Presidential indolence in foreign policy knows no partisan label. When Georgetown University Professor Anthony Lake put relations with China at the top of his list of America's main national security concerns, he got no argument from anyone in the packed hotel ballroom in downtown Los Angeles.
China is almost always on the mind of even a semi-conscious West Coast American. It's so obvious.
But it was not so obvious to the Clinton administration during its first term, when Professor Lake served as the president's national security adviser. It was still 'it's the economy, stupid' time, and foreign relations took a back seat. Bill Clinton was inaugurated as president in 1993, but did not get around to visiting China until 1998.
Professor Lake, in a riveting, informal chat last week to a Los Angeles World Affairs Council audience, sounded a note of frustration that the Bush administration had done so little to engage dangerous North Korea during its first four years in office; instead, it allowed Pyongyang time to work on its nuclear potential. He was not making a mere partisan point. He has seen more than one president dawdle when it came to foreign policy concerning Asia.
But, on balance, he is realistic about the prospects for Sino-US co-operation. The professor scoffed at his former boss' boyish enthusiasm for a 'strategic partnership' with China, realising there is no Santa Claus in Beijing. That unwise characterisation, he commented, 'devalued US relations with our true partners'. The China-US relationship is bound to oscillate constantly between ad-hoc instances of co-operation and periodic bouts of irritation and competition.
On the irritation front, you have first and foremost Taiwan. Those of us who truly care about Taiwan need to persuade it to abandon the formal independence kick; those of us who value mature, adult relations with China need to make it crystal clear that military action against Taiwan will lead to grave consequences.
