Is it possible for Washington to persuade China to support a tougher posture in the P5+1 negotiations?
Center for Strategic & International Studies Middle East Director Jon B. Alterman, writing in World Politics Review, argues that China may, in fact, support a harder line. According to Alterman’s analysis, China is in the midst of adjusting its international role from a peripheral power that can pursue its own interests within an environment shaped by others, to a global power that must take a broader view of its national interests.
Alterman suggests China’s friendly relations with Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States (all of whom are vary wary of an Iranian nuclear weapon) along with its interests in non-proliferation, Middle East stability, and low energy prices might compel Beijing to adjust its policy. He also thinks that Russian President Medvedev’s supposed openness to sanctions may make it more difficult for China to stand in the way.
Alterman’s analysis is at odds with a monograph published this week by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett (co-authors of this blog) along with John Garver. The monograph, Moving (Slightly) Closer to Iran: China’s Shifting Calculus For Managing Its Persian Gulf Dilemma arrives at the opposite conclusion.
The monograph copes with the same basic question that Alterman seeks to address – how will China balance its interests in Iran with its interest in good relations with the United States? This is China’s dilemma.
The authors analyze twelve cases in which China has had to manage this dilemma – beginning with its choice to supply Iran with arms during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s through its opposition (but eventual acquiescence) to symbolic sanctions on Iran in 2006 over concerns surrounding Tehran’s nuclear program.
On the nuclear issue, the pattern identified is one of supporting Western policy just enough to keep the issue within the Security Council without jeopardizing China’s commercial relationship with Iran and in particular its access to Iranian hydrocarbons. Therefore, the authors suggest that
Beijing is extremely unlikely to cooperate with Washington to impose anything approaching “crippling sanctions” – to use Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s phrase – on Tehran over Iran’s nuclear activities
Alterman and the Dilemma authors arrive at different conclusions in part because they perceive China’s interests in the Middle East differently. To Alterman, China’s interests in the Middle East are, in fact, close to those of the United States. He says that
China’s strategic interests in the Gulf are almost wholly aligned with the United States. China needs the U.S. naval presence in the Gulf, and it can ill afford the fallout of military action. A nuclear Iran is surely against China’s interests, both because of its implications for Gulf security and nonproliferation. Anything that raises oil prices hurts China badly.
I have two major questions about this analysis.
First, while Alterman is correct that China is extremely concerned about the price and availability of energy, I think he draws the wrong conclusion. While a nuclear Iran might lead to a rise in a spike in oil prices due to fears of instability, this risk is outweighed by the reward that positive relations with Iran – which possesses the world’s second largest reserves of both oil and natural gas – offers for Chinese energy security. Alterman acknowledges that China is developing substantial upstream capacity in Iran, but doesn’t think this will be a decisive factor in China’s policy regarding the nuclear issue. I am not so sure.
Second, China’s security interests in the Middle East are not the same as those of the United States. The United States has major allies (Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt) and security commitments in the region. China does not. This means that while a possible conflict in the Middle East is a concern for China, the risks cannot be compared to those of the United States.
I also think Alterman is overly sanguine about Russia’s possible cooperation on tougher sanctions, but I’ll leave that issue for another post.
– Ben Katcher