allowing Pyongyang to buy more time in the cat-and-mouse game, while for others
China’s active role in brokering the North Korea deal signalled its emergence as a
‘serious rival to American dominance’ (Krauthammer, 2005b). Max Boot, a neocon at
the Council on Foreign Relations (2005a) argues that the agreement ‘has loopholes big
enough to fly an ICBM through’. Given many neocons’ unwillingness to settle for
anything short of ‘regime change’, the row between Washington and Pyongyang is far
from over yet. With China’s long-standing objection to the neocons’ ‘regime change’ in
Pyongyang, the neocons could therefore blame the North Korea impasse on China. The
congressionally-mandated USCC Report (2004: 3), for example, claimed that China’s
action on North Korea was ‘unsatisfactory’. Similarly, Robert Joseph, Under Secretary
of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, once upped the ante by
saying that China had to make a hard decision on Pyongyang, threatening ‘very
significant consequences’ should it fail to do so (Glaser and Skanderup 2005).
Consequently, instead of being a boon for U.S.-China cooperation, both the Iran and
North Korea crises could become a catalyst for confrontation between the two great
powers.
In short, whatever the fate of the ‘War on Terror’, the neocons are more likely than not
to turn up heat on China in the years to come. Indeed, the past two years have already
witnessed a number of neoconservatives joining the chorus in sounding alarms about
the China challenge. For example, just days after Bush’s re-election in November 2004,
Frank Gaffney, Jr., president of the Washington-based neoconservative Center for
Security Policy, compiled a checklist of the work demanded of Bush and his
subordinates in a second term. Among other things, this list agitated for developing
‘appropriate strategies’ for dealing with threats posed by China (see Lobe 2004).
Similarly, Fukuyama (2005: A18) warned that ‘the war on terrorism must not blind us
to the fact that China’s rise will likely be the biggest geopolitical development of this
generation’. In February 2005, one day after CIA Director Porter Goss warned that
China’s military build-up posed a direct threat to the U.S., Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld echoed his message, claiming that within a decade the Chinese navy could
surpass the U.S. Navy (Hallinan 2005). And only a few months later, Rumsfeld repeated
his warning in Singapore. In his speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Rumsfeld named
China’s military spending a threat to regional security, and called for ‘a growth in
political freedom’ in China. His remarks were promptly reiterated by the Pentagon’s
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