Russia The Odd Man Out At U.S. And China Meet

by Franz Schurmann

(PNS) -- President Bush is going to visit with Chinese President Hu Jintao for three days, Nov. 19-21. Together these two leaders represent the new "odd couple" that oversees the world.

In the 1954 Geneva conference on the colonial Indo-China war the odd couple were the United States and the Soviet Union. But now it is America and China. In 1954 the center of the world was in the Euro-Atlantic. Now the center has moved to the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Ever since its founding in 1975, the G-7 (now the G-8) has been the most important forum on global economics. Today the Asia Pacific Economic Conferences (APEC), rapidly expanding to include Latin American countries, have far outdistanced the G-8.

Last September Bush had invited Hu Jintao to his Crawford Ranch but canceled the invitation because of Hurricane Katrina. The Crawford Ranch has a special function, allowing two leaders to meet one another in the intimacy of a home. However much distrust might separate their two countries, the leaders could develop a relationship and figure out how to communicate on a personal level. Even President Bush's father and former president won't visit the "Ranch" while a head of state is meeting with his son. Now Bush and Hu will have a chance to size each other up in Beijing.

But the Beijing meeting has a weightier importance that requires some knowledge of history to fully grasp. In the July 1954 Geneva conference, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles shook the hand of the Soviet Foreign Minister but refused a handshake with Zhou Enlai, then Foreign Minister of China. Dulles was not just being impolite. He was sending a formal signal that while America was engaged in a formal Cold War against the Soviet Union it considered China an illegitimate state, not worthy of inclusion in the intricate diplomacy that dominated global politics for half a century.

In the summer of 1958, the United States almost launched a hot war against China, threatening to nuke the mainland if it moved to incorporate the islands of Quemoy and Matsu. Decades later, President George W. Bush referred to the United States' 1958 action as a "preventive strike."

Richard Nixon, President Eisenhower's Vice-President for eight years who spent much of his time as a global ambassador, lived through "Quemoy-Matsu." In 1960 his boss in his "Farewell Address" warned Americans about the rise of an "Industrial-Military Complex" in America. His target was the Pentagon.

Though Nixon was on the ultra-right wing of the Republican party, he was also raised as a Quaker. Quemoy-Matsu -- with its hot-war ramifications -- was like a near-death experience. When Mao Zedong offered Nixon a visit to the China, he instantly accepted. Nixon started a political process that, step by step, has been bridging the chasm between America and China.

From Gerry Ford to George W. Bush, every president has honored Nixon's daring gambit vis-a-vis China. Ford, the successor of Nixon, did not fire Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who was one of the architects of the dramatic turn-about in American China policy. Then, President Carter normalized Sino-American relations. And hawk Ronald Reagan pushed state-of-the-art military technology on China via Israel. And George H. Bush, an old friend of China, sold sophisticated military hardware to Beijing's rival, Taiwan.

It was under George H. Bush that the world saw the disintegration of the Soviet Union. During his second "lame duck" term, President Clinton, a Democrat, pushed furiously to get China into the World Trade Organization (WTO). Ironically, if it had not been for a huge pro-WTO Republican vote for China's admission, Clinton's initiative would have failed.

What will the world's new "odd couple" talk about in Beijing? Since advisors from both sides have already agreed or disagreed on outstanding issues -- trade, avian flu, North Korea -- chances are good the two leaders will talk about Russia. Veteran Moscow watcher Peter Lavelle has ominous news: "President Vladimir Putin's call for the government to identify strategic sectors of the economy off-limits to foreign majority control has focused on the oil and natural gas sectors."

Even as China is opening doors, Russia is closing them, especially oil and natural gas. And a large and restless Islamic population besets Russia.

In an ironic twist on the 1954 Geneva conference, Russia is now the odd man out, leaving the new odd couple -- Bush and Hu -- to work out the broad intricacies for keeping the world at peace.