WASHINGTON — The routine and largely empty talks on Asia-Pacific trade scheduled for this coming long weekend in Shanghai once loomed as a distraction on President Bush’s busy agenda. But the APEC summit has suddenly become opportunity and crucible for U.S. foreign policy. Bush will convey in concrete terms in Shanghai how his world has changed since Sept. 11.
The president will explain to the leaders of China, Russia and other key Pacific nations his immediate strategy in the unexpected and unwanted war in Central Asia thrust on him by Middle Eastern terrorists and their Afghan hosts.
Bush is likely to tell Jiang Zemin, Vladimir Putin and a few others in their bilateral meetings to expect a continuation of the air-centered campaign on Afghanistan in the next few weeks. The immediate war goal, in the words of one senior U.S. official, is "to make sure that this cancer does not continue to spread, to make sure the Taliban and al Qaeda do not grow more cells outside" Afghanistan for future terror operations.
But Bush will also necessarily give in Shanghai a glimpse of the new organizing principles of U.S. global priorities, which have been profoundly shaken up by terror assaults on America and the continuing American and British military response.
Before Sept. 11, Bush’s foreign and security policies had not found a center. Various components — missile defense, a new strategic relationship with Russia, pushing U.S. trade opportunities as far and wide as possible, focusing more on Mexico and the Western Hemisphere — often seemed to compete more than complement each other.
But on Sept. 11, a grim new center found Bush’s policies.
That day greatly accelerated the search for a new relationship with Russia’s Putin, who was the first foreign leader to get through to Bush on the telephone after the airborne assaults on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
"There has been a steady evolution toward a strategic Russian choice" that this crisis seems to have confirmed, Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, told me Wednesday. That Russian choice is seen at the White House, as I understand it, to be one of pursuing alliance with and integration into the West — rather than flirting with a Third Way strategy built on partnership with China and others who want to reduce American influence abroad.
"In that new strategic framework, Russia moved quickly to get on board the counterterrorism fight," Rice added.
Bush in private is even more openly appreciative and admiring of Putin, others tell me. The president notes that instead of haggling over and minimizing Russia’s help, Putin jumped quickly ahead of his military and his diplomats to make clear that Russia would not be an obstacle in the war on global terror — or on other strategic issues — during this crisis.
This changes the leadership equation for Shanghai. Putin’s implied hope for a U.S.-Russia deal or at least a truce on missile defense in the near future lessens China’s leverage on global questions. Bush need aim no higher in Shanghai than a polite chat with Jiang.
Bush and his aides are still sorting through a post-conflict strategy for Afghanistan that the Shanghai conference could help solidify. Bush last week signaled at a news conference that the United States wants to see the United Nations and other international bodies take on responsibility for reconstruction and perhaps a new political order in Afghanistan as quickly as possible.
"We can’t make the mistake of 1989" when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan and the United States walked away from that broken country, said a senior U.S. official. "But given the role we are playing now" of waging war on Afghanistan, "it would not be appropriate for U.S. troops to be part of a peacekeeping force. And, depending on the circumstances, an outside security force might not be needed."
The White House seems open to letting events take their course on the ground in Afghanistan once the Taliban and al Qaeda are destroyed or dislodged. Bush and Rice seem to examine U.S. options with fresh eyes.
It is the State Department that clings to old thinking in this crisis by insisting on protecting Pakistan’s interests in Afghan tribal politics and by ostentatiously rewarding Pakistan with economic aid for taking steps that are in Pakistan’s interest to take. The reported effort to use the crisis to lift the few remaining Tiananmen sanctions imposed against China in 1989 is also unfortunate.
Bush’s policies are strong enough to stand on their own. They do not have to be propped up by obsequiousness as usual.
Jim Hoagland can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or hoaglandj@washpost.com.
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