Echoes in the East

The U.S. will find that it can no longer be diplomatic business as usual from now on in East Asia.

in Singapore

IN an era of post-modern capabilities in outer space and cyberspace, the People's Republic of China, known for its ancient heritage of statecraft, has officially stayed above the fray in the domain of WikiLeaks and its critics. The stand fully reflects Beijing's preference for confidentiality in diplomacy amid, as Frontline goes to press, the continuing release of an avalanche of classified American diplomatic cables on the multiplying WikiLeaks websites.

Japan, the other big East Asian power with hopes for the future against a chequered past, has had little or no need to react officially to any of the United States' diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks by early December. Hardly any of those leaked documents traced Tokyo's utmost core interests and concerns. This was in stark contrast to some dense details of China's vital stakes as a rising power with great expectations of becoming a global superpower.

South Korea, an increasingly prosperous democracy locked in rising tensions with its northern ethnic neighbour, has figured prominently in several U.S. cables that came out in the first rush of releases by WikiLeaks. However, Seoul has had little to say by way of a national reaction, if only because most of the facts and scenarios in the relevant cables covered wider issues of interest to other countries as well and not just South Korea. Such international concerns centred mostly on the problem called a poor but nuclear-armed North Korea, also known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Those documents showed up a significant collateral issue of much relevance to a future East Asian political and economic order, and this was all about China's present and potential thinking on whether the two Koreas should be reunified, and if so, when and how. Beyond some immediate news headlines, this particular issue has not gained much traction as a talking point in the specific context of the latest WikiLeaks disclosures. The simple but profound reason is Beijing's studied refusal to be drawn into making any kind of comment on such sensitive issues. China is not obviously amused at some aspects of what began as the promised biggest diplomatic rip-off in relation to America's cloak-and-dagger diplomacy of the past few decades.

Australia's dilemma

Japan (which does not figure prominently in the early tranches of these WikiLeaks documents), South Korea and Australia are military allies of the U.S. Australia is quite often a proactive U.S. military ally, even under Labour-led governments in Canberra, and the latest seemingly random release of American diplomatic cables is of genuine interest to the Julia Gillard government. This is so on two important counts. First, the cables reveal an unprecedented degree of candour in Australia's assessment of how to domesticate a rising China as a player within the bounds of a U.S.-led global order well into the future. Second, WikiLeaks founder and chief Julian Assange is an Australian citizen.

At the time of writing, Assange was already in custody in the United Kingdom over a request for his extradition to Sweden for a probe into his alleged sexual misconduct there. Palpable beyond that case, if not behind that arrest, was Washington's unmistakable interest in tracking Assange to fix him for his avid promotion of WikiLeaks as a proactive right-to-information campaigner in the largely uncharted cyberspace.

Within hours of Assange's arrest, after he surrendered to Scotland Yard, Australia's Foreign Minister and former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said we intend to extend consular and other forms of assistance to the WikiLeaks chief without fear or favour. Canberra clearly wants to act without fear of the U.S. on a matter concerning the personal liberty of an Australian citizen, regardless of his alleged status as a one-time computer hacker. At the same time, Rudd emphasised that Assange would be given Australia's consular aid without favour, either. This was as far as Canberra could go in its balancing act of being correct towards an Australian national and also being candid towards America as an ally.

Shades of this balancing act were evident in Australia's comments on the interrelated issues of WikiLeaks and Assange's legal position as of December 8. Rudd said: The core problem here is the unauthorised release of these things [American diplomatic cables] by the U.S. system. Secondly, in terms of the dissemination of the [leaked] information around the region or around the world, whether it is WikiLeaks or by anybody else, that's an entirely separate matter. But my view is: the core problem lies with the U.S. protection of its own diplomatic communications. And, the Australian Federal Police will investigate whether Mr Assange has committed or not committed any possible offence against Australia's criminal laws. [However] the key thing now is about Mr Assange's legal rights in terms of the matters he is facing both in the U.K. and in Sweden. The key challenge was to extend consular support concerning his well-being and his legal rights. Rudd emphasised that Canberra responded after Assange, in the first place, asked for consular support.

Following Rudd's public comment that the U.S. bore responsibility for the core problem in the unfolding WikiLeaks saga, Washington agreed that it was correct to trace the massive leak to a failure in the American system itself. However, the U.S. was deeply concerned about what Assange began doing with those leaked documents.

Rudd on China

The Assange arrest coincided with, but did not overshadow, the media furore in Australia over Rudd's reported comments on China and an unflattering American assessment of his work style, both as contained in the leaked diplomatic cables. Rudd and Julia Gillard said they would not comment on the purposed content in the U.S. diplomatic cables, which were released without authorisation in a grossly irresponsible fashion. Julia Gillard took the consistent line that the foundation stone of this WikiLeaks issue is an illegal act and no gloss should be placed on that fact.

Rudd, for his part, did not want to react to the comment in a leaked document on his personal work style. In his view, the purported criticism should be treated as water off a duck's back. Of greater resonance in Australian political circles was Rudd's comments on China as contained in a cable account on his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in March 2009 when he was still Australia's Prime Minister. While he himself would not confirm or contradict the accuracy of his comments as recorded in that leaked cable, his views on China's rise gained much coverage because of Beijing's paramount importance to any future East Asian or global political order.

In a self-portrayal as a brutal realist on China, Rudd was quoted, in the cable, as advocating that the U.S. and its allies should adopt a policy towards Beijing that could best be described as multilateral engagement with bilateral vigour. This was paraphrased, in the cable itself, as integrating China effectively into the international community and allowing it to demonstrate greater responsibility, all [the] while also preparing to deploy force [against China] if everything [of such an engagement policy] goes wrong for the U.S. and its allies. As a Mandarin-knowing leader with a perceived diplomatic comfort zone in Beijing, Rudd has had the reputation of seeing China in more positive terms than many of his fellow-Western' allies. His dim view of China, as contained in the leaked cable, has therefore become a talking point in East Asia, not just Australia. He is quoted as having told Hillary Clinton that the Chinese leaders were paranoid about both Taiwan and Tibet. In his paraphrased view, the reactions of the Chinese leaders towards Taiwan were sub-rational and deeply emotional, but Beijing's hard-line policies on Tibet were crafted to send clear messages to other ethnic minorities inside China.

In the immediate context of this leaked cable, Rudd maintained an unruffled stand of not getting dragged into commenting on the sensitive contents. And, Beijing stayed silent, without lowering its studied posture of staying above the diplomatic dust being raised by the steady leak of secret' U.S. cables. Several other sensitive diplomatic issues of long-term concern to East Asian countries, such as Beijing's formula for resolving inter-Korean tensions forever or America's grand strategy to tame or team up with a rapidly rising China, have also figured in various forms in the early batches of leaked cables. By December 10, there were no leaked cables with hypersensitive military-related data, such as those relating to China's strategic and tactical nuclear arsenals or its space-exploration-related assets or even the actual or virtual deployment of America's nuclear umbrella in the protection of Japan or South Korea or Australia. This fact may explain the absence of a noticeable or measurable political fallout, by that date, across the East Asian scene of complex inter-state relations.

Loss of spirit

Rather, the immediate fallout was a loss of spirit among some U.S. diplomats in East Asia. Some of them told this correspondent that their current and potential sources in the region might now stop being candid in their views and actions. To this extent, U.S. diplomats might find it increasingly difficult to peep behind the scenes in other countries and gather real information from their insiders. In essence, it is the U.S. that primarily tends to believe that it can no longer be diplomatic business as usual from now on in East Asia and elsewhere in the world. Surely, the U.S.' interlocutors, among the East Asian countries, will also begin to think about where the line should be drawn in communicating freely with Washington behind the scenes, especially on some issues.

One such issue is about China's heart-mind-and-soul policy on the issue of inter-Korean reunification over the longer term. Several years ago, an authoritative Chinese source had told this correspondent that the endgame for such reunification was nowhere in sight and might not begin for years or even decades, subject to any dramatic change in the relevant ground realities. The comment was made before North Korea formally tested a nuclear weapon.

Viewed in this perspective, it was quite interesting to glean, from one of the leaked American cables from Seoul, China's thinking in February 2010. China's view, as gathered by a top South Korean official, was conveyed to his U.S. interlocutor on these lines: The People's Republic of China would be comfortable with a reunified Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the United States in a benign alliance' as long as [a reunified] Korea was not [going to be] hostile towards China. With China keeping its counsel and staying unwilling to comment on such sensitive narratives in the leaked U.S. cables, there is no way the Korean future can be read in advance.

As for America's grand strategy towards China, the early batches of leaked cables shone the spotlight on general themes of cooperation and competition. There was hardly any stroke of genius on this complex issue. Surely, traces of the political ideas of Machiavelli or Carl von Clausewitz or oriental thought leaders such as Confucius were, of course, visible here and there.

The leaked cables from East Asian capitals did contain two aspects of interest to India. One was China's reported view that the P-5 club of veto-empowered permanent members in the United Nations Security Council should not be diluted through any expansion of membership in this elite category.

Another matter of interest to New Delhi was the need to turn Pakistan away from its obsessive focus' on India so that Islamabad could play a proper role in the global anti-terror campaign. This point was said to have been discussed by Rudd and Hillary Clinton.

Big powers do matter a lot in global affairs in almost all fields. At the same time, a country like Singapore, clearly not in this category, often punches above its weight in East Asia and beyond. The Singapore Foreign Ministry's comment on the WikiLeaks' actions does merit a close look. Expressing deep concern about the damaging action of WikiLeaks and without referring to the release of any specific document, the Ministry said:

It is critical to protect the confidentiality of diplomatic and official correspondence, which is why Singapore has the Official Secrets Act. In particular, the selective release of documents, especially when taken out of context, will only serve to sow confusion and fail to provide a complete picture of the important issues that were being discussed amongst leaders in the strictest of confidentiality.