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There is an American intellectual fetish that used to be called “scientism” — the use of pseudo-science to the exclusion of common sense. Those of us who went through Vietnam with McNamara’s “systems,” led by “measured response,” know it well.
The media circus with the Hainan Incident, the downing of an American spycraft by a “hot dog” Chinese pilot’s recklessness, is a case in point. And, unfortunately, with contemporary, omniscient, instantaneous communications, it is probably obscuring further for Beijing’s harassed leadership American intentions, which are always, perhaps the greatest unknown in international relations. One has to wonder, for example, when CNN calls on an obscure Chinese ethnic [perhaps a Chinese citizen?] from a local university. And he “explains” that Chinese public opinion is spontaneously inflamed, something we know from “the free interchange” on the Chinese Internet. His proof? He refers CNN listeners to People’s Daily’s chatroom, the Communist Party’s official mouthpiece.
A dozen times a day US media dredge up another “expert” to tell us how the whole situation is a “cultural misunderstanding”, how one translates “regret”, or “sorry”, or apology. If there are cultural misunderstandings, one might look closer to home. A recent volume in what purports to be a history of the Communist Party by one of our learned scholars contains the following: "My image of Mao is now less the stern but unifying sovereign of the Round Table, more a suspicious Olympia Jove, ready to strike down with lightning bolts.” It is not, I put it to you dear reader, how one with common sense would describe the leading monster in that nightmare epoch which featured Hitler and Stalin. [I suggested to an old Sinologist friend, more poised than I, perhaps he still had the wrong cosmology, and should try “Lucifer”.] Luckily for my blood pressure, he has not yet appeared on my TV screen — but I live in dread.
Seriously, however, there is great danger that we obscure the real significance for American national security of present events leading to new disasters. Beijing has reacted peculiarly to a bizarre accident: it has refused to dampen a highly emotive situation, which could destroy whatever modus operandi was evolving between our two countries. As has been said with endless monotony on TV both countries have a very large stake in such an accommodation.
Why has Beijing done this? There are basically three answers: 1] The Communist state, overwhelmed with new as well as old Chinese problems, simply could not pull itself together to act quickly, taking a more conciliatory line because of the claptrap post-Mao bureaucracy, 2] the Chinese leadership — turning its back on Sun Tzu's The Art of War, 2,000-year-old classic in strategy, who said always give your enemy a way of retreat — is deliberately heating up the issue to blackmail Dubya, oblivious to US public opinion, 3] the Beijing leadership, moving into a succession struggle with no former military at the helm for the first time in its 50 years, is being led by the nose by rebellious, chauvinistic, and untried younger officers. Or, a dreadful thought, all of the above!
Despite such genuine experts as Jim Lilley, Poppa Bush’s Beijing CIA station chief and a former ambassador to Taiwan and Korea, presumably still close to the Bush family, we simply know very little about Chinese decision-making inside The Forbidden City. What we do know is that as we moved in the waning years of the Clinton Administration there was growing conflict with the Chinese regime. It is no accident, as the Communists used to say, that Beijing scheduled secret underground nuclear tests -- despite having signed international agreements forbidding them — during the height of the Chinese Belgrade Embassy Incident and now, according to US, is again scheduling one. One of the reasons for the Hainan Incident was the growing array of missiles along the Fukien Coast facing Taiwan. That called, quite rightly given our involvement, for an increase in our listening flights over international waters. And that elicited the kind of interception by undertrained but exuberant fighter pilots that caused the accident.
Space does not permit a discussion of our involvement with Taiwan. But involved we are, and if we are to reduce the possibility of Beijing overplaying its hand — when the genome tabulations are completed, there may turn out to be a “gambling gene”, and if there is, the Chinese will have it — we have no option now but to reinforce Dubya’s stigmatization of our relationship with China as confrontational. That calls for a whole new Washington policy — including our transfer of technology through greedy American businessmen.
For in fact, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and acts like a duck, it is a duck — Peking or any other variety.
Sol W. Sanders is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.