Steven-
You seemed to miss the point I was addressing in my PS about Trulock. I was addressing the Clinton administration's reaction, which was one of dismissing a politically inconvenient matter of grave national security concern: spying with respect to WMD on the part of an arguably hostile dictatorship (we cannot tolerate such spying on the part of even "friendly" nations). A dereliction of duty of the first order- and sadly what I've come to expect of the Clintonistas.
<<This is hardly unique to the left. The illusion that rightist dictatorships were effective against communism...>>
I think there is a salient difference. Conservatives tend ot regard rightest authoritarian regimes as the lessor of evils, even though they recognize they may be undesirable. They are frequently regarded as allies of convenience at best, and often as simply handy guys to have around. The left tends to regard leftist governments as desirable- witness the fawning over an aging dictator like Fidel Castro. Mme. Mitterand encapsulated it well when she said, "Ce n'est pas un dictator." I think such blinkered thinking does not generally exist on the right- I personally never heard anyone defend Franco, and the best they could muster about Marcos was he was an anticommunist.
As to the interesting second part of your statement. Dictatorships of the right are generally- the Nazis may be the exception to prove the rule- not as pernicious as those of the left, although they may be quite nasty. For one thing, when a Franco or Salazar dies, history shows how amenable such societies are to change. But when the state/party has re-written the history and conciousness of a nation, when it controls the means of communication and has driven out the private sector, the demise of the reigning tyrant is rarely sufficient to usher in a new age.
<<do you honestly believe that China is anywhere remotely close to achieving nuclear parity with the US, in either quantity or quality?>>
Trulock's concern about spying on the part of the PRC has been shown to have been well founded. Whether of not China is near to attaining "nuclear parity" (whatever that means) with the US is completely irrelevant to whether or not their spying is a security concern and has no bearing on the question of should or should not the PRC be treated as an essentially friendly power. Why would you ask such a question? |
