LONDON – Richard Nixon, contending to be president in 1968, wrote a sensational article in the magazine Foreign Affairs in which he anticipiated a more conciliatory U.S. policy towards China. Soon after Nixon’s election, the U.S. moved to recognise communist China, which it had refused to do for twenty two years , and ejected Taiwan from the Chinese seat at the UN.

During his election campaign Jimmy Carter promised he wouldn’t “ass-kiss” the Chinese, but like Nixon he ended up turning his back on China’s human rights dissidents, intent on concluding the formal normalization of relations with China.

When Bill Clinton campaigned for the presidency against George Bush Senior he charged that Bush was soft on China- Bush had been quick after the Tiananmen Square masacre to send to Beijing his National Security Advisor to reassure the Chinese leadership of Washington’s solid, enduring relationship. Clinton promised if elected that the age of conciliation would be over. But once in power it did not take long for Clinton to fall in line with the Nixon legacy- even though the main geopolitical reason for it- to balance the Soviet Union- was no longer relevant. The policy now was to engage China, go for the long run and tell the American public, in the words of Samuel Berger, Clinton’s National Security Advisor, “through engagement you can get a lot of serious things done and maybe even advance the process of change in China.”

Thus the American voice on human rights was muted once more- and the Europeans followed suit. It took many years before the Clinton Administration put its China ship on to a more sensible course. In pursuit of its quest to win Congressional support, in its effort to open up trade with China, it finally caved into human rights critics who demanded a more activist and publically critical role from Washington. In the spring of this year the U.S. finally decided to criticise China in the UN Commission on Human Rights, a major departure.

And now, this election? Barely a word on China. Don’t rock the boat appears to be the joint Al Gore-George Bush position. Yet an article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs by Paul Heer warns that the U.S. is in danger of edging into a Cold War with China. Is it really the time to be quite so laid back? Surely this is the occasion for a grand debate on where next to go with China. Failure to establish the right policies could lead China to engage in a major buildup of its nuclear forces which is bound to lead to a worsening of its precarious relationship with Taiwan and Japan and which could push it into a quite unnecessary nose to nose confrontation with the U.S. itself.

At present China possesses a quite modest nuclear force. It has only about 20 missiles which could reach the continental U.S.. Its submarine capability is minimalist- one submarine with twelve medium range missiles. For all the furor last year around China’s espionage success in stealing state-of-the-art American missile and nuclear secrets, the fact is that while China has long had the technical prowess to equip its ballistic missiles to deliver multiple warheads it has chosen not to. Beijing’s policy has been essentially a defensive one, designed to preempt nuclear blackmail and to help make China into a recognized world power.

The old policy is now up for serious question in Beijing. Modernization is well under way, not least for the reason that the leadership believes if it has more nuclear muscle the less likely it is it will be coerced over its attitude to Taiwan.Yet it is still unclear- and probably undecided- how far and fast Bejing wants to go. Washington very much holds the key to these decisions. Much hangs on what the next U.S. president decides to do about the controversial missile defence plan, a decision now put on hold until after the election. For its part China is convinced that such a move would totally negate China’s current second-strike capability and make China militarily totally subservient to American might.

What the debate in Washington has overlooked as it has dwelt on the future horrors posed by “rogue states” is that the only country that actually fits that picture in terms of nuclear ability is China itself. Any limited defences that the U.S. builds, supposedly insufficient to ward off a Russian attack but sufficient enough to defend against a rogue’s missiles, could stop a Chinese attack mid sky. Since China- like Europe- believes these so called “nuclear rogues” don’t really exist, it concludes that the reason for American missile defence is simply to out-manoeuvre China. It will retaliate by building larger forces that could overwhelm new U.S.. defences. As we know from the old Cold War days the U.S. will always react to such a move by overcompensating, and the whole cycle of the nuclear arms race will be ratcheted up, merely complicating an issue the first steps were meant to resolve.

Washington, if it were wearing its correct lenses, aught to perceive it is better off with the status quo, with Chinese forces remaining small and and composed of only single-headed missiles. Washington’s eyesight would be better focussed on China’s nuclear relationship with India, for any move by China to build up its nuclear arsenal is going to provoke India to do the same. Likewise, there is the added danger than in a more bellicose relationship with the U.S., China will move to build more short and medium range missiles, maybe some of them nuclear-tipped, capable of hitting Taiwan and Japan.

It all comes back to the pressing need for the U.S. to restore impetus to the badly flagging effort to reduce the world’s nuclear armouries. This is the Clinton Administration’s worst legacy, yet neither candidate has given it much more than passing mention. Which is why it is not unfair to say that when it comes to foreign affairs this is probably the most irresponsible presidential election campaign in memory.

I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com