Diplomacy Intelligence: White House change Asian Team but is Thai diplomacy ready?

By Ranger, Thai Intel’s national security journalist
Originally posted on http://thaiintelligentnews.wordpress.com

There is lots of movement at the White House on the Asian Desk. New York Times, reported the following story with the headline something like “Tone of USA’s China Policy May be Affected.”

Of note is that is that Japan Hand, Danny Russel is moving to the National Security Council as a senior director. Japan continues to be USA‘s strongest ally in Asia, and Japan is increasingly coming to terms with China-both as an adversary and as an economic ally.

Of note also, is that with USA, the Asian policy is very much has to do with the NSC. In a way it is like Thailand, with the differences that for Thailand, traditionally, foreign policy is entirely in the hands of the Thai military.

Meanwhile, as the USA makes adjustments to its Asian strategy, the opposition party in Thailand said of Thailand’s diplomacy is in a mess. The Thai opposition party just issued a statement yesterday that said, quote:

Outwitted and outmaneuvered by Cambodia on the settlement of the Thai-Cambodian border problem, the best that the Thai Government can do now is to go to Bogor, Indonesia with dignity and make a decent showing at the meeting. Diplomacy is never a place for the fainthearted. On the other hand, showing its misplaced guts by shunning the international community may further damage Thailand’s international image which has already taken a big plunge after the military coup of 2006 and parliamentary coup of 2008 which ushered in the present government.

From time immemorial, the Thai nation has excelled in diplomacy which has kept Thailand independent and sovereign. Proactive diplomacy has always been Thailand’s strong point in winning regional and international recognition.

Sadly for the country, the conduct of international relations by the present government has only succeeded in winning mistrust, confusion, and condemnation in the region.

The Foreign Ministry seems to be at a loss on how to handle the border situation, notwithstanding its relations with other countries. There is no clarity in its foreign policy except for its indulgence in vengeance and spreading false rumors. At no time in Thai history has Thai diplomacy reached its lowest point.

The following is from the New York Times:

By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — With tensions rising over China’s crackdown on dissent, the Obama administration is about to lose three of its most prominent players on China policy — a shake-up that could reinforce its efforts to cultivate other Asian countries to counterbalance an increasingly assertive Beijing.

Jeffrey A. Bader, President Obama’s top China adviser, is leaving the White House, senior officials said on Friday. James B. Steinberg, a deputy secretary of state who focused heavily on China, has announced plans to take a job in academia, while the American ambassador to China, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., will step down at the end of April to explore a bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

Taken together, the departures could alter the tone of the administration’s approach to China, one of its most vital but difficult relationships. Mr. Bader will be replaced at the National Security Council by his deputy, Daniel R. Russel, a Japan expert. Mr. Steinberg’s exit raises the profile of Kurt M. Campbell, the assistant secretary for East Asian affairs, who has also worked intensively on Japan.

While both Mr. Russel and Mr. Campbell have traveled to Beijing regularly in the last two years, their Japan pedigrees serve as a reminder to China that the United States has other old friends in the region. Since Mr. Obama took office, the United States has worked to shore up alliances with Japan and South Korea and to deepen ties with Indonesia, Vietnam and other neighbors that worry about China’s regional ambitions.

White House officials played down any message in the changes, noting that China policy is coordinated by the national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and that Mr. Obama has met the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, eight times — an unusual amount of contact that demonstrates the importance that the administration attaches to China.

“We’re going to have challenges going forward,” Mr. Donilon said of China in an interview on Thursday. “But we work from a better base, and more important, we work from a stronger base in the region.”

Among those challenges is China’s recent detention of dozens of lawyers, journalists, artists and human-rights advocates, which American officials said appeared to be aimed at preventing the Arab world’s uprisings from spreading to China. The State Department cited the arrests in its annual human-rights report, issued Friday, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton bluntly criticized China.

On Wednesday, Ambassador Huntsman used a farewell speech in China to deliver a rebuke of Chinese authorities for detaining Ai Weiwei, a Beijing artist, as he was trying to board a flight to Hong Kong on Sunday. Mr. Huntsman also said China had wrongly jailed an American geologist, Xue Feng, who was accused of stealing state secrets while researching the Chinese oil industry.

Mr. Huntsman has been in an awkward spot, still serving as Mr. Obama’s emissary even though there were indications that he might challenge him for the presidency in 2012. But administration officials said his remarks faithfully echoed the administration’s criticism.

Mr. Huntsman’s successor will be Gary Locke, the former governor of Washington, who is now commerce secretary. A senior official predicted that Mr. Locke would be warmly received in China because of his status as one of the highest-ranking Chinese-Americans in the government, as well as his record in Washington State, where he worked on trade ties with China for local exporters like Boeing.

Trade friction between Beijing and Washington has eased in recent weeks, with the upswing in the American economy and a modest rise in the value of China’s currency. In February, the Treasury Department declined again, in a twice-yearly report, to cite China for manipulating its currency, though it said the currency, the renminbi, remained “substantially undervalued” compared to the dollar.

The White House pointed to signs of improvement, including China’s decision not to veto a United Nations resolution authorizing military action in Libya, as well as its support for sanctions against Iran. Chinese officials are toning down maritime claims in the South China Sea, an issue that flared last year when Mrs. Clinton said the United States wanted to help resolve disputes between China and its neighbors.

After a fraught period between the two countries over disputes like climate change and North Korea, Mr. Hu had a smooth state visit in January. It had been exhaustively planned by Mr. Donilon and Mr. Bader, who traveled to Beijing last fall with Mr. Obama’s former top economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers. It was a trip that cemented Mr. Donilon as the key administration figure on China.

Mr. Donilon has kept up his contacts with Chinese officials, but he is not a China hand by background or education.

With Mr. Bader’s departure for the Brookings Institution, the administration is losing a Chinese-speaking official whose involvement with China goes back to the normalization of relations in 1979. He also came up with the idea of appointing Mr. Huntsman, then the governor of Utah, who had been a Mormon missionary in Taiwan.

Mr. Bader’s replacement, Mr. Russel, speaks Japanese and was consul general in Osaka, Japan, from 2005 to 2008. Noting that he worked at the United Nations and in Europe, Mr. Russel said that an official’s focus could not be extrapolated from his background “because their focus is what the president’s focus is.”

For all his history with China, Mr. Bader was the architect of a policy that has stressed tightening ties with all the countries around it. He said Mr. Russel’s regional focus made him the right choice to carry that forward.

Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting.