Gates’ China approach tests chance for military exchanges
Published: February 8, 2010
In the last half of 2009, U.S.-China rhetoric was thawing, dignitaries were visiting Washington and Beijing, and cooperation seemed on the rise. But when the U.S. sold $6.8 billion of military weaponry to Taiwan last month, as it had warned Beijing it would do, China responded by cutting off military-to-military exchanges, as it warned Washington would happen.
The incident threatens to wipe away several months’ worth of work to open doors. That’s important for at least one reason – on his second day on the job as new Pacific Command commander, talking to reporters in a Seoul, South Korea, hotel meeting room, Adm. Robert Willard said:
“I would contend that in the past decade or so China has exceeded most of our intelligence estimates of their military capability and capacity every year."
President Barack Obama fulfilled a campaign promise by dispatching his top national security officials to press China for greater dialogue and openness. Top U.S. Navy officials attended a Chinese fleet review marking their military’s 60th anniversary, hoping to learn their “intent”. http://blogs.stripes.com/blogs/stripes-central/cno-seeks-learn-chinas-na.... Diplomats secured unprecedented support from Beijing against North Korean provocations.
And Obama himself visited Beijing in November, committing to military exchanges.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates also has pushed for normalized and open relations between American and Chinese militaries. In October, Gen. Xu Caihou, the second-ranking military officer in China, essentially Gates’ counterpart, spent a week touring U.S. military bases from the Pentagon to Pearl Harbor. Gates accepted an invitation to visit Beijing in 2010 and both sides agreed to increase exchanges junior officers and senior noncommissioned officers.
Xu was the highest ranking Chinese officer to visit Washington since 2006. Press Secretary Geoff Morrell, said the secretary stressed to him this point: “There is a need to break the on-again-off-again cycle of our military-to-military relationship."
Gates hoped the two militaries could continue despite political “hiccups,” Morrell said.
Then the U.S. did it again. Another arms sale to Taiwan. Another Chinese silent treatment.
It’s unclear how U.S. military exchanges would be slowed or halted by China. The U.S. said this fall it would begin several cooperative maritime exercises with China, including combined search and rescue operations.
The announcement of a joint maritime venture was poignant because the two Navy’s have a history of several tense dust ups at sea. In May 2009, Chinese vessels surrounded a U.S. contract surveillance ship, USNS Impeccable, attempting to snag a tow line dragging sonar equipment and forcing the ship off course. The snags seem to continue.
“I’d hoped that in the future we could shield the military-to-military relationship from the political ups and downs,” Gates said at the Pentagon, February 1. “I think that we have a lot to learn from each other.”
Gates said he was still planning for a China trip.
