The oil and gas industry should hope that President Bill Clinton's overture to China this month represents things to come in U.S. foreign policy. Over objections from both ends of the political spectrum, Clinton met with China President Jiang Zemin in Manila and agreed to an exchange of official visits.
Human-rights activists think the U.S. should forswear such engagement until the Chinese government softens its treatment of people who disagree with it. And conservatives consider it unseemly for the U.S. to hold official conversation with the government of a country selling missiles and related technology to unstable Pakistan and post-revolutionary Iran.
State Department officials readily point to other points of contention between Washington, D.C., and Beijing: Taiwan, violations of copyright, and suspicious textile trade, to name a few. They took pains to warn that the two countries remain far from cozy with one another. Their cautions might have been motivated by the urge to reassure opponents of relationships of any type. They nevertheless imposed a welcome framework of realism on a diplomatic initiative rich with potential for political grandstanding.
The vital comment came from Winston Lord, assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs. As quoted in the Wall Street Journal, he said, "We believe that regular, high-level dialogue is the most effective way to make progress on all these issues."
The oil and gas industry should embrace the approach and hope that the U.S. applies it to other countries with which it has serious disagreements.
The official snub
Throughout history, the official snub has been a standard and occasionally effective implement of foreign policy. When governments got into a snit, one or both of them suspended diplomatic relations. Trade sanctions often followed.
Such moves meant something in a world defined by a bipolar nuclear standoff between the U.S. and former Soviet Union. Diplomatic crises could always threaten to shift a balance of influence given weight by the superpowers' threat of mutual and collateral destruction.
In the post-Cold War world, suspensions of dialogue and trade mean very little. The world can shrug off most bilateral crises. World peace no longer depends on any particular country's relations with Russia or the U.S.
Similarly, trade relations are diminishingly linear. A country shunned by only one country-even the U.S.-usually has other options.
As a unilateral tool of international influence, the official snub thus has lost its bite. To be effective, it needs to be a group effort. And forming a group can be difficult, especially when the snub takes the form of refusal to conduct commerce. The U.S. has experienced this difficulty in its efforts to isolate Cuba, Iran, and Libya with primary and secondary trade sanctions. Resistance from allies in Europe and Canada, properly defensive about the right to differ over foreign policy goals and methods, has created a new layer of diplomatic trouble.
A world in conflict over who's snubbing whom is neither safe nor good for business, especially the oil and gas business. Nations now can deal with one another free of the context of nuclear gloom. Enlightened governments can concentrate on economic goals. More than ever before, trade can be a unifying priority. Why does any country want to perpetuate division and desperation by continuing to practice the politics of exclusion?
Hopeful intuition
Vile governments exist. Suppression of people is the worldwide norm. The impulse to correct widespread injustice is altogether proper.
In the modern world, however, opportunities for improvement in any one country surely reside more in communication from outside and aspirations from inside than they do in imposed isolation. This hopeful intuition seems to be at work in Clinton's guarded overture toward China. The oil and gas industry should encourage it.
Copyright 1996 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
