ARMING THE DRAGON
A. James Gregor
Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1988
128 pp., $19.75
The recent death of Chiang Ching-kuo, the former head of the Nationalist Chinese government on Taiwan, received only scant mention in the American news media. Only a few Americans, to be sure, had ever heard of him, and fewer care about the once inviolable security connection the United States had with his small island nation. What portion of the public can even recall that little more than a generation ago, the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan was considered an integral link in American security relationships in Asia, and that many Americans once endorsed the idea of our government helping the Nationalist Chinese regain mainland China?
In the wake of President Nixon's famous "tilt" in 1972 toward the People's Republic of China (PRC), the American public's perceptions underwent a fundamental transformation. While events on Taiwan today are rarely reported in the United States, mainland China has enjoyed considerable, usually favorable, coverage by the American news media. Americans have come to regard the PRC as, if not an entirely reliable ally, at least a no longer threatening adversary.
Few Americans have objected, then, given this favorable attitude toward the PRC, to the present U.S. approach to selling arms to the Beijing government. However, in an examination of U.S.-Chinese security ties, A. James Gregor, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that our current policies are based on misguided assumptions about the military potential and political reliability of the PRC. By currying favor indiscriminately with the PRC out of an exaggerated fear of "losing the Chinese" to the Soviet Union, the United States, he claims, is paying insufficient attention to the interests of noncommunist Asian governments.
Realpolitik?
The origins of the rapprochement between the PRC and the United States were rooted in a perception of mutual security interests. Throughout the 1960s, relations between the PRC and its Marxist ally, the Soviet Union, deteriorated steadily. This growing rift eventually erupted in a violent border incident in 1969 between Soviet and Chinese troops.
By 1970, the Soviets were apparently concerned enough about their erstwhile communist ally to propose to the Nixon administration an extraordinary superpower joint agreement against possible Chinese nuclear provocations. The Chinese, for their part, convinced that the Soviets intended to launch a surgical strike against their nuclear facilities at Lop Nor, began taking extensive defensive measures.
In this tense atmosphere, China and the United States were drawn to each other by a growing awareness of shared interests. The United States sought to play the "China card" to counterbalance an alarming Soviet military buildup; a diplomatically isolated China recognized its inability to defend itself against Soviet aggression. Each needed the other to counter-weigh the growing aggressiveness and military power of a common enemy. By 1971, the elements of a pragmatic
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