GLENN: I'll have some detailed questions. I doubt if I have time to get into them. I'd like to submit to you for the record, and you could respond to those. But I wanted to take a little time here to talk -- I know we're talking big picture things this morning here. I'd like to go even bigger picture.
COHEN: You've been at much higher levels than most of us, so take that big picture.
GLENN: Not quite that far up. These decisions are not made in a global isolation. And I think these are historic. It is an historic debate, to use your words. And it's a new NATO, a new Russia that we're considering here, and those are important steps.
I do think that much of our foreign concerns though over the next quarter century or even half a century are going to be involved in the Far East and the People's Republic of China and their concerns out there as they emerge.
And in a moment, I'd like for you to role play that you are the foreign minister of the PRC, and look at the world from that vantage point out there with all the containment paranoia attendant thereto to that particular position, because as you view things from Peking -- or Beijing now -- you see all the military powers of the world united, the U.S. and Europe and now some affiliate arrangement being made with Russia.
And to come back to Senator Kempthorne's statement, NATO is a military alliance. And with all this alignments of all the rest of the military power in the world -- against what? Against what?
Now, we look at it as though we trying to allay any concerns for the future about that have led in the past to European nations versus European nations fighting each other or the rest of the world; or Europe being united against the Soviet Union, now Russia; and now allying all of those powers together. And we are working through the European Union and Partnership for Peace.
But it is a military alliance that we're talking about. And I would see us maybe solving one historic problem of Europe and making another maybe insoluble by how we handle this thing as we go along, if the perceptions of the PRC and their paranoia about things is permitted to expand or grow larger.
And they have good reasons for paranoia, too -- the Opium Wars, the Yangtze River gun boats, European spheres of influence, Hong Kong, Macao. All of these things we know about.
And they're now in the process of joining the world community. But that marriage isn't complete yet.
GLENN: It's still in sort of in the courtship stage, both directions, I guess. And how we -- how we go at this thing, it seems to me, is very important right now. I think how we handle their perceptions of paranoia and their outlook of what's going on with NATO and Russia and everything else -- I wouldn't -- you know, you can see why they might be a bit paranoid with their background.
I don't know whether we've invited them to sit in and send a representative to some of these meetings that we have so that they realize that our concerns are more to dampen any of the historical problems that we've had in Europe, more than aligning Europe and us against whatever other powers in the world there may be, of which there's only one, and that's China.
And so I'm concerned that we not permit this paranoia that may result from this to interfere with what we're trying to do here. And I guess, Madame Secretary, if you could play PRC foreign minister for a minute with the attendant paranoia that goes along with that job, as I said, I'd appreciate it.
And then if I have any time left, I'll get to some of the detailed questions.
ALBRIGHT: I think, Senator, you have framed a very interesting question. And it makes us all understand even more the
interrelationship of how we're all functioning these days, where you can't act in one area of the world without it having an effect on another.
We have taken this into consideration. And when I was in Beijing in January, as part of kind of an overall discussions that I had with the Chinese foreign minister, we talked about NATO enlargement, and what it was and it wasn't.
And I believe that a level of transparency here is one way of dealing with this. This whole process is one which is highly transparent and will continue to be so. And it is not in any way aligned or arrayed against China.
I think our whole approach now to the way we want to deal with China is to engage them across the board. I have testified in other committees about the importance of this multifaceted relationship we have with China.
That is another issue that we have to do a lot of explaining about to the American public, because we had, in fact, if -- you know, for the last 50 years, we've been dealing with the specter of the Soviet Union and Communist China.
We now have to adjust our thinking about how we want to deal with a China that is changing in and evolving, and one with whom we wish to have a constructive relationship while we tell it like it is on issues that bother us.
So I -- we are aware of what you are raising. We will continue to raise it with the Chinese in a way of telling, you know, making clear what our direction and intentions are. But we are very much aware of this sense of the Chinese that they have felt isolated, and that they are -- have been the victims of invasions and various other ways of dealing with their problems of sovereignty.
GLENN: Yes. Secretary Cohen, I know you've thought about this. You and I have travelled together in China and had many discussion with Chinese leaders. What are your thoughts on this? How do we do this thing with NATO and Russia without really creating just more paranoia in the Far East?
COHEN: Well, it's not only NATO and Russia. It's the U.S. presence anywhere in Asia. I recently came back from a trip to Japan and South Korea. And I managed to stir the interest of both the Chinese, the Russians and the North Koreans, and I guess, the Okinawans, all in one trip.
But it was a very enlightening one for me. The Chinese government took the position that the United States should be out of Asia altogether, that we should have no presence in Japan, and we should no presence ultimately in South Korea. So they see the United States presence, at least officially, as being a necessary and potentially -- quote -- "destabilizing" from their point of view.
I think the way in which you deal with this is to have the military-to-military contacts that were initiated by Secretary Perry. Those are very important. I intend to continue those. I will make frequent trips to China and encourage them to make frequent trips here.
I think the Chinese feel really quite excited about the fact that more senators and congressmen have visited China in the past couple of years than at any time in their history. That's the way in which you break down the barriers and break through the paranoia by trying to explain the policies that we have.
As Secretary Albright has said, more transparency. But if we simply disengage -- and that's why I mentioned the word; we have to be a forward-deployed, engaged in a variety of ways -- then you will feed that paranoia. They will look at our relationship with Japan.
Can we have a relationship with Vietnam? Can we ever go back into the Philippines? Can we stay in South Korea? All of these issues they will see as adversarial to them, unless we can have a good working relationship with China as well.
So yes, there are potential problems there. We have to deal with them. We have to deal with them openly, and that means more contact, more engagement, vigorous.
And I'm sure that Secretary Albright has been breaking world records in terms of where she's been able to go in a very short period of time. And she had made an exhausting -- an exhaustive trip to Russia, China and Japan, all the way back in her first 10 days in office, I think.
And more of that -- I'm going to place that burden on you right now -- more of that will be required. More will be required.
GLENN: Just one question. Have you considered inviting the Chinese to an observer status at any of these meetings so they would have some of their fears allayed a bit? Some of the meetings...
ALBRIGHT: Not that I know of. But I think it's an interesting idea. I do think that it is important for them to feel that it is not an alliance created against them.
Although -- let me just -- this is not the same forum. But I have to tell you, in terms of the dealings with the Chinese at the United Nations, for instance, is a way for -- I did it on a daily basis -- to have them understand what our motives are.
And I think we need to explain ourselves better to them. I think whether they sit in observer status anywhere is not as much the issue as our being straight with them about what we are doing.
And we plan to do that. And as Secretary Cohen mentioned, I deliberately went to China on this trip in order to indicate that there was not a favoritism about going to Europe, and made it clear that they were part of what we were trying to do in terms of establishing a web of strategic relationships.
GLENN: Thank you. My time is up. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.