Panetta seeks closer Sino-US ties as China military expands
U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta boards his aircraft before heading for an official visit to Japan, China and New Zealand, at Joint Base Andrews, outside Washington, September 15, 2012. — Reuters pic TOKYO, Sept 16 — US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta will look for ways to deepen US military relations with China during a visit to Asia this week, even as he works to bolster US alliances in the region as part of a strategic shift that Beijing views with concern.
Panetta, who arrived in Tokyo on Sunday on his third trip to Asia since becoming defence secretary, will discuss the realignment of US military basing in Japan and expanding ballistic missile defence cooperation before heading to Beijing to try to deepen and broaden military-to-military ties.
He wraps up his visit with defence cooperation talks in New Zealand.
Senior US and Chinese defence officials have made an effort to push their military relationship forward since it resumed a year and a half ago after a bitter break over US arms sales to self-ruled Taiwan, which Beijing views as a breakaway province.
But despite high-level visits by top officials, relations between the Pentagon and the People's Liberation Army are marked by wariness and mistrust.
"This is a relationship that has in the past been characterized by a lot of ups and downs and an on-again, off-again cycle that reflected the lack of a solid foundation ... sufficient to weather the type of turbulence that's natural in a relationship that's as broad and complex as the one that we have with China," a senior defence official said on condition of anonymity.
"We're not there yet in terms of where we'd like to be in our military-to-military relationship, but visits like the one that Secretary Panetta is going to have ... sustain the forward progress that we've been able to make over the past several months."
US defence officials pressed for a restoration of military-to-military ties with China because of concerns about the direction of Beijing's military modernisation efforts, including anti-ship missiles, stealth aircraft and its first aircraft carrier.
Many of the weapons worry US military leaders because they appear to be aimed at countering US strengths and denying US access to waterways in the region.
US defence officials believe that by engaging in cooperative efforts with the Chinese military, the two sides will gain greater familiarity with each other's operations and develop transparency and communications channels that can help avoid misunderstandings that could lead to conflict.
But Dean Cheng, a China analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, said it wasn't clear exactly what the upside to renewed ties has been.
"The relationship is not in the deep freeze, but there is at best limited evidence of any kind of progress," he said. "The Chinese military remains averse to transparency as the West understands it and remains hostile to things like US military ships transiting China's EEZ (exclusive economic zone) without prior permission."
The push for deeper ties comes at a time of heightened tensions in the region, with China locked in disputes with US allies like Japan and the Philippines over potentially resource-rich islands in the East and South China Seas. The United States has urged the parties involved to settle their disputes peacefully, a point Panetta said he would raise in Beijing.
'We don't want provocative behaviour'
"The United States does not take a position with regards to territorial disputes, but we do urge not just China but the other countries that are involved to engage in a process in which they can peacefully resolve these issues," Panetta told reporters on his plane en route to Tokyo.
He said he would encourage China to engage in the dispute resolution process promoted by ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, in an effort to try to resolve the disagreements peacefully.
"What we don't want is to have any kind of provocative behaviour on the part of China or anybody else result in conflict," Panetta said. "And my purpose will be to urge that they engage in the effort by the ASEAN nations to try to work out a format for resolving these issues."
China's claims over much of the South China Sea, including the Spratly and Paracel islands, have put it at loggerheads with Vietnam, the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations. A similar dispute has set China against Japan in the East China Sea.
China has been irked by the US-backed proposals for a multilateral approach to resolving such disputes, preferring to negotiate separately with each of the far less powerful Asian claimants.
The US defence secretary said he hoped to talk to Chinese defence officials about cooperating on a range of additional issues where the two countries have common interests, including nuclear proliferation, freedom of navigation, piracy, trade and humanitarian assistance.
"These are all areas where we can work together to try to provide security support for the Asia-Pacific region that will enhance the ability of that region to be able to prosper in the future," Panetta said. "Those are some of the areas that I'd like to work on."
But even if Panetta is successful in moving US-China cooperation to a new level, it is still not clear the relationship would deliver the kind of communications US officials hope is possible.
"Part of the question is what we want out of the mil-mil (military-to-military) relationship. If it is simply to have a channel available, then it is succeeding," Cheng said. "If, however, it is to have a channel of communications that can avert a crisis or tamp down escalation at critical moments, that is unlikely to happen under any circumstances.
"The PLA's procedures and organization, including the important role of political officers, does not match against how the US tends to operate." — Reuters
