Opinion Stunted triangle

Meanwhile a powerful new trend began to undermine the RIC even as it struggled to find its feet. Since the first trilateral meeting of the three foreign ministers took place in 2002,the balance of power within RIC steadily evolved in favour of China. Although Russia and India have increased their weight in the international system over the last decade,the rise of China has been too spectacular for either of them to match.

Thanks to the financial crisis and the advent of the Obama Administration in Washington,the United States is now tempting China with the prospect of a global Sino-US condominium or a ‘Group of Two’ that makes an utter mockery of the ‘Strategic triangle’.

Japan’s Kabuki

If Moscow and Delhi find it hard to understand that a rising China does not need either of them to increase its leverage with the United States,Japan is poised to give them a big knock on the head. Last week’s public spat in Tokyo between the visiting US Defence Secretary Robert Gates and the new government in Japan led by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on alliance management has shaken the world’s assumptions about the US-Japan partnership that has been the one constant feature of Asian international relations since the end of the Second World War.

Although Hatoyama says that the alliance with the United States will remain the corner-stone of Japan’s foreign policy,he has underlined the importance of greater ‘equality’ in the partnership. Hatoyama is asserting his new quest for equality by refusing to sign onto a critical bilateral agreement with the US on reorganising the deployment of American forces in Japan. Gates appealed to the new Japanese government not to reopen the negotiations and wrap up the agreement,a product of painful negotiations over a decade and a half. Hatoyama insisted,publicly,that the new government can’t be hustled into concurrence just because Gates was in town and President Barack Obama would arrive in Tokyo next month. It is not often that Japanese leaders differ with their American partners,and that too in public.

Even as he ‘stands up’ to the United States,Hatoyama is making a big effort to reach out to China in the name of lending a new Asian focus to Japan’s foreign policy. If Tokyo distances itself even a wee bit from Washington and signals the readiness to end its historic animosity with Beijing,the balance of power in Asia will undergo a revolution that few could have dared imagine even a few months ago.

Being conservative,the Chinese Communist Party is not ready to celebrate its incredible foreign policy luck in Washington and Tokyo,both of whom seem eager to cut separate deals with Beijing after sixty years of an alliance that was considered rock-solid. As it expresses scepticism about Japan’s ability to pursue an independent foreign policy,Beijing would want to test how far Hatoyama is prepared to go.

Military diplomacy

Gen. Xu Caihou,vice chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission of the CCP,arrived in the US on Monday as part of a new effort to revive high level military exchanges between the two countries. On the eve of his meeting with defence secretary Gates,Gen Xu said,“The China-US relationship is one of the most important bilateral relationships in the world. Exchanges and cooperation between the United States and China are important for world peace and development”,he said.

Gen. Xu is also likely to tell his interlocutors in Washington that any US decision to resume arms sales to Taiwan will have a damaging effect on bilateral relations.

The writer is Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress,Washington DC