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T A B L E+T A L K Should the Clinton administration reconsider its policy of reconciliation with China? Draft policy in the Headlines area of Table Talk
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The China syndrome
BY JOSHUA MICAH MARSHALL | The current Chinese espionage controversy is "the most alarming nuclear espionage scandal in nearly 50 years, certainly since the Rosenbergs," says CNN's Lou Dobbs. What makes it similar to the "Soviet espionage of the 1940s," according to arch-conservative columnist Phyllis Schlafly, "is the cover-up by the administration." This avalanche of outrage was triggered on March 6, when New York Times staff writers Jeff Gerth and James Risen revealed that in the mid-1980s, China obtained U.S. technology that allows nuclear warheads to be miniaturized down to not much bigger than a large television set. But the fat really hit the fire two days later when Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced the firing of Los Alamos weapons designer Wen Ho Lee, the Taiwan-born Chinese-American scientist believed to be at the center of the espionage. The days that followed have brought a steady chorus of calls for congressional investigations, for the resignation of National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and for a new get-tough policy with China. But before heading to the bomb shelters to wait for Chinese missiles to rain down upon us, it's worth getting some political perspective on the controversy. The furor over Chinese espionage has more to do with right-wing nostalgia for the Cold War and U.S. domestic politics than it has to do with threats to American national security. Ever since 1994, when conservative Republicans took over Congress, hostility to China on the American right has grown apace. Under pressure from Republicans, President Clinton approved issuing a visa to the president of Taiwan, which China considers a rebellious province -- a move that roiled U.S.-Chinese relations for several years. More recently, Republicans have accused the Chinese of posing all manner of threats to the United States, including peddling AK-47s to American street gangs. And just this week, one of the Republican Party's most vitriolic critics of China, GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer, said that "America's China policy must recognize the Cold War posture of the current Chinese regime." Why are Republicans so trigger-happy when it comes to China? Several reasons -- the first of which is baldly political. Nothing has done more to damage the unity of political conservatism than the end of the Cold War. The robust 1990s economy, the rise of the fractious religious right and the increasingly centrist position of the Democratic Party have each played a role in fomenting the divisions that bedevil today's GOP. But none is so important as the end of the Cold War. With so many problems finding a unifying agenda on domestic issues, Republicans are looking to China to provide the party with a solid national defense issue in 2000. And a new Cold War would help Republicans in innumerable ways. As GOP foreign policy guru Richard Kagan, himself one of the China-hawks, recently put it, "China is going to be a big issue in this campaign, including the primary campaign. It's a core grass-roots issue for Republicans. When a candidate goes before a conservative audience, China is an applause line." And Kagan's right. Lamar Alexander -- once known as a GOP moderate until he decided he wanted to be president -- was the first out of the gates calling on National Security Advisor Berger to resign. He was followed by almost every other candidate for the Republican nomination. And now the whole question of China has turned into a political football with a host of second-tier candidates trying to bait GOP pacesetter George W. Bush into ending his silence on the China question. None of this is meant to imply that China does not represent a serious foreign policy challenge to the United States or that the theft of nuclear weapons technology has not compromised U.S. national security. There is some debate about how much the Chinese would have been aided by the miniaturization technology allegedly stolen from Los Alamos. But even many of those who are sympathetic to Clinton administration foreign policy concede that the technology transfer "probably was fairly serious." N E X T+P A G E+| Fears about China could become a self-fulfilling prophecy |
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