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Copenhagen talks show G2 far from reality: analysts

Mistrust hinders foreign cooperation: Russia military chief
Moscow (AFP) Dec 21, 2009 - Nikolai Makarov, Russia's influential armed forces chief of staff, said Monday the Russian military and its foreign counterparts needed to remove mistrust to cooperate against common threats. Speaking to over a hundred uniformed foreign military attaches, he said that cooperation should move from exchange of delegations to more sophisticated forms like training personnel. "There comes an understanding that there is a need for you and us to act more openly," he said, noting that a recent flurry of meetings with his colleagues from Germany, Poland, Switzerland, France and the United States reinforced this understanding. "The more we will know each other, the more doors we will open... the more we will trust each other," he said in his end-of-the-year speech to the foreign attaches.

But Makarov, who is also first deputy defense minister, cautioned that there still remained a certain level of mistrust between the Russian and foreign military. "A little wall of sorts is still remaining," he said, noting that it prevented better cooperation in fighting common threats like nuclear proliferation and terrorism. "We need to remove this wall so that there are normal relations not only between the states but also between armies," he told his audience at the Academy of the General Staff whose halls are adorned with portraits of Russia's most-famous military commanders, including Stalin. Makarov said Russia never planned to use its vast nuclear arsenals first and would launch a nuclear strike only if it faced an "immediate threat of liquidation of the state system." Speaking of Russia's controversial efforts to reform its bloated outdated army, Makarov said a key problem was changing the Soviet-era mentality of the Russian soldiers.

"Our officers were trained in the Soviet Union," he said in response to a question from Captain Garry Newton, a British naval attache. Another key challenge, Makarov said, was that the military equipment produced domestically was not up to Western standards. "The most complicated task is providing (the army) with new equipment and weapons," he said. Makarov, a proponent of modernising the country's conventional armed forces through procurement from Western suppliers, earlier this year admitted the military needs equipment that Russia cannot produce at present, and said the country could buy a Mistral-class helicopter-carrying assault warship from NATO-member France. The deal, which would also include a license to produce several more warships in Russia, would be unprecedented since World War II, both in terms of the size of the equipment in question and Moscow's insistance since the war on producing all military hardware for its own use and export.
by Staff Writers
 Beijing (AFP) Dec 21, 2009
 The fraught climate change talks in Copenhagen have shown that the concept of a "G2" that would see China and the United States ruling global affairs is far from reality, analysts said Monday.

The accord reached last week in Denmark after marathon negotiations has been widely criticised as a failure, and much of that ire has been directed at China and the United States, the world's two largest carbon polluters.

The global powers sparred often at the talks, failing to agree on several key issues, including that of how to verify that emerging economies such as China fulfil their pledges to crack down on greenhouse gas emissions.

"If there is proof times four that there is no G2, it's the Copenhagen conference," said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University.

"Nothing can be done without the others."

Shi Yinhong, a political expert at Renmin University, agreed.

"I think that on the one hand, China's position and importance have increased much more, and consultation between the US and China was quite important," said Shi.

"But on the other hand, if you talk about G2 in Copenhagen, you can see G2 confrontation on some very important issues, so I don't think that the G2 is a correct concept."

The idea of a special US-China relationship, dubbed the G2, has been floated in American academic circles since 2006.

It was raised again in January by former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in Beijing as the world's largest and third-largest economies celebrated 30 years of diplomatic ties.

The concept again attracted interest following the G20 meeting in April in London, where US President Barack Obama and China's Hu Jintao launched an annual strategic dialogue and agreed to "strengthen ties at all levels."

But experts said the Copenhagen talks had highlighted the fact that the two sides remain far apart on a number of issues.

Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based analyst, said the verification of emissions cuts in particular had displayed a key sticking point in relations between Beijing and Washington.

"There's still anxiety that the United States is out to contain China," he said.

"It also has to do with domestic consequences -- how do you tell local governments that not only are you going to be overseen by Beijing in terms of economic growth... but you're also going to be overseen by other countries?"

Beyond that, the Copenhagen summit also illustrated that China was still trying to work out what role it wanted to play in the world, Moses said.

"Do you want to be a G2, a G8, do you want to be the only superpower in the world?" he said.

For Shi, the conflicts seen at Copenhagen between the United States and China signalled the beginning of a difficult period for relations between the two nations.

"If we consider the Sino-American conflicts in Copenhagen, the potential new arms sales to Taiwan and Obama's potential meeting with the Dalai Lama, relations will have more difficulties in the next few months," he said.

The United States could reportedly soon sell a new batch of arms to Taiwan -- a move that would anger China, which considers the island nation part of its territory.

White House aides have also said that Obama would meet with Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama "at an appropriate time" after the US leader's November visit to China -- another move which would raise hackles in Beijing.

Commercial ties between the world's largest and third largest economies have been frayed in recent months, with the capitals trading accusations of unfair trade practices.

Another potential irritant could be the trial this week of leading Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo on subversion charges -- the United States has already urged Beijing to free Liu and end the harassment of political prisoners.

"Relations (between the United States and China) will remain difficult," said Cabestan.

"This shows that Obama's visit to China was a bit of a waste of time -- it was a formality but actually masked important differences."

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