Yesterday’s NY Times had an excellent piece about what it argues to be the US’s increasing reliance on China in numerous matters diplomatic. The piece quotes Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation at length, who also has his own piece on his blog here. Here’s a sample from the Times article:
China, by virtue of its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, has always been an important diplomatic player. But its importance to the Bush administration has grown for two reasons: it has become more assertive around the globe and the administration has exhausted a lot of its options.
“I think we need China almost everywhere in the world because we’ve disengaged from the rest of the world,” Mr. Clemons said, criticizing the administration’s initial disdain for concerted international diplomacy and citing its preoccupation with Iraq.
Meanwhile, China has steadily expanded its diplomatic and economic ties far beyond Asia. Mr. Clemons suggested that that has caused a subtle tectonic shift in how nations view it and, conversely, the United States. “They see China as an ascending power,” Mr. Clemons added, “and they don’t see us that way any more.”
On his own blog, Clemons is even more blunt as he rebuts calls made in the Washington Post for the US to boycott China’s 2008 Olympics if it doesn’t force the Burmese government to back down over the recent protests.
So, folks can pine on about America boycotting the 2008 Olympics — or they can get back to the “serious” problem that America isn’t taken all that seriously anymore, and China is.
