How to Appease China Without Really Trying: Strategic Reassurance

As President Obama goes wheels up to Asia, it seems a good time to do a pulse check on his China policy.  Today's Washington Post article on the art of labeling the US-China relationship raised questions about whether "strategic reassurance" has really become the authoritative articulation of Obama's China policy.  "Strategic reassurance" -- or, as I like to call it, "strategerea" -- was rolled out as the new intellectual framework for US-China relations in a September 24 speech by Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg.  

After Steinberg floated the concept, the administration said nothing further in public about it for about six weeks, leading to much speculation by various commentators about the true meaning and importance of this new label inside the administration.  This speculation culminated in an item by Josh Rogin at the Cable last week reporting that Steinberg had gotten ahead of the rest of the administration by announcing this new policy without getting buy-in from his colleagues at State and beyond.  (The Post article confirms this.)  The rumor that the policy was stillborn gained further steam when, in consecutive remarks last Friday, the NSC's top Asia hand Jeff Bader failed to use the terminology in his pre-trip scene-setter at Brookings, and Steinberg himself gave a wan defense of his creation during remarks at the Center for American Progress.

This week, however, on the eve of his departure for Asia, Obama himself appeared to endorse the concept of strategic reassurance in an interview where he discussed forging a "strategic partnership" with Beijing in terms that seemed drawn from the original Steinberg speech, and according to the South China Morning Post, the Chinese appear to be acting as if they believe the policy remains operative.

Meanwhile, there have been persistent rumors in Washington for several weeks that there are no real deliverables for this trip, and that the Chinese were pretty much refusing to move beyond the status quo on all the important issues.  So, is the "strategic partnership" happy talk a last-ditch effort to get something useful out of this trip?  Possibly.  The Chinese have been trying for over a decade to get successive US administrations to characterize the US-China relationship as a "strategic partnership," and commentators in Asia (6) have seized on this as a major development. But if that is the case, then the Chinese seem to be getting the best part of the deal.  Again from the South China Morning Post:

Beijing wants Obama to make a public statement recognising China's sovereignty over Tibet and promise to refrain from arms sales to Taiwan. Chinese diplomats familiar with the situation say Chinese negotiators are bargaining for an Obama statement on Tibet and Taiwan in exchange for China's commitment to accept the "strategic reassurance" tag, which includes measures to promote transparency of its military and co-operation on non-proliferation and disarmament.

If this comes to pass, Obama will have sold the Tibetans and Taiwanese down the river for nothing more than vague Chinese promises to work on areas where they have been notoriously uncooperative and have little real incentive or inclination to change.  Let's hope that this is just wishful thinking of misinformed Chinese diplomats and sloppy reporting by Hong Kong journalists.