notional country. Because Chen’s speech refers to “China” and “Taiwan” separately, his statement cannot be interpreted in any way other than as an assertion of Taiwan’s independence as a country. This is especially true after his government offered the official English translation of the speech with the word guo given as “country,” not “state” (the Chinese character guo itself is ambiguous on this score).⁷⁰ For our purposes here, it is also notable that Chen’s speech was made in a teleconference with Taiwan compatriots in Japan, a fact that could only exacerbate Chinese concerns about the link between Japan and Taiwan independence and therefore, between the U.S.-Japan alliance and Taiwan independence.

During his August 2002 Beijing visit, Deputy Secretary Armitage not only clearly distanced himself from the statements by Chen but implicitly labeled them as actions designed to promote Taiwan independence. When answering questions to the press about the statements, Armitage replied simply and firmly that the United States “does not support Taiwan independence.” Also of importance, during his trip Armitage treated China as a partner in the War on Terror by publicly labeling the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which seeks independence for the PRC’s Xinjiang region, as an international terrorist organization with links to Al Qaeda.⁷¹

At the Crawford Summit in October 2002 President Bush would have another chance to explain to President Jiang that his administration was not seeking to change the historical U.S. “one China policy.” But it would be in December 2003, in the leadup to the 2004 Taiwan presidential elections, that President Bush would state most clearly that Washington not only did not support Taiwan independence but actively opposed statements and proposals by President Chen that seemed designed to change unilaterally the status quo across the Taiwan Strait. On the campaign trail in late 2003, President Chen had suggested that he would pursue “defensive referenda” on aspects of Taiwan’s relationship with the mainland during the presidential election of March 2004. He also suggested the need for constitutional reform, and made various assertions of Taiwan’s sovereign independence from mainland China. Singling out Chen’s recent actions and statements for comment in a public address, President Bush, with the visiting PRC Premier Wen Jiabao at his side, clearly and publicly stated that he opposed actions by either side of the Taiwan Strait to unilaterally change the status quo.⁷²

President Chen won a second term in a much disputed electoral process that included an apparent eleventh-hour assassination attempt on him and Vice President Annette Lu. The result was extremely bad news in Beijing, even though the scaled back “defensive referendum” on Taiwan’s pursuit of missile defense that accompanied the election failed to receive sufficient ballots for passage. Chen would return to divisive rhetoric as he campaigned for his party’s candidates in the legislative elections in December 2004. China’s leadership responded by having the China’s National People’s Congress draft and eventually pass an “anti-Secession Law,” which outlined in rather vague yet quite provocative terms the conditions under which the mainland should use “nonpeaceful” means in its policy toward Taiwan.⁷³

Contributing to China’s concerns about regional security in this period were trends in Japanese politics and in U.S.-Japan alliance relations. In Japan, Prime Minister Koizumi had visited the Yasukuni Shrine every year since he took office in 2001, aggravating nationalist sentiments in both China and Korea. Especially since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the United States and Japan had strengthened the alliance in ways consistent with the 2000 “Armitage Report.” The report urged Japan to play a larger role in the alliance and to shed some of the historical and legal constraints on collective self-defense and on Japan’s ability to project power abroad. In February 2005, the aforementioned “2+2” statement of the U.S.-Japan alliance was issued. That statement mentioned peaceful and stable relations across the Taiwan Strait as a mutual interest of the two allies.⁷⁴

In a revealing 2005 article, an influential Shanghai-based scholar, Wu Xinbo, outlined China’s growing pessimism about the U.S-Japan alliance at that time. The degree of concern he expressed seemed more severe than the mainstream view in China at the time, but Wu’s analysis was hardly an unconditional diatribe against the alliance. Wu presented real concerns in China and offered a sophisticated analysis of what does and does not set off alarm bells in Beijing about the U.S.-Japan alliance. The article begins by breaking away from standard official PRC public line that opposes all U.S. basing overseas, instead noting that many analysts in China have viewed the U.S.-Japan alliance in the past as constructive in reducing the prospect of a more militarily assertive and independent Japanese security policy. Wu claimed that the increased levels of concern about the alliance had to do with three key issues: nationalist political trends in Japan during the Koizumi years; the perception in some quarters in Japan of China’s rise as a threat; and Japan’s apparent growing attention and interest in Taiwan, as evidenced for Wu by the mention of the Taiwan Strait in the February 2005 “2+2” statement. Wu claimed, however, that these negative reactions had been tempered in the past and could be tempered in the future by proactive diplomacy in Washington and Tokyo. Wu emphasized the importance of the allies coordinating with a rising China in international efforts to address common security concerns. Moreover, he said that both Washington and Tokyo should take a clear position against President Chen’s efforts to unilaterally assert Taiwan independence. Finally steps should be taken in Washington and Tokyo to foster better bilateral PRC-Japan relations and trilateral dialogue between the United States, Japan, and China.⁷⁵ Although his article tends to emphasize the negative, Wu himself concedes that some efforts along these lines had already been made. For example, he notes that in 2002–2003 leaders in both Washington and Tokyo had rejected the provocative rhetoric and actions by President Chen during the elections.⁷⁶

In 2005–2006 the United States and Japan would take actions consistent with the prescriptions in Wu’s article. The Bush administration would adopt policies that clearly ran counter to any notion that Washington was trying to contain a rising China. Washington engaged Beijing in high-level security dialogues at which Beijing was invited to play a larger role on the international stage, albeit for purposes that served common interests in bolstering regional and global stability in security and economic spheres. This approach took on almost doctrinal stature through Deputy Secretary Robert Zoellick’s important speech at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations gala dinner on September 21, 2005, a statement that invited China to become a “responsible stakeholder” on the international stage and outlined the philosophy behind the U.S.-PRC “Senior Dialogue” on Security and Political Affairs. The same spirit of U.S.-PRC cooperation and the same rejection of a zero-sum mentality in bilateral relations underpinned the late 2006 initiative to create the Strategic Economic Dialogue, headed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, on how to improve economic cooperation between the two states.⁷⁷ Cooperation and collaboration among China, the United States, and two U.S. allies—Japan and the ROK—during the Six Party Talks on Korean denuclearization would continue and intensify, especially following the North Korean nuclear test of late 2006, and Washington would continue to engage in productive bilateral discussions with Beijing about how the United States and the PRC could better coordinate the two countries’ responses to challenges around the world.⁷⁸

Perhaps the most important instances of confidence-building between the United States, Japan, and the PRC were Washington’s and Tokyo’s policies toward relations across the Taiwan Strait in the lead-up to the March 2008 Taiwan Presidential elections. In 2007–2008 the United States and Japan would join many other important actors in the region and around the world in criticizing the referendum on applying to the UN under the name Taiwan. President Chen’s DPP was clearly using the referendum and the prospect of significant constitutional revision as both a campaign strategy and as a launching pad for future pro-independence policies. After private diplomacy failed to dissuade Chen and the DPP from this approach, the Bush administration opposed the referendum publicly in a series of high-level statements in late summer 2007 by Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, Deputy National Security Advisor James Jeffrey, and the National Security Council Senior Director for Asia, Dennis Wilder. In this process, the author, then–Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, gave a speech to a high-level U.S.-Taiwan defense conference explaining in detail the basis of the Bush administration’s opposition to the referendum.⁷⁹ In December, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice again rejected the referendum as “provocative” in a press briefing, even as she reminded Beijing of the other half of coercive diplomacy by calling for a peaceful settlement of all cross-Strait differences.⁸⁰

For our purposes here, it also is important to note the policies of major U.S. allies in the region and around the world, most notably Japan, were fully consistent with U.S. policy toward the referendum. During a late December 2007 summit in Beijing then–Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda would reject the referendum and any other unilateral attempt to change the status quo in cross-Strait relations. Although Fukuda was a bit more reserved than U.S. officials, stating that he did “not support” the referendum rather than stating that he “opposed” it, he clearly implied that he saw the referendum in a very negative light. Taipei newspapers, including the pro-DPP Taipei Times, were quick to note Fukuda’s negative stance and placed little if any significance on the difference in wording between the American and Japanese criticisms of the referendum.⁸¹

The concerted international criticism of the referendum apparently did real damage both to the popularity of the referendum in Taiwan (an intended consequence of U.S. public diplomacy) and the popularity of politicians who remained associated with the referendum in the March 2008 elections (an unintended consequence). The coordinated effort also helped clarify something important: when the United States, its allies, and like-minded states insist that cross-Strait differences be settled peacefully, this is not some sort of code for their support for Taiwan independence, as some pessimists in Beijing might have it. In order to avoid the opposite problem—that Beijing might somehow mistake U.S. and allied opposition to Chen’s initiatives as indifference to Taiwan’s security—clear messages opposing the use of force and criticizing the mainland buildup across from Taiwan as destabilizing were included alongside the criticisms of the referendum.

The consistency of allied positions on cross-Strait relations also served to bolster the U.S. diplomatic argument that upgrades in the U.S.-Japan alliance were not designed to contain China or provide explicit or tacit support for provocative political initiatives on the island. In fact, several weeks after President Ma Ying-jeou’s electoral victory in Taipei, President Hu made the first trip to Japan by a Chinese leader in over ten years. In the days leading up to the trip an influential Chinese scholar at the CCP Central Party School, Gong Li, pointed out that one reason for the much improved relations between the two sides was the fact that Japan had rejected Taiwan’s UN referendum and clarified its opposition to unilateral changes to the status quo by Taiwan during Prime Minister Fukuda’s trip to China in 2007. Gong places Japan’s assurances in an overall strategic setting, stating that

In the article, Gong exaggerates the change in atmosphere in Tokyo by claiming that Japan under Fukuda somehow rejected the February 2005 “2+2” U.S.-Japan alliance statement. But despite such hyperbole, it is quite clear that Japan’s diplomatic efforts had successfully reassured influential elites in Beijing that the purpose of the strengthening of the U.S.-Japan alliance was not to promote Taiwan independence or to contain the growth of China’s influence on the international stage. Japan’s signaling of assurances was certainly enabled by the fact that Koizumi’s immediate successors, Prime Ministers Abe, Fukuda, and Aso all avoided visits to the Yasukuni Shrine and generally avoided making provocative statements about Japan’s imperial history in the region.

A similar story could be told about U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. Having notified Congress regarding $3 billion (USD) in weapons sales in fall 2007, the Bush administration a year later notified Congress again about its intention to sell an additional $6.5 billion in arms to Taiwan. As always, this sparked great criticism in Beijing and led to a counterproductive cancelation of military-to-military dialogue between the two countries until early 2009, after President Obama’s inauguration. But despite the large size of the packages, Beijing’s response was rather limited and did not derail in any fundamental way relations across the Pacific. Nor did the weapons sales notification spoil quickly improving relations across the Taiwan Strait following the election and inauguration of President Ma Ying-jeou in March 2008 and May 2008, respectively. The two sides concluded economic agreements during shuttle diplomacy between unofficial representatives of the two governments and party leaders of the KMT and CCP.⁸³

Despite a rocky start in U.S.-China relations for the Bush administration, it seems that it found a way fairly early in its tenure to bolster regional security in a very challenging time in cross-Strait relations. It was clear on the one hand that Washington and its partners fully insisted upon peaceful resolution of cross-Strait differences and have maintained the military strength and political will to deter efforts by the mainland to coerce Taiwan toward unification against its will, while at the same time it was clear that the purpose of these efforts was not to harm Beijing’s fundamental interests by promoting Taiwan independence. Such a mix is the key to solving the alliance security dilemma.

Of course, the policies of the United States and Japan toward Taiwan are only part, albeit an important part, of the overall story of why cross-Strait relations and Sino-Japanese relations have stabilized. Adjustments in China’s own approach to both Taiwan and Japan under Hu Jintao since 2004 also played an important, stabilizing role. On the negative side of the equation was the persistent and arguably destabilizing buildup across the Taiwan Strait across the Jiang and Hu years. But in his first several years in office, President Hu has shown more patience than his predecessor in addressing cross-Strait relations. Since Hu consolidated his leadership position, rumors in knowledgeable circles in Beijing of a timetable for unification under Jiang Zemin have been replaced with rumors of acceptance of the status quo long into the future, as long as Taiwan does not take significant steps in the direction of de jure independence.⁸⁴

THE U.S.-JAPAN-CHINA SECURITY DILEMMA IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION

The Obama administration in its first two years in office inherited very stable cross-Strait relations and quite sound U.S.-PRC relations. For a new administration that came into office claiming to want to refocus U.S. energies toward Asia, it was unfortunate, however, that the U.S.-Japan alliance would quickly come under some real strain with the electoral defeat of the LDP in August 2009 elections and the selection of Yukio Hatoyama of the Democratic

Party of Japan as prime minister in August. Hatoyama had promised to scrap and then renegotiate a deal struck by his LDP predecessors in 2006 to adjust the U.S. military presence on Okinawa. That deal, which included relocation on the island of the U.S. Marine airbase at Futenma and the relocation of thousands of marines from Okinawa to Guam, was some thirteen years in the making. So, when Hatoyama carried through with his party’s campaign promise after assuming office and called for renegotiation of the deal, he placed an enormous strain on U.S.-Japan security relations. The United States initially adopted a tough posture on the issue. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates claimed in Tokyo that the United States would not renegotiate the deal nor would it implement aspects of the deal that were popular in Japan, such as the relocation of marines to Guam, if the unpopular aspects, including the relocation of Futenma, were scrapped by Tokyo.⁸⁵ Eventually, the United States softened its stance slightly and Hatoyama accepted the basics of the 2006 deal with minor adjustments in late May 2010; but his reversal itself was very controversial and the highly unpopular prime minister resigned from office almost immediately thereafter.

In early June Hatoyama was replaced by fellow DPJ member and party chief, Naoto Kan, who, thanks to Hatoyama’s last-minute compromise, had the luxury of agreeing to honor the basic agreement without being blamed directly for having negotiated it or being the first DPJ leader to approve it. Because of national and local (Okinawan) resistance to the U.S.-Japan agreement in Japan, at the time of this publication it is not at all clear that Kan will, in the end, be able to implement the basics of the 2006 agreement without revisions. What is notable for this study is that Kan is reported to have justified his own stance toward Hatoyama’s last-minute compromise by pointing to the need to shore up the U.S.-Japan alliance and maintain the U.S. basing in Okinawa as a way to enhance deterrence. He then expressed concern about the fast-paced growth of Chinese military power.⁸⁶ In a related fashion, at the Hiroshima memorial in August 2010, Kan reasserted the utility of nuclear deterrence and the U.S. nuclear umbrella for Japan’s security in the twenty-first century.⁸⁷

Chinese reactions to the weakening of the alliance under Hatoyama were very muted. This is almost certainly not merely a function of increased Chinese power, although that factor probably has contributed somewhat to the result. Also likely quite important is that, while Chinese analysts recognized the real strains in the alliance over the Futenma air base issue, they did not expect this to lead to a permanent fissure in the alliance. So, absent were the concerns that Japan might go it alone in the foreseeable future that we saw in the early 1970s and the early 1990s.⁸⁸ In fact, the U.S.-Japan alliance for most of Hatoyama’s short tenure in office might be seen as perfect from the perspective of many Chinese security analysts: the United States would surely stay in Japan as a “cork in the bottle,” but the alliance would remain sufficiently off balance that it might have added difficulty effectively carrying out roles and missions in areas like Taiwan or the East China Sea, in which it might be taking on Chinese forces. The focus of the disputes between Tokyo and Washington—the bases in Okinawa—are, after all, perhaps the most relevant for potential future engagements with Chinese forces in these areas. So, it is not surprising that analyses in Chinese official news sources were generally positive about Hatoyama in his early months in office, and that commentary in official news service publications were quite critical of his last-minute decision to accept the basics of the 2006 deal on Okinawa force relocation.⁸⁹

The aforementioned media reports of Kan’s public effort to maintain and bolster the U.S.-Japan alliance’s “deterrence” capacity, with special reference to concerns about China’s quickly growing military power, was unusually forward for a Japanese leader and, of course, led to a negative official and unofficial reaction in China. The Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, rejected the notion that China posed a threat to Japan and said that the United States-Japan alliance should not target third countries. He said that Beijing had expressed its concern over Kan’s statement directly to Tokyo.⁹⁰ But we have not seen anywhere near the severity or persistence of the reaction that we saw in the second half of the 1990s to the Guidelines review, the joint development of TMD, and the U.S. encouragement of a more active Japanese role as part of the alliance. Relative Chinese calm in this case can likely be attributed to several factors, including the rise of Chinese power and self-confidence and the perceived decline of U.S. power because of the financial crisis and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But our study of the history suggests that there might be an even more important factor behind Beijing’s relatively calm reaction to Kan’s statement: the positive trends in relations across the Taiwan Strait.

Since 2008 Taipei has adopted more moderate and even accommodating policies toward the mainland than at any time since 1992. Under these conditions, the details of adjustments in the U.S.-Japan alliance and the justifications for them are not nearly as sensitive as they would be if cross-Strait relations were as tense as they were from the early 1990s through 2008. It is still important to understand these dynamics in part because there is no guarantee that proindependence leaders might not return to office in Taipei or, more generally, that cross-Strait relations will remain stable. Moreover, even under conditions of quite positive cross-Strait relations, there are still some traditional hints of neuralgia in Beijing about the purpose and power of U.S. alliances in Asia. After an international review board determined that a North Korean submarine had torpedoed an ROK naval ship in March 2010, killing 46 South Korean sailors, Washington and Seoul planned and executed a naval exercise off the Korean coast. To the great frustration of South Korea, China maintained an agnostic position about the sinking and refused to study the evidence in the weeks that followed. The Chinese government then reacted very negatively to media articles about the planning for the exercises, directly warning Washington and Seoul not to threaten Chinese security during the exercises. In addition to this official governmental warning, a series of rather threatening statements by Chinese scholars and military officers appeared in the Chinese media reports regarding the U.S.-ROK exercises.⁹¹

One can only imagine how strident the Chinese reaction to the U.S.-ROK exercises and the statements of Prime Minister Kan about the purpose of the U.S.-Japan alliance might have been if relations across the Taiwan Strait had been very tense at the same time. Under such circumstances it might prove much more difficult for the United States to balance the need to maintain strong alliances in the region and reassure Beijing that the purpose of those alliances is not fundamentally contradictory to China’s own security interests. So, although the alliance-related security dilemmas are not very sharp at the time of this publication, they could become so again, with implications for the management of coercive diplomacy between the United States and China in the Taiwan Strait or in future Korea scenarios.

Understanding the Cold War history of U.S.-PRC relations from an analytic perspective can help us understand these more contemporary phenomena, but we must remember to be careful in drawing these analogies too easily. The United States and China are very far from being in a Cold War in this century. China is both much less ideological in its foreign policy and much less aggressive with its military in the reform era than it was under Mao. Moreover, the United States and China enjoy extremely deep economic and social ties in contrast to the hostile mutual isolation of the two countries in the 1950s, 1960s, and even most of the 1970s. Finally, through the hard work of diplomats and top leaders on both sides, the United States and China have managed to cooperate on a broad range of projects from North Korea to the Gulf of Aden in this century in ways that would have been simply unimaginable in the Mao years.⁹² That being said, there are still classic and complex elements of mutual coercive diplomacy between the United States and the PRC over issues such as relations across the Taiwan Strait. As long as one fully recognizes the differences in context, some of the theoretical and historical lessons drawn from the earlier chapters of this book can still help us understand the challenges to U.S. coercive diplomacy and alliance management in the region that will likely persist into the early decades of this century.