A farewell to sabre-rattling?
Demystification, not containment. This was the central theme of US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's comments regarding China at this year's Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore - the Asia-Pacific region's largest unofficial gathering of defence officials and security specialists.
Unlike his speech at this annual International Institute for Strategic Studies gathering last year, when comments on China (and the war on terrorism) dominated his formal remarks, only one short paragraph in a four-page prepared text referred to the People's Republic.
Mr Rumsfeld first praised China's great potential, strong economic growth and industrious workforce. 'But,' he cautioned, 'there are aspects of China's actions that can complicate their relationships with other nations. The lack of transparency with respect to their military investments understandably causes concerns for some of its neighbours'. That was it. Beyond this, Mr Rumsfeld largely stressed the positive.
'In the past five years, in terms of defence and security co-operation, the United States has done more things, with more nations, in more constructive ways, than at any other time in our history,' he said.
As expected, he warned against violent extremism in the region, while challenging North Korea to 'choose a path which leads back to membership in the community of nations'. That was a relatively gentle admonition, for the US Defence Department at any rate.
If China was not a central theme in his prepared remarks, it remained the subject of over half the questions posed to Mr Rumsfeld during the on-the-record question-and-answer session that followed.
While several questioners tried to draw him into a discussion of the Chinese threat, he was not about to go there, perhaps remembering the challenges he received last year when he questioned China's growing defence spending.
Instead, he merely called for China to be more transparent about its military capabilities and doctrine. In essence, he said that countries have a right to develop the military they choose, but others have a right, and a need, to know what they are doing and why.
It would be in Beijing's interest, Mr Rumsfeld argued, if it demystified what it was doing militarily. He predicted that China would eventually see the wisdom of doing just that.
Even on the contentious issue of Taiwan, he merely observed that we should 'take China at its word' when it says it seeks peaceful reunification as its first choice.
Mr Rumsfeld stressed that the United States had no grand design in Asia, other than to 'contribute to peace and stability' - stressing again that the goal of US-China military-to-military relations was 'to demystify one another'.
It would be too kind to claim that Mr Rumsfeld hit a home run in Singapore. But, if he struck out last year, this year he at least had a solid hit. His more nuanced views towards China - perhaps informed by his first visit to Beijing as defence secretary last October and by the adverse reaction to last year's Shangri-La presentation - were much better received. The desire for increased Chinese transparency is widely held in Asia.
Unfortunately, the Chinese Defence Ministry and People's Liberation Army chose once again to boycott the gathering, thus missing an important opportunity to demonstrate Beijing's professed commitment to greater defence co-operation in the Asia-Pacific region.
Ralph Cossa is president of the Pacific Forum CSIS, a Honolulu-based non-profit research institute
