Sensible three-way balance for peace in East Asia

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES: China is about to get a new U.S. ambassador. But will it get a new American China policy?

Current ambassador Joseph Prueher, the former Pacific admiral, did a masterful job, especially during the Hainan crisis, but he has no special ties to President George W. Bush.

Clark "Sandy" Randt Jr, the respected Hongkong-based lawyer and businessman, is a certifiable FOW (Friend of W). He is even a former Yale-college classmate. Bush wanted his own man.

But what's the new American China policy? Randt does know China, which puts him ahead of everyone else in the administration.

Hopefully the president picks his pal Randt's brain often. Bush's evident decision not to sell top-of-the-line Aegis defenses to Taiwan is in everyone's interests, including Taiwan's. And it will start the new envoy off on the right foot with Beijing.

Randt should inspire the president to formulate a few thoughtful speeches about Asia -- or some may think Bush's Asia policy are haphazard responses to accidents waiting to happen.

February brought the tragic Pacific collision of a U.S. submarine with a Japanese teaching vessel. Japanese lives were lost, which did little for bilateral relations. (Imagine the U.S. reaction had a Japanese submarine ended American lives.)

April brought the fateful collision between the U.S. spy plane and a Chinese fighter. (Just imagine if the dead pilot had been American.) That all but grounded Sino-U.S. relations.

Indeed, it led to the third Pacific collision: the diplomatic one now taking place over the U.S. plane incident. However, the subtext (that is, the real issue that is heating up) is which of the Big Three is to become the boss of East Asia.

The correct answer is: There should be no boss.

For unless Beijing, Washington and Tokyo agree on a sensible power-sharing arrangement, East Asia will lose its footing and its geopolitical balance.

The balancing act is too much for just two powers; what's needed are all three players working as a consortium of interests.

The prerequisites for peace and security are a strong and surefooted Japan, an outward-looking and mature China, and an involved but non-ideological America. But what are we getting?

Surefooted? Japan will soon offer its people and the world yet another new prime minister but hardly anyone expects big changes soon.

Outward-looking and mature? China is in the midst of an intense succession process that should slow down major external- policy decisions. Americans were annoyed that Beijing took 11 days to release the crew -- lightning fast by Chinese standards.

Involved and non-ideological? Too many Bush people still see Red when they think of China and have offered too much smoke about puffing up the Japan tie and shrinking the China one.

What is crucial is America working with China and Japan together.

Singapore Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew told this writer emphatically years ago that America needed to work harder on its China relationship because the end result of imbalance among Tokyo, Beijing and Washington would be regional instability.

Last month, he admitted that the problem of geopolitical equanimity is even more difficult to achieve these days. "To keep this region stable, the Americans need to have a balance with the Japanese working in tandem with them", he said in Singapore.

"Without the Japanese, on your own, you can't balance China. You're too far away. You need a vigorous Japan to host you and to carry out the economic side of the equation ... They will take some years to come back."

Today's Asian equation is a brutal Bermuda Triangle with Washington, Beijing and Tokyo at its points.

But Lee tries to stay upbeat about Japan: "The Japanese are capable of radical changes and -- in the course of the next five years, more or less -- they will change."

But based the past few months, five years seems a long time.

The writer, a UCLA professor, is a Straits Times columnist

-- The Straits Times/Asia News Network