Susan Shirk Comments on Huntsman's 'Strategic Dialogue' with China
Huntsman’s proposal for a ‘strategic dialogue’ with China
08/24/2011
Glenn Kessler,
The Washington Post
“With respect to China, I would establish a senior strategic dialogue. The one thing the relationship needs and doesn't have -- and I would say under Republicans and Democrats this has been a problem -- we don't have enough trust in the relationship. And the trust is driven by a head-of-state-to-head-of-state kind of relationship…. I would formalize a strategic dialogue that would build trust and confidence in the years to come, because they want to know what our intentions are in the region. We need to known what their intentions are in the region.”
--Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, August 23, 2011
Huntsman, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, is a fluent Chinese speaker and was ambassador to China under President Obama. So he certainly knows a great deal about the U.S. relationship with Beijing.
But we’ve been puzzled by one of his talking points—that the United States needs to establish a “senior strategic dialogue” with China. He made that point during the last Republican debate and then again Tuesday on CNBC.
Doesn’t the United States already have a strategic dialogue with China?
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Susan Shirk is director of the University of California system-wide Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and Ho Miu Lam professor of China and Pacific Relations at IR/PS.
She founded in 1993 and continues to lead the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD), an unofficial “track-two” forum for discussions of security issues among defense and foreign ministry officials and academics from the United States, Japan, China, Russia, and the Koreas.
