come on, Obama

China Post editorial:

It was a majestic performance, if your head is buried in sand

Members of Sweden's Nobel Peace Prize committee will have slept well in their beds this weekend following signing of last week's agreement to make significant cuts to the global stockpile of nuclear weapons by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. If the treaty is ratified by both countries' legislatures and implemented, this will see the Cold War adversaries' arsenals reduced to the lowest levels since the arms race of the 1960s.

In any case, the fanfare that accompanied the signing ceremony held in Prague's baroque castle will have been music to Swedish ears. Last year, in what was widely criticized as a partisan political gesture, it awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama just a few months after he entered the White House simply for promising to work for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

So maybe the committee got it right, and maybe the world will be a safer place in the future thanks to Obama and Medvedev's actions. But there was something bizarre about the whole event, or rather, something was missing.

It was not that nuclear weapons have not claimed a single life in over six decades, or that the greatest threat to citizens of the United States and Russia comes from terrorists with rucksacks, vests and even shoes loaded with bombs (though in Russia's case, insurgents might be a fairer word).

Nor was it that the United States and Russia are essentially now on the same side after spending most of the 20th century with daggers drawn, and both countries' chief concern with regard to nuclear weapons are the so-called rogue states (now to be known as “outliers,” apparently) of North Korea and Iran. The cost to people in the former country is lives of unimaginable poverty, while those in the latter are about to get clobbered by serious sanctions if Obama, Medvedev and the leaders of around four dozen countries can focus their animosity (whereas Israel joined the “nuclear club” and introduced nuclear weapons into the unstable environment of the Middle East almost without censure).

No, the most bizarre aspect of last week's baroque love fest was its anachronism. It was like watching two dinosaurs arm wrestle on television then kiss and make up. Nice spectacle, but hardly relevant to today's more evolved world. Russia may possess thousands of nuclear warheads — which once upon a time gave some backing to its claim of superpower status — but its empire fell apart two decades ago. Moreover, the world very quickly learned that the bombs were little more than the emperor's new clothes, and that the cost to the Soviet Union of possessing them was far beyond the means of what, in reality, was not a superpower at all.

So the pantomime went ahead, and the world applauded, and the pundits discussed the Obama-Medvedev contribution to world peace, and almost no one mentioned China, which, as a growing global power, should merit more attention.

Whether China already is a superpower, will become one sooner or later, or will never exceed its role as regional heavyweight are questions that normally generate many column inches. There can be little doubt that this is China's aim, however, and if any existed, it was surely dispelled by the recent book by PLA colonel and academic Liu Mingfu, in which he made no bones about China's goal of replacing the United States as world leader. Perhaps being modest, Liu said this would take 90 years: 30 to match its GDP, 30 to equal its military and cultural strength, and 30 to surpass its per capita GDP.

Or perhaps he was trying to reduce anxiety. Liu did make it clear, however, that this goal required not just building its economy into the world's largest, but also creating armed forces of equal stature. But he said armed conflict was not inevitable, and described the forthcoming competition as neither world war nor cold war, but more like a track-and-field event or a protracted marathon.

Perhaps the greatest doubt about China's ability to transform into a world force comes not from outside but from within as it undergoes the growing pains necessary for this maturation. All its economic and military clout will count for nothing if it cannot overcome numerous and varied challenges. These include people's demands for rule of law and freedom of expression; government corruption and organized crime; intergenerational conflict as the old elite clings to power and socio-economic imbalances between geographic regions of the vast country; horrendous pollution and growing health problems, as well as a population time bomb that could explode at any time.

But the United States and rest of the world cannot just bury their heads in the sands of the past as the Prague performance suggests they would like. Obama and his colleagues must do more to deal with today's reality, and if he really is worthy of the Nobel prize, China's nuclear weapons should be on his agenda, too.