US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said she will step down as
America's top diplomat and enjoy some rest despite the re-election of Barack
Obama as US president. Though many see this as the end of her political career,
her diplomatic legacy will continue to exert influence across the world.
Since becoming the secretary of
state in 2009, Clinton has made 70 overseas trips to more than 100 countries,
spent 340 days on the road, including more than 80 days on her Air Force 757,
and has been praised by the American media as a diplomatic "labor
model".
Clinton has brought great
strategic thinking to her job. Despite a mountain of domestic economic problems
created by the global financial crisis, solving the diplomatic problems left
behind by former US president George W. Bush was once high on her diplomatic
agenda. According to American media reports, Clinton has worked into the small
hours in her office trying to find ways to retain the US' global leadership and
rebuild its credibility, and to deal with various global challenges in the
post-Cold War era.
She is an advocate of the art of
smart power and has peddled a flexible foreign policy philosophy around the
world in a steadfast and composed way, which has improved Washington's image in
the international community.
Soon after assuming office,
Clinton began to reshape the US' relations with China and other emerging
powers. Though she said the US was looking for ways to support China's peaceful
rise, she mixed it with some tough rhetoric on China.
Most of all, she has spared no
efforts in promoting Obama's "pivot to Asia" strategy. She visited
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations secretariat in Jakarta, Indonesia,
in February 2009 and stressed the importance of the region for the US,
signaling the beginning of the "pivot to Asia" strategy.
The same year, she signed the US
Instrument of Accession to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast
Asia at the ASEAN ministerial meeting in Thailand, something ASEAN had been
seeking for 17 years, and agreed to the first ASEAN-US summit.
Improvement in relations with
Myanmar is a breakthrough in the US' strategy for the region. For decades, the
US had been hostile toward Myanmar and imposed sanctions on it. But Clinton has
said publicly that the US will review its policy toward Myanmar, shifting from
sanctions to engagement.
These are considered
strategically important diplomatic decisions to further strengthen the US' ties
in Southeast Asia.
After his re-election, Obama's
first overseas trip was to Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia. The US president's
visit to Myanmar filled a geographical gap in Washington's "return to
Asia" strategy. The US' "pivot to Asia", now called Asia-Pacific
"rebalancing", will undoubtedly be Obama's diplomatic legacy with
Hillary as its main promoter.
The US' strategic
"rebalancing" toward East Asia, coupled with its intensifying
military presence in the region, is considered an important strategy to contain
China and has raised the hackles of Chinese strategists. The US' involvement in
the South China Sea and the Diaoyu Islands dispute has exacerbated China's
concerns that the US is trying to encircle China. This in turn has intensified
bilateral strategic distrust and tensions.
China's peaceful rise has
prompted Washington to make Beijing the most prominent target of its global
strategy, and one of the principal aims of the US' strategic rebalancing is to
contain China's rise.
Obama's strategy, now under
fine-tuning, puts greater emphasis on a combination of strategies, including
military, diplomatic, security and economic elements, many of which involve
China. When US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visited Beijing, he invited
China to participate in the next US-led "Pacific Rim multinational
military exercise", with Washington claiming that it doesn't side with
either Japan or China in the dispute over the Diaoyu Islands.
Clinton has reminded Japan to
handle its relations with China carefully, because the US did not want to see
the situation in the Asia-Pacific region spiral out of control. And even though
the US Senate has passed an amendment to the national defense authorization
bill for 2013, which emphasizes the US' right to freely navigate in the East
China Sea and puts China's Diaoyu Islands under the purview of the US-Japan
security treaty, the State Department is yet to comment on it.
Clinton has said the US was
looking for ways to support China's peaceful rise, which is an important
statement from a senior US leader. On the economic front, Obama is promoting
the Trans-Pacific Partnership to develop a US-led multilateral free trade
mechanism in the region to share the benefits of faster economic development in
Asia-Pacific. During the East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the US
decided to pull the 10 ASEAN countries into the TPP and it also welcomed China
to join it. Of course, the TPP sets a high threshold for China in terms of its
State-owned enterprises, government procurements and labor standards.
The US' strategic rebalancing
toward Asia-Pacific is thus the combination of the diplomatic philosophy of
Obama and Clinton, with the former as the final decision-maker and the latter
as the real promoter.
But China need not worry about
the US' "pivot to Asia" policy because its national strength and
influence is still increasing. China and the US are highly interdependent in
Asia-Pacific, and neither can enjoy complete dominance in many fields, which
means they can counterbalance each other's influence as well as expand it.
Based on this objective reality, leaders of both countries will continue to
deal with bilateral relations from a strategic point of view.
No matter who succeeds Clinton,
much can be expected from Sino-US relations. During Obama's second term, the US
is likely to maintain continuity in its diplomacy despite the fine-tuning it is
undergoing. Avoiding constant ups and downs in Sino-US ties is conducive to
long-term strategic interests of the two countries. As far as Sino-US ties are
concerned, the next US secretary of state can only go with the flow and promote
positive bilateral cooperation.
Fu Mengzi
The author is vice-president of
China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.
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