A deadly game of chicken
"The Chinese are new at this kind of cat-and-mouse game," said
Melvin Goodman, professor of international security at the National
War College. "It's not like the Soviet-American games, where the
pilots got to know each other, knew how to go cockpit-to-cockpit
to give each other the finger. They got close enough that they could
really make faces at each other."
By Naftali Bendavid
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON--Just three months ago, a Chinese aircraft came
within 20 feet of a U.S. spy plane in roughly the same spot as the
collision that forced an EP-3 surveillance plane to the ground in
China, officials say.
"Our Pacific Command was quite concerned," recalled Derek
Mitchell, a China expert in the office of then-Defense Secretary
William Cohen. "We protested in Beijing, and we brought in people
from their embassy here, and we stated that this could be
dangerous. So when I heard about this on Sunday, it was not a
complete shock."
That earlier episode illustrates two points military analysts
emphasize about the newest incident: U.S. planes routinely engage
in games of "chicken" with other aircraft in critical zones all over the
world; and the Chinese are relatively inexperienced at this
maneuvering, which may help explain why something went terribly
wrong this time.
"The Chinese are new at this kind of cat-and-mouse game," said
Melvin Goodman, professor of international security at the National
War College. "It's not like the Soviet-American games, where the
pilots got to know each other, knew how to go cockpit-to-cockpit
to give each other the finger. They got close enough that they could
really make faces at each other."
Airborne greeting parties
For 40 years, experts say, the United States has sent planes to
gather information off the coasts of potentially hostile or volatile
nations, from the Soviet Union to Cuba to the Persian Gulf. Military
officials, fairly or not, distinguish these from spy missions because
they do not intrude on foreign airspace, waters or soil.
The United States launches such flights several times a week,
perhaps daily, experts said. "This is a very common tactic," said
Bud Cole, a retired Naval captain and an expert on the Chinese
military. "It's trying to paint an electronic picture of a country about
which you're curious. The idea is, if you approach a coast, you
want to know what you can expect."
While the most famous cat-and-mouse games occurred between
U.S. and Soviet pilots, American fliers have also engaged in such
maneuvers other countries, such as Cuba. If Cuban pilots strayed
too close to U.S. airspace, the American military would dispatch
F-14s to escort them away.
Similar incidents have occurred in the Baltic, the Indian Ocean and
elsewhere.
The American role as a superpower makes it natural for the U.S. to
probe for information about other nations, officials said. When they
can, those nations respond with an airborne greeting party. It has
become almost a game, and some say it's surprising that collisions
do not occur more often.
But China feels put upon
To more nationalistic countries such as China, however, these flights
are not routine military business, but invasive forays that infringe on
their sovereignty. CHINA DOES NOT PARTROL the coasts of the United
States, several observers noted, and has asked the U.S. to halt the
missions.
Instead, the United States has been stepping up its flights, and the
Chinese, with improved aircraft, have been challenging them more
aggressively.
"This is emblematic of the U.S.-Chinese relationship," said Mitchell,
now a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"You have an established power and a rising power that is
aggressive and assertive. How do you manage the intersection of
those interests?"
Mitchell and others said Chinese and American pilots have not
worked out rules of the game, so pilots would know how much
distance to keep and what to expect.
"They don't recognize the rules of the road, that this is what powers
do," Mitchell said. "They don't accept it, the way we and the
Soviets seemed to accept it--we nodded and winked and did our
thing. We knew the stakes. The Chinese are not quite into that
mindset."
A pattern of perceived provocations
Chinese leaders appear to view the surveillance flights as another in
a long series of U.S. provocations, from the 1999 bombing of the
Chinese Embassy in Belgrade to American support for Taiwan.
With China beginning to assert itself as a military superpower,
commanders attempting to send a message may have pushed
matters too far, several experts theorized.
"The Chinese have been increasingly irritated by these flights," said
Robert Hathaway, a China specialist who spent 12 years on the
staff of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "It represents in their
view another example of American arrogance, and because of their
inability to prevent it, it became a symbol of their second-class
status and their military inferiority vis-a-vis the United States.
"It just rankled."
Published in The Seattle Times, PA3, Wednesday, April 4, 2001
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