Three Sides in Search of a Triangle: Singapore-America-India Relations

4. China

98 Three Sides in Search of a Triangle C H A P T E R IV CHINA1 Singapore, the United States, and India agr ee only partially on the implications of the rise of China. AMERICA In an essay that goes against much of conventional wisdom, William J. Dobson ar gues that, rather than treating 11 September 2001 as the iconic inauguration of a new world order, it was New Year’s Eve, 1991 that changed the world for ever. “It was on that day , far away from any cameras, that the Soviet Union finally threw in the towel, dissolving itself and of ficially bringing an end to the Cold W ar.”2 Comparisons between momentous events are controversial, but there is no doubt that the end of the Cold W ar was a defining moment for America’s place in the world. That moment was also a defining moment for China because it could unravel Beijing’s r elationship with Washington, which now , as the sole r emaining China 99 superpower, was best positioned to either facilitate or constrain China’s emergence as a global power .3 The Sino-American relationship, based on a common opposition to the growth of Moscow’s power, had been established in the closing two decades of the Cold W ar. America’s overtures to China — beginning with Kissinger’s secret trips there in July and October 1971, and culminating in President Richard Nixon’s visit in February 1972 — had signified the dif ference that China could make in a world situation marked by the failure of the United States and the Soviet Union to achieve a stable balance of power thr ough détente. Beijing’s estrangement from Moscow had made it a natural partner for a W ashington that had been seeking to reverse the strategic defensive into which Soviet advances had pushed it. The Sino-American rapprochement, which had received a tremendous boost with China’s decision in 1978 to modernize and open up its economy to the world, had set the tone for a new era in international, and particularlyAsian, affairs that had affected the outcome of conflicts such as the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1978 and Beijing’s punitive expedition against Hanoi the following year . Perhaps more than any other country , China had benefited from American choices made in those two decades. However, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which set in motion the events that would climax with the implosion of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, combined with the military suppr ession of the pr o-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square also in 1989, reversed the direction in which U.S.-China r elations had been moving. The China Card turned into the China Threat. “The US no longer needed China as a potential ally against the Soviets, and the thr eat of China opening a 100 Three Sides in Search of a Triangle second front during a world war was no longer a necessary deterrent.”American military planners, faced with downsizing but buoyed by the “peace dividend”, focused more attention on China as “a potential future adversary”. The first Gulf War that followed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 in essence pitted Chinese equipment and their strategy of overwhelming numbers against America’s high-technology and force-multiplier strategy. Surprised by the results, China embarked on an ambitious military modernization programme.4 With the end of the Cold W ar, Chinese and American approaches to international security began to diver ge. To sceptics, the problem lay more with the United States than it did with China. China, given its population, economy, and the r emnants of a Stalinist political system, began to answer to the Pentagon’s post-Cold War search for a potential rival with which to r eplace the Soviet Union; 1 1 September 2001 mer ely put this quest on hold.5 Contemporary American thinking on China is encapsulated in a series of of ficial pronouncements, such as the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, released in September 2002, and the Quadrennial Defense Review reports. These documents view China’s defence spending and its military modernization as threats to the established world or der, although the country is rising without the support of an alliance system, which the United States possesses. The U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review of 2001 and the National Security Strategy...