Chinese Take Out

President Obama’s trip to China has been accompanied by the usual concerns about human rights abuses and the value of the Yuan that have troubled Sino-American relations for the past two decades. This trip has also raised a relatively new concern about China: that it is not pulling its weight on international problems. Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt of the International Crisis Group writes that China is a “global free-rider,” for failing to help the U.S. take action against Iran and North Korea. Over at the New York Times, China is similarly charged with needing to “play an even stronger international role,” including assisting the U.S. with the remaining two-thirds of the axis of evil.

The objection that China is free-riding is silly and myopic. To free ride is to fail to contribute to a public good that you enjoy. In order for China to free-ride on the proliferation issues in North Korea and Iran, China has to believe that a change in the status quo would significantly damage their national interests, which is not at all clear. On Iran, the Times notes, China “seems more concerned about its own voracious energy needs, and Iran’s ability to satisfy them.” So China is looking out for its own national interests, perhaps to the detriment of other states in the international system? Would other states dare to do this?

When Nixon made the bold opening with China nearly three decades ago, he hoped that the Chinese would exert pressure on the North Vietnamese to help bring an end to the war in Vietnam that would benefit the United States. The Chinese, with little to gain from an end to the war, did not fulfill Nixon’s wishes. The premise of free-rider arguments is that China and the United States want the same things in their foreign policies, when, in fact, they do not. Thus, there is no free-riding. [Climate change is a different issue, but unfortunately, the United States is not much better.]

The underlying concept here is soft power and the United States general inability to use it effectively with the Chinese. The Obama administration needs to get China to “want what we want.” This moves outside the realm of international bargaining (and discussions of American’s limited leverage over the Chinese) to focus on how China should perceive the international system. Increasing Chinese significance in the international system will change Chinese interests, but not necessarily cause them to align with the United States. Unfortunately, over the medium term it seems unlikely that China’s interests will mirror those of the United States due to economic, domestic political, cultural, and geo-strategic reasons.

Evidence? We don't need no stinking evidence!

The latest meme on the Iranian nuclear program is that Iran's admission of the centrifuge facility near Qum is but the tip of the iceberg. The Times has a nice "man bites dog" piece on U.S. intelligence taking a cautious line on the Iranian nuclear program after the Iraq debacle. The story argues that European intelligence agencies are much more hawkish on the Iranian program than their American counterparts (although, this is not, as the Times reports, a mirror image of the Iraq debate). The even handedness of the Times story falls apart at the conclusion when they quote Graham Allison: “How likely is it that the Qum facility is all there is? Zero. A prudent manager of a serious program would certainly have a number of sites.” Of course, this comes from the same nuke alarmist who bet Nicholas Kristof that terrorists would explode a nuclear bomb by 2014. Over at Foreign Policy there is similar hand-wringing over the implications of the Qum facility, although the article focuses on the fact that President Ahmadinejad's statements following the disclosure of the facility are at odds with IAEA rules (insert mock shock here!). What unites both the ominous Allison quote and the equally ominous FP piece is a general aversion to providing actual evidence for their contentions. For Allison the rationale is that any descent nuclear program should have more sites. In the FP article the rationale seems to be that Iran does not follow the rules and thus there must be other facilities. Instead of relying on evidence for their claims, these authors can instead rely on general distrust of Iranian intentions to support their arguments. It is too easy for those following Iran to simply take every piece of new evidence about the nuclear program as further "proof" that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. The real story is the cautiousness of U.S. intelligence on Iran, despite the cries of the nuclear alarmists. We will have to see how long evidence-based intelligence wins out over doomsday theories.