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Security Cooperation with China: Analysis and a Proposal

Authored by Dr. Thomas L. Wilborn.

November 25, 1994

30 Pages

Brief Synopsis

Dr. Wilborn examines U.S.-China security cooperation before Tiananmen, the strategic context in which it took place, and the strategic environment of U.S.-China relations at the present time. He then concludes that the reasons which justified the program of security cooperation with China during the cold war are irrelevant today.

Security cooperation and military-to-military relations with China are highly desirable in the strategic environment of the 1990s. China is a major regional power which inevitably will affect U.S. security interests, and the PLA is an extremely important institution within that nation. Additionally, as a member of the U.N. Security Council and one of the five acknowledged nuclear powers, China's actions can influence a wide range of U.S. global interests. In the future, China is likely to be even more powerful and its actions more significant for the United States.

Structurally, renewed U.S.-China security cooperation can be modeled on the program of the 1980s. However, the purpose of the high level visits, functional exchanges, and technological cooperation will no longer be to strengthen a strategic alliance against a common enemy, as it was before, but to contribute to stability in an important region of the world and to achieve U.S. global objectives.

Summary

Suspended for 5 years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, the United States and China have renewed the security cooperation relationship initiated in 1983.

From 1971, when National Security Advisor Henry A. Kissinger visited Beijing to affect rapprochement with China, until 1983, security cooperation between the two nations was sporadic and limited, even though their common opposition to the Soviet Union was the basis of the relationship. However, by 1983, adventurist moves by the Soviet Union, including the invasion of Afghanistan, coupled with an understanding between Washington and Beijing concerning U.S. relations with Taiwan, had set the conditions for a more extensive and systematic program.

U.S.-China policy called for "three pillars" of security cooperation: high level visits, functional exchanges, and sales of defensive weapons and weapons technology. In fact, frequent high level visits involved the key defense and military figures of each nation.

However, functional exchanges, organized by individual services and only begun in 1985, were limited and engaged relatively few mid-level officers from both sides. The initiative for these exchanges appears to have come from the United States. By 1988, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) had begun to withdraw from the functional exchange program between its ground forces and the U.S. Army.

The last "pillar," arms sales, turned out to be limited, also. The PLA sought only a few systems, although it discussed a broad array of weapons and equipment with U.S. Government and defense industry representatives. The PLA entered into four Foreign Military Sales Agreements and several commercial contracts involving relatively small purchases when compared to other U.S. customers, including Taiwan. President George Bush suspended all aspects of security cooperation in June 1989.

Had the events of Tiananmen Square not abruptly interrupted the U.S.-China security cooperation program, significant alterations would probably have begun to occur anyway. The profound changes which have transformed the international system and brought an end to the cold war were already in progress in 1989. U.S.-Soviet relations were no longer confrontational and, more importantly, President Mikhail Gorbachev had conceded virtually all Chinese preconditions to Sino-Soviet rapprochement. Washington and Beijing are renewing security cooperation at a time when the trends which were unfolding in 1989 have already resulted in a new decentralized international system. The cold war and one of the protagonists have disappeared. Thus, the strategic rationale which justified U.S.-China security cooperation in the 1970s and 1980s is no longer valid.

But the United States and China are key factors respectively in each other's foreign and security policy calculations. As a major East Asian power, China's behavior inevitably affects regional stability, and also influences U.S. global interests. Security cooperation, supplementing other aspects of binational relations, increases the ability of the United States to influence and be better informed about China and the PLA. It is also important for the United States to improve its contacts with China's military because as an institution the PLA performs critical political and economic roles within China.

Structurally, renewed U.S.-China security cooperation can be modeled on the program of the 1980s. However, the purpose of the high level visits, functional exchanges, and technological cooperation will no longer be to strengthen a strategic alliance against a common enemy, but instead to contribute to stability in an important region of the world and to the attainment of U.S. global objectives.

Three other important characteristics should be included in renewed U.S. security cooperation with China. These are:

• Policy direction centralized in OSD;
• Relatively slow, deliberate pace; and
• Transfer of only defensive weapons which cannot be used against Chinese civilians or seen to endanger regional power balances.

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