POREG VIEW: This decision and its timing defy logic. It goes to show that only the US is capable of doing the unpredictable vis-à-vis China. Beijing has gone into celebration mood with the state-run news media seeing signs of Washington moving to lift the 11-year-old arms embargo.
The White House National Security Council spokesman, Michael Hammer, however, contends that the ban on sale of C-130 military transport aircraft is lifted for a limited purpose. And it is to enable C-130s to land in China while cleaning up oil spills in the South China Sea.
As Sharon Hom, executive director of Human Rights in China, points out there is no oil spill emergency in and around China at present. So much larger diplomatic, economic and strategic American interests have propelled the relaxation of the ban imposed under the fiscal 1990 Foreign Relations Act on what are essentially billed as "temporary munitions export licenses".
The C-130s are touted as one of the world’s premier military transports that can take off and land on rough airstrips.
By making the waiver to coincide with the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, a ‘don’t worry, take in the stride’, message has been delivered giving a body blow to the human rights campaigners.
As the Washington Times said, the waiver also appears linked to the latest visit to Vietnam by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
Vietnam is worried about growing Chinese territorial encroachment in the resource-rich South China Sea. And Washington has a long-standing national interest in freedom of navigation and open access to Asia’s maritime commons.
The Vietnam mission provided an opportunity for Gates to meet his Chinese counterpart, Liang Guanglie for the first time since the two militaries suspended talks with each other last winter. While the talks may be no more than exploratory and therefore cannot prevent “mistrust, miscalculations and mistakes” between the two countries, the Americans will do well to work on Plan B in their dealings with China for two reasons.
One the currency rift with China has demonstrated the limitations on the US clout in the post- meltdown period.
Second a more assertive leadership is slowly slipping into positions of power both in the Chinese party system and military apparatus.
In their ideological moorings, this so-called post-Tiananmen Square generation is avowedly anti- American. For them, C-130s mean little, very little indeed. Also the Great American bending to humour them. Realistically speaking.
