been calling for? Michael Ledeen (2004), for instance, believes that Iraq, like
Afghanistan, is ‘only one theater in a regional war…. There will be no peace in Iraq so
long as the terror masters rule in Damascus, Riyadh, and Tehran’. With their hands full
with Iran and/or North Korea, one may believe that the neocons would be unlikely to
play tough with China, as the latter’s cooperation would continue to be important for the
United States.
It is tempting to reason along this line. Yet, I argue that playing tough with North Korea
and Iran on the one hand and with China on the other hand are not as incompatible as
they may seem. In fact, with an enlarged ‘War on Terror’, there is even a heightened
chance that China might be caught in the ‘crossfire’ in one way or another. This is
largely because China holds greater stakes in Iran and North Korea than in Afghanistan
or Iraq. Over the past four years, China’s soaring energy need has seen Beijing and
Tehran forging closer ties. In October 2004, China’s oil company Sinopec signed a
natural gas agreement with Iran worth up to US$100 billion, the latter’s largest deal
with a foreign country since 1996. With about 11 percent of China’s oil imported from
Iran, the latter is now China’s biggest foreign oil supplier (Callick 2006; Bezlova 2004).
This, together with Iran’s accession as an observer to the Shanghai Cooperation
Organisation, signifies that Tehran has by and large been put into China’s strategic
orbit. On the other hand, the new U.S. National Security Strategy recently announced
that ‘We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran’ (White
House 2006: 20), and news reports revealed that the U.S. was actively preparing for
military strikes against Iran (see Hersh 2006). But given its high stakes in Iran’s
stability, it is doubtful that Beijing would further follow America’s tough stance.
Rather, whether America pushes for tough sanctions or for war, it is likely to put new
strain on U.S.-China relations (see Goodman 2006). U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, for
example, has already accused China of ‘sending the wrong signals’ to Iran (Reuters
2006).
North Korea can be seen in a similar light. In September 2005, the fourth round of the
six-party talks in Beijing reached an agreement in which North Korea agreed to
abandon its nuclear program in exchange for energy aid. While this agreement may be
seen as a fruit of U.S.-China cooperation on the issue, crucially, few neocons are
impressed by this development. For some neocons, the deal achieved nothing but
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Convention