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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (4471)	8/27/1999 12:47:00 PM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Tiawan Crisis Thanks to Clinton No. 130, 16-22 Aug. 1999 There is no doubt in Asia that Clinton is solely responsible for the Taiwan crisis. That an American president could be so incredibly stupid in his dealings with Beijing leaves Asian leaders both stunned and filled with contempt for the Oval Office. I have tried to stress that the Clinton's administration is a foreign policy disaster. And its most disastrous failures have been in China. Instead of working to strengthen China's reformist trends it has acted to strengthen its militaristic tendencies by rewarding bad behaviour. The more Chinese militarists behaved badly the more the Clinton administration did everything within its power to minimise their threat to American security. The administration deliberately, and criminally, ignored Beijing's acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, its rapid attempts to try and modernise its armed services, the mischievous role it has played in nuclear proliferation, its application of US high-tech imports to military uses. As I said elsewhere, the effect of brushing aside China's reformists in favour of appeasing Chinese militarists is to strengthen them at the expense of US security. Rewarding bad behaviour guarantees more of the same. This is why China is now engaged in a fierce sabre rattling exercise over Taiwan. As usual, most Western commentators have missed the vital point. China's aggressive noises are warnings to the rest of Asia and are signalling how much the regime holds the US in contempt. How the US reacts to these signals could have political and military repercussions for many years to come. Already the signs are bad. I pointed out last week that Admiral Dennis Blair's irresponsible comment that the US should not defend Taiwan would encourage Beijing to become even more bellicose. And that is precisely what happened. No wonder the rest of Asia is appalled by White House stupidity. Does this mean an invasion of Taiwan? Not in my opinion. Two fundamentals must be borne in mind. The first is the fact that for sometime China has been working to undermine American influence in the region. By showing that America is a "paper tiger", "an ally without courage", as one official put it to me, Beijing hopes to weaken the regional powers' faith in America's willingness to stand by its allies by standing up to Chinese threats. At the moment it appears it will definitely have some success, thanks to White House cowardice over Taiwan. In other words, the sabre rattling is part of Beijing's political war against the US. I have stated before that it is Beijing's prime long term aim to drive America out of Asia and then virtually out of the Pacific, at least as far back as the Hawaiian islands. As I wrote two months ago the consensus among China's political elite is that America is in a state of terminal moral and political decline1, and that this will eventually be reflected in American political power shrinking in absolute terms. It is believed that this decline will be preceded by an increasing inability to project military power. This is why Beijing believes time is on its side. (Ironically, Clinton's election wins only succeeded in reinforcing this dismal political prognosis, as has the insane process of 'feminising' the US military). Unfortunately, Clinton and his coterie of '60s misfits are literally incapable of truly understanding any of this. It simply does not fit their 'liberal' mindset. So why should China ruin its long term plans by attacking Taiwan and thus bring the wrath of the US Congress down on its head? And it is Congress, not Clinton, that it fears. It knows that though Clinton is a coward an angry Congress could force him to act. Regardless of the damage Clinton and his appointees have done to the American military, Beijing still has a lot of respect for what's left. This brings us to the other fundamental ? the true state of the PLA. A PLA general claimed that they could "roll up Taiwan in 10 days." This is pure bravado and he knows it. Though China has about 2.5 million troops, its equipment is largely obsolete. Compare this with Taiwan's 400,000 troops, highly trained and motivated, equipped with the latest hardware and backed up by a huge reserve of trained personnel. Any attempt to cross the Taiwan Strait would therefore inflict the kind of massive losses on China's armed services that no government could survive. As a token military gesture the PLA could try and invade one of the outlying islands, Kinmen perhaps. But though success would be guaranteed the losses would probably be politically unacceptable and certainly militarily embarrassing. There will be no invasion of Taiwan. But America will, thanks to Clinton, have suffered another political defeat in the region, which brings us to the Democrats. This is the party that Beijing wants to see control both Houses and the Oval Office. And why? Because it considers it to be, putting it politely, the party of appeasement. So I strongly suggest that Americans should ask themselves this question: Why does Beijing want to see Al Gore in the Oval Office?