WASHINGTON — When Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen first planned his upcoming trip to the United States, he was penciled in to see President Bush at the White House on Monday.
But then the Bush White House shifted ground. It urged Qian to put off his visit for a couple of days because the president wanted to meet Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori first. So Bush will greet Mori on Monday, while Qian cools his heels.
The Chinese were privately irked. The turnabout was a subtle but telling demonstration of the new administration's commitment to give Japan and other allies precedence over China in American policy toward Asia.
The episode was also a reminder that the Bush administration's foreign policy team, in its earliest days, is not yet a smooth operation.
For all the current talk about how Bush and his administration have an efficient, corporate governing style, the reality is that--on foreign policy at least--the start-up has had its share of minor snafus.
Indeed, right now the biggest question about Bush's foreign policy team is whether it will be disciplined enough to iron out and cover up its internal disagreements as well as the last Bush administration did.
The second Bush administration is less than two months old, and one can detect some early signs of discord.
The most recent example came last week, when the president asserted that he was in no rush to resume talks with North Korea. Only a day earlier, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had said he planned to pick up those negotiations where the Clinton administration had left off.
There have been signs of similar wrangling over Iraq policy. And during the next month, chances are that there will be a fight within the administration over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.
Such internal foreign policy disputes have broken out within every recent administration.
The Jimmy Carter administration's foreign policy operation deteriorated into a virtual civil war between National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance. In the Ronald Reagan administration, Secretary of State George P. Shultz was regularly at odds with Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger.
The Clinton administration also had more than its share of turmoil. A new memoir by former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, "Chances of a Lifetime," describes how he was caught by surprise when, at a crucial juncture in 1994, President Clinton failed to support him in dealing with Beijing.
