Zbigniew brzezinski

10. In a meeting in 1996 with China's top national security and defense officials, I identified (using 
occasionally deliberately vague formulations) the following areas of common strategic interest as the basis for 
such a dialogue: (1) a peaceful Southeast Asia; (2) nonuse of force in the resolution of offshore issues; (3) 
peaceful reunification of China; (4) stability in Korea; (5) independence of Central Asia; (6) balance between 
India and Pakistan; (7) an economically dynamic and internationally benign Japan; (8) a stable but not too 
strong Russia. 

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There are also areas where Chinese ambitions might clash with American (and also Japanese) interests, 
especially if these ambitions were to be pursued through historically more familiar strong-arm tactics. This 
applies particularly to Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Korea. 
Southeast Asia is potentially too rich, geographically too spread out, and simply too big to be easily 
subordinated by even a powerful China—but it is also too weak and politically too fragmented not to become at 
least a sphere of deference for China. China's regional influence, abetted by the Chinese financial and economic 
presence in all of the area's countries, is bound to grow as China's power increases. Much depends on how 
China applies that power, but it is not self-evident that America has any special interest in opposing it directly 
or in becoming involved in such issues as the South China Sea dispute. The Chinese have considerable 
historical experience in subtly managing unequal (or tributary) relationships, and it would certainly be in 
China's own interest to exercise self-restraint in order to avoid regional fears of Chinese imperialism. That fear 
could generate a regional anti-Chinese coalition (and some overtones of that are already present in the nascent 
Indonesian-Australian military cooperation), which would then most likely seek support from the United States, 
Japan, and Australia. 
A Greater China, especially after digesting Hong Kong, will almost certainly seek more energetically to 
achieve Taiwan's reunification with the mainland. It is important to appreciate the fact that China has never 
acquiesced in the indefinite separation of Taiwan. Therefore, at some point, that issue could generate a head-on 
American-Chinese collision. Its consequences for all concerned would be most damaging: China's economic 
prospects would be set back; America's ties with Japan could become severely strained; and American efforts to 
create a stable balance of power in eastern Eurasia could be derailed. 
Accordingly, it is essential to attain and maintain reciprocally the utmost clarity on this issue. Even if for the 
foreseeable future China is likely to lack the means to effectively coerce Taiwan, Beijing must understand—and 
be credibly convinced—that American acquiescence in an attempt at the forcible reintegration of Taiwan, 
sought by the use of military power, would be so devastating to America's position in the Far East that America 
simply could not 
afford to remain militarily passive; if Taiwan were unable to protect itself. 
In other words, America would have to intervene not for the sake of a separate Taiwan but for the sake of 
America's geopolitical interests in the Asia-Pacific area. This is an important distinction. The United States 
does not have, per se, any special interest in a separate Taiwan. In fact, its official position has been, and should 
remain, that there is only one China. But how China seeks reunification can impinge on vital American 
interests, and the Chinese have to be clearly aware of that. 
The issue of Taiwan also gives America a legitimate reason for raising the human rights question in its 
dealings with China without justifying the accusation of interference in Chinese domestic affairs. It is perfectly 
appropriate to reiterate to Beijing that reunification will be accomplished only when China becomes more 
prosperous and more democratic. Only such a China will be able to attract Taiwan and assimilate it within a 
Greater China that is also prepared to be a confederation based on the principle of "one country, several 
systems." In any case, because of Taiwan, it is in China's own interest to enhance respect for human rights, and 
it is appropriate in that context for America to address the matter. 
At the same time, it behooves the United States—in keeping with its promise to China—to abstain from 
directly or indirectly supporting any international upgrading of Taiwan's status. In the 1990s, some U.S.-
Taiwanese official contacts conveyed the impression that the United States was tacitly beginning to treat 
Taiwan as a separate state, and the Chinese anger over this issue was understandable, as was Chinese 
resentment of the intensifying effort by Taiwanese officials to gain international recognition for Taiwan's 
separate status. 
The United States should not be shy, therefore, in making it clear that its attitude toward Taiwan will be 
adversely affected by Taiwanese efforts to alter the long-established and deliberate ambiguities governing the 
China-Taiwan relationship. Moreover, if China does prosper and does democratize and if its absorption of 
Hong Kong does not involve a retrogression regarding civil rights, American encouragement of a serious cross-

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Strait dialogue regarding the terms of an eventual reunification would also help generate pressure for increased 
democratization within China, while fostering a wider strategic accommodation between the United States and 
a Greater China. 
Korea, the geopolitically pivotal state in Northeast Asia, could again become a source of contention between 
America and China, and its future will also impact directly on the American-Japanese connection. As long as 
Korea remains divided and potentially vulnerable to a war between the unstable North and the increasingly rich 
South, American forces will have to remain on the peninsula. Any unilateral U.S. withdrawal would not only be 
likely to precipitate a new war but would, in all probability, also signal the end of the American military 
presence in Japan. It is difficult to conceive of the Japanese continuing to rely on continued U.S. deployment on 
Japanese soil in the wake of an American abandonment of South Korea. Rapid Japanese rearmament would be 
the most likely consequence, with broadly destabilizing consequences in the region as a whole. 
Korea's reunification, however, would also be likely to pose serious geopolitical dilemmas. If American 
forces were to remain in a reunified Korea, they would inevitably be viewed by the Chinese as pointed against 
China. In fact, it is doubtful that the Chinese would acquiesce in reunification under these circumstances. If that 
reunification were taking place by stages, involving a so-called soft landing, China would obstruct it politically 
and support those elements in North Korea that remained opposed to reunification. If that reunification were 
taking place violently, with North Korea "crash landing," even Chinese military intervention could not be 
precluded. From the Chinese perspective, a reunified Korea would be acceptable only if it is not simultaneously 
a direct extension of American power (with Japan in the background as its springboard). 
However, a reunified Korea without U.S. troops on its soil would be quite likely to gravitate first toward a 
form of neutrality between China and Japan and then gradually—driven in part by residual but still intense anti-
Japanese feelings—toward a Chinese sphere of either politically more assertive influence or somewhat more 
delicate deference. The issue would then arise as to whether Japan would still be willing to serve as the only 
Asian base for American power. At the very least, the issue would be most divisive within Japanese domestic 
politics. Any resulting retraction in the scope of U.S. military reach in the Far East would in turn make the 
maintenance of a stable Eurasian balance of power more difficult. These considerations thus enhance the 
American and Japanese stakes in the Korean status quo (though in each case, for somewhat different reasons), 
and if that status quo is to be altered, it must occur in very slow stages, preferably in a setting of a deepening 
American-Chinese regional accommodation. 
In the meantime, a true Japanese-Korean reconciliation would contribute significantly to a more stable 
regional setting for any eventual reunification. The various international complications that could ensue from 
Korean reintegration would be mitigated by a genuine reconciliation between Japan and Korea, resulting in an 
increasingly cooperative and binding political relationship between these two countries. The United States 
could play the critical role in promoting that reconciliation. Many specific steps that were taken to advance first 
the German-French reconciliation and later that between Germany and Poland (for example, ranging from joint 
university programs eventually to combined military formations) could be adapted to this case. A 
comprehensive and regionally stabilizing Japanese-Korean partnership would, in turn, facilitate a continuing 
American presence in the Far East even perhaps after Korea's unification. 
It almost goes without saying that a close political relationship with Japan is in America's global geostrategic 
interest. But whether Japan is to be America's vassal, rival, or partner depends on the ability of the Americans 
and Japanese to define more clearly what international goals the countries should seek in common and to 
demarcate more sharply the dividing line between the U.S. geostrategic mission in the Far East and Japan's 
aspirations for a global role. For Japan, despite the domestic debates about Japan's foreign policy, the 
relationship with America still remains the central beacon for its own sense of international direction. A 
disoriented Japan, lurching toward either rearmament or a separate accommodation with China, would spell the 
end of the American role in the Asia-Pacific region7 and would foreclose the emergence of a regionally stable 
triangular arrangement involving America, Japan, and China. That, in turn, would preclude the shaping of an 
American-managed political equilibrium throughout Eurasia. 
In brief, a disoriented Japan would be like a beached whale: thrashing around helplessly but dangerously. It 
could destabilize Asia, but it could not create a viable alternative to the needed stabilizing balance among 

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America, Japan, and China. It is only through a close alliance with Japan that America will be able to 
accommodate China's regional aspirations and constrain its more arbitrary manifestations. Only on that basis 
can an intricate three-way accommodation—one that involves America's global power, China's regional 
preeminence, and Japan's international leadership—be contrived. 
It follows that in the foreseeable future, reduction of the existing levels of U.S. forces in Japan (and, by 
extension, in Korea) is not desirable. By the same token, however, any significant increase in the geopolitical 
scope and the actual magnitude of the Japanese military effort is also undesirable. A significant U.S. 
withdrawal would most probably prompt a major Japanese armament program in the context of an unsettling 
strategic disorientation, whereas American pressure on Japan to assume a greater military role can only damage 
the prospects for regional stability, impede a wider regional accommodation with a Greater China, divert Japan 
from undertaking a more constructive international mission, and thereby complicate the effort to foster stable 
geopolitical pluralism throughout Eurasia. 
It also follows that Japan—if it is to turn its face to the world and away from Asia—must be given a 
meaningful incentive and a special status, so that its own national interest is thereby well served. Unlike China, 
which can^seek global power by first becoming a regional power, Japan can gain global influence by 
eschewing the quest for regional power. But that makes it all the more important for Japan to feel that it is 
America's special partner in a global vocation that is as politically satisfying as it is economically beneficial. To 
that end, the United States would do well to consider the adoption of an American-Japanese free trade 
agreement, thereby creating a common American-Japanese economic space. Such a step, formalizing the 
growing linkage between the two economies, would provide the geopolitical underpinning both for America's 
continued presence in the Ãàã Kasl and for Japan's constructive global engagement."