Power and influence
On high-level diplomacy, leftover Soviet ideas, and the claims of rules versus territorial ambitions
One way or another, the United States and China will have to coexist as major global powers. It is certain to be a rocky relationship from time to time, but occasional diplomatic encounters -- like the US National Security Advisor's meeting with the Chinese president -- are likely to be fruitful on the whole if they help to keep avenues of communication open between the countries. But what is actually said still matters.
■ In his campaign book for the 1988 Presidential election, George H. W. Bush wrote, "One of the lessons I'd learned in two diplomatic assignments, at the United Nations and in China, was never to underestimate the importance of symbolism. Not image -- that's something else entirely. Image has to do with appearance, how you look to the world. Symbolism has to do with messages, what you want to tell the world."
■ Xi Jinping's words at the meeting went like this: "In this changing and turbulent world, countries need solidarity and coordination instead of division or confrontation." At a glance, that sounds unobjectionable; who wants "division or confrontation"?
■ But it's the kind of platitudinous nonsense one might say when they really mean, "Stay out of our sphere of influence". And that's clearly how China's rulers see matters. The Soviet Union liked that "spheres of influence" idea, too, and for the same reason: If rivalrous great powers can agree to split up the world and stay out of one another's claims, that looks a lot like "coordination" and prevents "confrontation".
■ That's not how a world order based upon rules is supposed to work, though. Different nations agree on rules by mutual consent, and stand behind those rules everywhere.
■ And differences of opinion about the implementation and consequences of those rules can easily lead to "confrontation" -- much more of it than if powerful countries merely "coordinate" and agree to let one another force "solidarity" upon weaker neighbors. But the observance of rules, even if it's sometimes messier and less immediately satisfying to the expansive ambitions of the powerful, is a more just way to regard self-determination for all.
■ Conflict within rules-based boundaries can be contained. It's when a power insists that "coordination" looks like absorbing a neighbor, muscling out another's naval claims, and making incursions into another's airspace that we come to realize what's really being said behind the symbols.
