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PRESIDENT-ELECT Barack Obama finally called President Arroyo—and
other heads of state and government whose calls he had earlier
failed to answer. His office, according to an Agence France-Presse
report, said Mr. Obama “expressed his appreciation for their
congratulations on his election.”
Even if they did discuss US foreign policy, Mr.
Obama’s interlocutors would—and should—not tell anyone about
the conversation. The American president-elect’s camp has made it
clear it would not want to cramp outgoing President Bush by speaking
and acting like a doppelganger to him.
The President of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, seemed
to have made a boo-boo when he announced after a telephone
conversation with President-elect Obama that the latter would push
through the Bush administration’s plan to install a missile shield
system in eastern Europe. Poland is in central Europe, actually.
An Obama aide immediately corrected the media
report of what the Polish leader had claimed. Denis McDonough
confirmed that Mr. Obama and Mr. Kacsynski did speak by telephone
but said the president-elect only supports a missile defense shield
when “the technology is proved to be workable.”
Washington and Warsaw in August signed an
agreement that allows the US to deploy 10 defensive missiles in
Poland. The Czech Republic has also signed an agreement with the USA
to host part of the system.
American officials say the shield is aimed to
counter a possible attack from “rogue” nations, like Iran. But
Russian officials see the shield as a threat and the USA’s
agreements with the former Soviet Russia’s Warsaw Pact allies as
provocations. They irritate Russia, giving its officials the feeling
of being “encircled.”
The Polish president’s words most likely gave
a signal to Moscow that needed sending at the time. For sounds from
Russia were denigrating President Bush and patronizing Mr. Obama as
someone who might prove to be less problematic for Russia than Mr.
Bush. Before the Polish president and Mr. Obama talked, Russian
President Medvedev had said he planned to deploy missiles near the
Polish border.
Considering how Byzantine the ways of diplomacy
and international politics can be, I can imagine the possibility
that (1) President Kaczynski did not make a boo-boo at all, (2) that
President-elect Obama knew the Polish president would tell the press
something that his aide Mr. McDonough would make only a slight
correction about and (3) that President Bush was aware of the whole
thing. In other words, the three were sending the message to Messrs.
Validimir Putin and Dimitri Medvedev that the Obama
administration’s Russian and central-eastern Europe policy would
be essentially similar to the current one of the Bush
administration.
Obama’s known
stand on China
The Council on Foreign Relations has summarized
President-elect Barack Hussein Obama’s publicized and broadcast
statements in a paper on what his policies on various countries
could be. I’ve made the following digest about HBO on China:
He wants cooperation with China. But he sees it
as a major competitor to the United States. At the April 2007 debate
among Democratic Party aspirants for president, he said China is
“neither our enemy nor our friend. They’re competitors. But we
have to make sure that we have enough military-to-military contact
and forge enough of a relationship with them that we can stabilize
the region.”
In an April 2007 speech before the Chicago
Council on Global Affairs, he said he would, if elected president,
“forge a more effective regional framework in Asia,” building on
“our strong bilateral relations and informal arrangements like the
Six-Party Talks” on North Korea.
But he has been strongly critical of China for
manipulating its currency and asked Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson
to take action. He blames the Bush administration’s failure to
check Chinese currency manipulation as a reason why the USA “has
imported more than $232 billion in goods from China than we sold to
it” in 2006.
He wanted to cosponsor with Sen. Hillary Clinton
a bill to impose high duties on Chinese goods to pressure China into
revaluing its currency.
He said the United States should maintain a
cooperative relationship with China but “never hesitate to be
clear and consistent with China where we disagree—whether on
protection of intellectual property rights, the manipulation of its
currency, human rights, or the right stance on Sudan and Iran.”
In March 2008, he condemned China’s crackdown
on protests by Tibetan Buddhist monks. He called on China to respect
Tibet’s religion and culture and grant Tibet “genuine and
meaningful autonomy.”
He has expressed support for the “one China”
policy. In March 2008, he congratulated Taiwanese President-elect Ma
Ying-jeou on his electoral victory, and said the government of China
should respond to the election “in a positive, constructive and
forward-leaning way.”
He has urged Beijing to “allow Taiwan greater
international space” in the World Health Organization, something
that The Times has been supporting.
rqb@manilatimes.net rq_bas@yahoo.com
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