Beacon No. 82: Secretary Rice Plays Winston Churchill

AS HER ASIA PACIFIC TRIP MEETS WITH ALLIES SKEPTICAL OF EFFORTS TO “CONTAIN” CHINA.


There’s a parallel universe—maybe Harry Turtledove will get around to writing about it—in which Winston Churchill spent the 1930s warning Britain’s allies about an expansionist Japan, rather than the menacing Germany that consumed his attention in our universe.

We’re not in that parallel universe, but Secretary Rice is playing a Churchillian role on her current trip around Asia and the Pacific. To hear Steven R. Weisman write about it in “Rice and Australian Counterpart Differ About China,” the Secretary of State is spending her time warning America’s allies, not against an expansionist Japan, but against the supposedly sinister intentions of Beijing. And she is being politely ignored by nations that don’t want to risk irking the region’s new giant, the same way that Churchill was in the run-up to Germany’s invasion of Poland.

Secretary Rice has some valid points about China: It is spending heavily to modernize its military. It has locked up access to needed resources around the Pacific Rim and beyond for decades into the future. It continues to oppress its people and anchors its foreign policy in reining in the “renegade province” of Taiwan.

But she is having difficulty being heard by Asian governments that either fear China’s wrath or prefer to drown out the Secretary’s voice with the sound of money that pours forth from Beijing’s coffers. Even Australia, usually one of the most reliable allies of the U.S., is asking the Bush administration to please pipe down:

Before Ms. Rice arrived, [Australian foreign minister Alexander] Downer told Sky News: "We don't support a policy of containment of China. I don't think that's going to be a productive or constructive policy at all." His comments were described in the Australian press as an effort to assuage China's concerns about American-Australian policies.

To go back to the 1940s analogy once more: Many Japanese believed—and may still believe—that Pearl Harbor was not the beginning of the Second World War, but that U.S. attempts to isolate it internationally and cut off flows of fuel, metals and other resources were aggressive acts by the U.S.

This same complex scenario is playing out with the People’s Republic today, except that China is making great efforts to secure its standing with suppliers and other allies in order to head off direct confrontation with the U.S. Beijing recognizes that a war would be bad for business and prefers to simply preempt Washington by demonstrating to everyone what a great deal it is to be in China’s corner.