The new US activism in Asia is intended to be bold, but not rash. That at least is how we are reading the tea leaves at Via Meadia.
There’s no doubt that the announcement of new US deployments in Australia will not please Beijing — especially when paired with Australia’s decision to sell uranium to India. It’s hard not to read that as the tightening of the web around China.
But it could have been worse, from Beijing’s point of view. Much worse. The President’s tough words for China were carefully hedged, saying that it’s time for the country to follow “international norms” and “play by the rules” but at the same time repeating that the United States welcomes “a peaceful and prosperous China.
More substantially, deployments in Australia are the least provocative way for the US to raise its Asian profile. Australia has excellent trading relations with China and has no interest in seeing a confrontation between Washington and Beijing. It is not eager to be the spearpoint of an anti-China front, and China knows this.
Oz is also a very long way from Beijing. . The United States has troops in regions which are much closer: Almost 30,000 in South Korea and more than 40,000 in Japan. If President Obama really wanted to be provocative, he would visiting Hanoi this week and announcing closer military relations Vietnam. And while Secretary Clinton was in Manila, she would be signing an agreement for US forces to return to its cold war era bases in the Philippines.
While I was in China last month, people frequently asked me whether the US had a policy of “engagement” or of “containment” with China. My answer then was that our policy was engagement, but the option of containment was there. It is on a shelf in the closet, I said; we know where it is, we know how it would work, and we can get it down if we have to. We prefer to avoid going that route and sticking with engagement, but the option is real.
That remains true, I think, after the President’s trip to Australia. The Obama administration has pointed to the closet where we keep the containment policy, but it hasn’t actually brought it out yet. The deeper relationship with Australia is intended to ward off the need for a more generally aggressive regional policy rather than as the opening salvo in a campaign of expansion and encroachment.
Containment is still on the shelf, and it is still up to China what happens next.
It’s both engagement and containment simultaneously. Every arms sale to Taiwan is a tacit admission that the US worries about a cross straight invasion. Our forces in Korea, Japan and our PACOM engagement strategy with key allies, including India, all have the effect of restraining an expansionist China.
To view our relations China as either engagement or containment, is a mistake.
“Engagement, if you want it.”
當我們看中國的外交，卻發現她很多時會在違背自身價值觀和利益的情況下，向各國妥協。可見中國外交的失敗。
中共所實行的睦鄰政策，可說是徹底的失敗。中共現在的領導人奉行鄧小平那套所謂的「韜光養晦」政策。但其實，這只是一種逃避挑戰的鴕鳥政策。當今中國所面臨的惡劣國際環境，則決定了這種鴕鳥政策必然失敗。
在這種鴕鳥政策主導下，中國外交不僅畏首畏尾，更胸無大志，既沒有系統的外交戰略，也沒有長遠的外交目標。這種頭痛醫頭、腳痛醫腳式的外交政策，直接導致中國外交在面對各種挑釁時束手無策，盡顯軟弱之態，面對大好機遇時，也因毫無戰略準備而無所作為。
對印度對日本甚至是越南，中國都是畏首畏尾，一昧退讓，實行韜光養晦。本來，鄧小平的韜光養晦，是指平時積蓄力量，關鍵時刻果斷出手，是一種積極進取的外交思維。但現在，卻成了一種鴕鳥政策，令人無奈。
其實，按照中國現在的實力，根本不用如此讓步，中共對東南亞國家，對日本，甚至是越南，都讓得太多。完全顯示不到大國風範，畏首畏尾的外交政策，只會令中國人蒙羞！
至於對印度和越南的外交處理手法，中共簡直令人覺得恥辱。情況就好像當年清政府打贏法國，但仍然賠償法國一樣。令人覺得是絕大的恥辱。
中國在和俄羅斯，印度，日本，越南等周遍強國的政治經濟往來中，沒有佔到多少便宜，也沒有讓這些列強放棄對中國崛起的偏見和敵視，自身利益不斷被侵占，不能不說中國的外交政策有很大缺陷，這是中國國家佈局計劃和外交政策慘敗的最佳體現。
中國常常想成為一等一的大國，但他的外交卻事事以懦弱的方式勉強了事，實在不能給人任何強國的風範。
vokoyo, non ieiuno Sabbato?