Canada in the World: Canadian International Policy

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Chinese Interests	2 min 38 sec	Windows Media l QuickTime
Implications of the U.S. Approach to India	3 min 17 sec	Windows Media l QuickTime
China’s Balancing Act	2 min 46 sec	Windows Media l QuickTime

(Video players are available here: QuickTime | Windows Media)

Transcript

Chinese Interests

I think the big story is the emergence of China as a player in multilateral institutions that deal with a wide range of disarmament or arms control issues—from nuclear suppliers group concerns through to almost every organization we can look at. The Chinese are learning how to be participants in them. They are also finding them, from their perspective, to be a way if not to check, then at least to have some balances on rising U.S. power. The Chinese are discovering multilateralism, not because it is necessarily their preferred world view but because they see it as a useful way of being an international player and constraining unilateral American power. I think that is the big story.

The Chinese approach has been to be seen as a major nuclear power. While they have some rhetorical criticisms of the United States and Russia and others, in general terms they see themselves as a nuclear power now and indefinitely into the future. So the idea of disarmament, to the Chinese, is unrealistic at this point.

I think what is interesting is that the Chinese would like to see a strategic balance at a lower level of weapons. Though they are slightly increasing their nuclear arsenal slightly—moving it into new projection platforms, including submarines—in general terms they feel you can have nuclear parity at a lower level of warheads. So at this stage they are looking at a fairly small and limited increase in their own weaponry, hoping that the other great nuclear powers will reduce their arsenals as well.

But in general terms, China is living within the nuclear status quo. They are not on a schedule to try and upset that through their own developments, although there is some modernization. That could change, and I think the issue we need to look at from the Canadian side has been the issue of ballistic missile defence, and ways in which China’s modernization of its weapons systems could change as the American deploying system moves forward. Because from the Chinese perspective, missile defence is not about North Korea; missile defence is in the long term about China and the weaponization of space.

Implications of the U.S. Approach to India

I think clearly the response by the United States to India’s nuclear program has opened, maybe not just a new chapter but in fact a whole new book in non-proliferation. This is essentially not just a pragmatic recognition that a country has the weapons, has the power and the influence in the international system to have others accept that. It is something more; it’s a whole new approach to how to control new nuclear states. It is essentially opening a door to the prospect of being realistic about what exists and making the best of a situation rather than thinking the clock can be turned back.

Many of us in Canada feel deeply ambivalent about the deal that has been struck between Washington and Delhi on the nuclear program. We are ambivalent because we know there are potential signals being sent from this that are going to make the control of nuclear threshold states more difficult in future. It is a recognition that the genie is out of the bottle. The technology is moving in ways such that we are going to need to come up with some new rules and new approaches that violate the spirit of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, that might even encourage more proliferation but in a context of more control of what exists. So it’s a devil’s bargain. This is not one that we can ring up as a great triumph, but it is one that is a practical effort to deal with the situation that exists.

President Bush has gone further than any of his predecessors would, essentially legitimizing India as a nuclear weapons state. I think there have been some individuals inside the Administration who see India as a rising economic power, as a democracy—and that is important in the American context—and as a country that the U.S. just has to deal with. Some of that thinking is partly counter-balancing China. There is a view in many conservative quarters in the United States that better relations between the United States and India is one way of counter-balancing China’s rise. But I don’t think that is the main factor—it’s that essentially you have a big and important country in South Asia that is connecting to a big and important country in the United States. What is driving it is part ideology, but fundamentally it’s economic and social interests, which see India as a rising power that can’t be kept on the outside, that needs to be brought into one new nuclear tent but also into much deeper relations with the United States and Canada.

China’s Balancing Act

Generally, the Chinese are not interested in seeing more nuclear weapons states in Asia or other parts of the world. In general terms, they share the desire to restrict proliferation. But in the two hard cases of Iran and North Korea... In Iran, they feel there is the prospect of a middle road where there can be an Iranian program that does not produce weapons. And most importantly North Korea, their next-door neighbour, is one that probably already has a number of nuclear weapons. There I think the issue is that the Chinese don’t want to see a nuclear North Korea, but at the same time they don’t want to use overt coercion to stop that. So they live in a kind of grey world of not wanting an outcome but being reluctant to put heavy pressures on either Iran or North Korea to abandon their nuclear programs or to put them under new controls. It’s a delicate balancing act for the Chinese. They need something from Iran on the economic side. From North Korea they need a buffer state—it’s a government they don’t want to see collapse even if they don’t necessarily like that government. So China plays a complicated game in trying to restrict proliferation while at the same time they want to maintain relations with those countries.

They do use unilateral means in trying to express concerns to the governments of Iran and of North Korea, in particular—where they have, if not a stranglehold over the North Koreans, at least some kind of influence. They use what I would call bilateral persuasion efforts. What they are very reluctant about is seeing “coalitions of the willing” coming into play in either of those settings. They feel that it probably will antagonize them. In the context of North Korea—where there is a proliferation security initiative designed to pressure the North Koreans—they don’t feel that pressure of that sort is going to work and in fact that it is counterproductive. It makes the North Koreans more nervous and even deepens the North Korean interest in having those weapons. The kind of diplomacy they would like to see is something like the Six Party Talks, in which the key players that are involved with North Korea are discussing the question with the North Koreans. The Chinese still think diplomacy can work.

Last Updated:2006-10-16

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