Why China won't toe the U.S. line.
Reflecting on the watered down sanctions that will likely be issued by the United Nations over Iran's nuclear program, Will Marshall writes:
'All this suggests weâ??re in for protracted haggling in the Security Council over language that, in the end, probably wonâ??t induce the Islamic Republic to stop enriching uranium in defiance of UN strictures. The fundamental problem is not that China is indifferent to nuclear proliferation or intent on â??protectingâ? a valuable trading partner. The fundamental problem is that China doesnâ??t seem ready yet to assume the responsibilities of global leadership, as we would define them.From Sudan to Iran, China puts the amoral pursuit of its own interests â?? in these cases, assuring access to the energy it needs to fuel its rapid growth â?? ahead of larger conceptions of international cooperation and order, or even its own undoubted interest in stemming nuclear proliferation. The idea of â??enlightened self-interestâ? that underpins U.S. internationalism has an unnatural and vaguely sinister ring to officials in the Middle Kingdom. For now at least, itâ??s hard to imagine the historically self-contained and inward-looking Middle Kingdom spending trillions of renminbi, say, to support a Pacific analogue to NATO, or an architecture of international institutions dedicated to collective problem-solving. [Emphasis mine.]
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I often wonder what American commentators would be saying if the shoe were on the other foot and the U.S. was the rising power and China the dominant one. Would we argue that, for all its faults, the Chinese-led international order was the best for America's interests and that, when America's commercial interests conflicted with Chinese priorities, the U.S. should subsume her interests to further China's agenda.
I suspect no American politician would touch that rhetorical framework with a hundred foot poll and yet we expect the Chinese to essentially swallow that line.
(AP Photo)