This case
study examines the formation and implementation of U.S. policies in response to
three of the most important national security crises between the United States
and the People’s Republic of China: the June 1989 decision by the Chinese
military to employ force to suppress unarmed student demonstrators in Tiananmen
Square; the accidental May 1999 bombing by U.S. aircraft of China’s embassy in
Belgrade during the Kosovo War; and the April 2001 collision between an
American EP-3 surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter aircraft off China’s
coast.
Three
considerations make a study of how the
United
States has managed crises with
China important for the Project on
National Security Reform (PNSR). First, managing security relations with the
People’s Republic of
China
(PRC) has been, and will probably remain for at least several more decades, one
of the most important national security missions of the
U.S. government. Second, assessing
the
U.S.
interagency response to three short-term incidents sharing common
characteristics provides examples of how the American national security system
reacts to unexpected international crises. This evaluation complements other
PNSR case studies that review how the
U.S. government forms and executes
strategies during longer-lasting events. Third, the three cases highlight
various differences in American policies towards
China
that clarify the formation and execution of
U.S. national security strategy.
STRATEGY:
The leading national security policy makers in each of the
three administrations under consideration held different views about the
appropriate U.S. strategy toward China even if they subscribed to a general
consensus that a more democratic, less bellicose PRC would be a more favorable
partner than an authoritarian regime that pursued repressive domestic policies
and confrontational foreign policies.
George H.W. Bush
entered office with a well-formulated strategy toward
China. The President, who inclined
toward a realpolitik perspective of great power relations that focused on the
external rather than the internal behavior of countries, emphasized the
need to prevent a rupture in Sino-American ties despite the end of the Soviet
threat that had united the two countries during the Cold War.
In principle, the overarching strategic framework of the
Clinton administration toward
China was that of “constructive
engagement.” Its adherents sought to promote
China’s domestic liberalization,
global economic integration, and responsible international behavior gradually
by deepening bilateral dialogue and interaction on a range of issues. In
practice,
due to the lower level of
presidential interest and other factors, the
Clinton
administration was divided over its strategic priorities regarding
China.
Some elements were most concerned with promoting human rights, others with
securing commercial advantage, others with curbing nuclear and ballistic
missile proliferation, and still others with pursuing defense diplomacy with a reclusive
but increasingly powerful PLA. Absent senior White House direction, the U.S
government agencies primarily responsible for
America’s
China
policy often failed to integrate and prioritize these objectives.
The second Bush
administration came into office with a strategic framework that saw
China as a long-term strategic competitor, but
the EP-3 collision occurred too early in the new administration for it
to have developed a coherent strategy, with supporting interagency procedures,
regarding
China
or many other important issues. The crisis might have accelerated the
development of an integrated strategy that treated
China
as a potential near-peer competitor if the September 2001 terrorist attacks had
not quickly overwhelmed
U.S.
government planning efforts and directed policy makers’ attention away from
China
and toward countering international terrorism.
INTEGRATED ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL POWER:
The three
specific incidents under review encompass a wide range of actors that have
participated in the formation and execution of
U.S.
security policies towards
China.
These include several executive branch departments, agencies of the
U.S.
intelligence community, influential members of Congress and their staff, and
diverse non-governmental organizations. Yet, each of the three administrations under
consideration employed distinct processes for formulating and executing
American security policies towards
China.
U.S.
policy toward
China
during the first Bush administration was directed by the President himself. George
H.W. Bush relied primarily on his most senior advisers when making key policy
decisions toward
China
after Tiananmen. These officials would reach decisions and then seek to
implement them without necessarily requiring formal advanced or post-decisional
meetings of the established NSC committees. Although this centralized system
received criticism for being too closed, the fact that it involved key actors
who played important roles in both the formal and informal structures helped
keep the two processes in sync.
The priority
that President Clinton and other senior
U.S.
government officials placed on winning the war in Kosovo perhaps disinclined
them from attempting to disrupt formal
U.S. government decision making
structures and processes by substituting ad hoc procedures. That said, for much
of the period leading up to the
Belgrade bombing
incident, the administration had experienced problems integrating the various
components of its comprehensive engagement toward
China. Diverse executive branch
agencies readily engaged with
Beijing,
but often on their own terms in pursuit of distinct agendas. By the time of the
embassy bombing in 1999, Chinese officials had become distrustful of
Clinton administration statements and actions, since these
were often contradicted by at least one
U.S. government agency.
Since the
EP-3 collision occurred so early in the life of the second Bush administration,
the executive branch had yet to establish clear interagency procedures
regarding
China
or many other issues. Decision makers resorted to several ad hoc interagency
mechanisms to establish and implement policies during the crisis. The
U.S. military heavily influenced the initial
U.S. government response since one of its planes
was directly involved in the incident and because much of official
Washington was not yet
awake. After the non-DOD agencies became more engaged, however, the defense
establishment adopted a lower profile and allowed Secretary of State Colin Powell
and President Bush to manage the public response more effectively.
EVALUATION:
The realpolitik
approach of the first Bush administration created tensions in
executive-legislative relations, as diverse members in Congress sought to
challenge the administration’s policies. The White House felt compelled to
threaten presidential vetoes to prevent Congress from adopting sanctions that
the executive branch strongly opposed. Yet, the Bush administration, like other
foreign governments, proved unable to prevent the Chinese leadership from
inflicting widespread human rights violations or induce
Beijing to alter other policies obnoxious to
American values and interests.
The priority
of the
Clinton administration was to settle the
Belgrade bombing crisis in a way that quickly returned the
Sino-American relationship to pre-crisis conditions and allowed the
U.S.
government to continue to concentrate on winning the war in Kosovo.
The initial
U.S.
response, which failed, was simply to hope that expressions of contrition by
American leaders would assuage Chinese authorities, who would then suppress the
public demonstrations.
Most participants
in the interagency working group established to monitor the crisis subsequently
acknowledged feeling they were making decisions excessively hastily, with
incomplete information. Constraints on the president’s time, congressional
attacks on the Chinese government, and other impediments also complicated the
U.S.
government’s ability to handle this crisis.
The second Bush administration sought to settle the EP-3
crisis through a solution that, while not worsening Sino-American ties, would
not compromise future
U.S.
intelligence operations against
China.
In this case, differences in interagency perspectives, especially between
U.S.
civilian and military actors, hindered policy implementation.
RESULTS:
In response
to Tiananmen, President George H. W. Bush felt compelled to engage the
Beijing government directly by circumventing traditional
diplomatic and
U.S.
government channels. This approach had the advantage of flexibility but meant
that, when details of the tactic became public, members of Congress felt less
reluctance to attack the effort because they had never been briefed on the
issue. More generally, congressional pressure continually forced the first Bush
administration to pursue a harsher policy toward
China than the President preferred.
In terms of implementing its desired policy toward
China,
however, the main obstacle was not lack of interagency cooperation, but the
dependence of the strategy’s effectiveness on
Beijing’s response. Chinese policy makers
proved unwilling to curtail their internal repression sufficiently to avoid
undermining congressional support for the White House’s approach of pursuing
long-term cooperation with
China.
Despite having
possessed several years of in-office experience conducting policies towards
China, the
Clinton
team encountered problems orchestrating its diplomatic, economic, military and
other foreign policy instruments before and during the embassy bombing crisis.
The lack of interagency integration resulted from the embassy bombing’s
unexpectedness and the White House’s preoccupation with winning a war in Kosovo
that was proving much more difficult than originally anticipated. The military
and intelligence communities proved reluctant to share information about their target
selection procedures with their civilian colleagues, let alone the Chinese. As
a result, the civilians in the State Department were left assuring the Chinese
government that the incident had all been a mistake while acknowledging their
limited understanding of why the intelligence failure had occurred.
The second
Bush administration eventually achieved its immediate crisis objective of
securing the return of the EP-3 crew and subsequently the plane. Nevertheless,
the hard-line stance taken by
U.S.
military leaders was not well integrated with the softer approach of the U.S.
State Department. A more integrated response might have helped secure the
release of the crew and aircraft faster. Faced with unanswerable
counterfactuals, however, one can acknowledge that the “good cop/bad cop”
approach actually adopted, whether consciously or by accident, might have
yielded the best results. In any case, congressional pressure for harsh
U.S. retaliation if the Chinese failed to return
the crew appeared to have strengthened the administration’s bargaining position
by making its implicit threats more credible to
Beijing.
CONCLUSION:
Several patterns emerge
from the three crises under consideration. First, even those presidents that assumed
office with well-integrated strategies often found it hard to implement them
within the
U.S.
interagency framework. Second, absent close presidential attention, the
agencies would often develop and pursue their own
China policies, contributing to
undesirable policy incoherence. Third, responding to the immediate crisis
almost always involved a mixture of formal and ad hoc interagency processes.
Fourth, serious problems arose when the crisis occurred early in a presidential
transition since the new administrations had yet to establish fully functioning
interagency processes or secure Senate approval of many mid-level political
appointees. Fifth, since the Tiananmen crackdown, sustained tensions have
affected executive-legislative policies regarding
China, with Members of Congress
often advocating much more confrontational policies than the executive branch
deems wise. Finally, the main achievement of the
U.S. government response to all the
crises involved costs avoided—normally not a major accomplishment, but important
here, when mismanaging events could have escalated into nuclear war.
