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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Lacelle who wrote (39037)	3/17/1999 10:48:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Respond to of 67261

>>I don't think the current situation in Washington will help craft a decent foreign policy toward China. However, the idea that we should sit back and let these nations steal our technology is absurd. I never expected Bill Clinton to craft a decent foreign policy, given his Woodstock reality bites. Clinton's political calculations control his foreign policy, just like his domestic policy - they are all one. US interests are purely ancillary for him and his cronies. March 17, 1999 Who Lost China? As candidate for President in 1992, Bill Clinton accused George Bush of "coddling tyrants" for refusing to tie China's trade to its human-rights practices. Four years later, when Mr. Clinton had reversed himself and China was proving more militarily aggressive in Asian waters, the President's response was to accuse critics of trying to "isolate" China. So it comes as no surprise that the White House response to questions about China's apparent theft of U.S. nuclear secrets is to charge his opponents with wanting an isolationist United States. It is not simply Mr. Clinton's China policy that has him in hot water. It is the way it illuminates his very idea of policy. Whether as a handy foil to berate Mr. Bush for insensitivity to human rights, a convenient source of campaign cash or, now, a vehicle to bad-mouth the Reagan and Bush administrations, the Clinton China policy from the first has been subsumed into the permanent campaign. Indeed, to Tip O'Neill's dictum about all politics being local Mr. Clinton has appended his own contribution, to wit, that all foreign policy is politics. Was this not the message sent by having Sandy Berger, then his deputy national security adviser, attend the weekly 1996 campaign meetings? Whether China received any distinct quid pro quo for its cash will likely be the subject of endless debate. This misses the essential point. The information that China had about White House relationships with various Chinese operatives alone had great potential to embarrass Mr. Clinton. Indeed, Elizabeth Drew in her book quotes Mr. Clinton as saying that news of the John Huang scandal allowed Republicans to keep the House in 1996. A number of those Congress sought for questioning in the donorgate scandal found sanctuary in China. That would seem to have given Chinese leaders a pretty good foreign-policy trump were they inclined to play it. In the months since those Congressional hearings we have had even more damaging news about Mr. Clinton's recklessness, the consequences of which will doubtless be paid for in renewed efforts to "punish" China through trade. Bad enough that the Chinese have stolen the technology for a nuclear warhead that will make their own missiles more threatening to U.S. national security. Far worse is the casualness with which the White House greeted the news. Mr. Berger says that he was briefed on this in April 1996, which happens to be the same month Al Gore traveled to California for his infamous Buddhist fund-raiser. To Americans the dates may not hold much significance. But Taiwanese will immediately recognize that, by Mr. Berger's own account, he was told of China's new capabilities just a month after Beijing had lobbed its missiles off Taiwan's coast. Yet the White House coffees-for-cash continued. By now the damage to Mr. Clinton's credibility has become something of a cliché. The real damage, however, has been to American interests vis-à-vis a country that will likely remain at the center of our foreign policy for decades to come. All along our view has been to couple an open trade policy with China with a defense policy (including a missile shield) that would retain American military pre-eminence. This is not much different from the philosophy that has characterized U.S.-Japan relations since the end of World War II. Thus we supported Mr. Clinton in his efforts to reverse course and take the politics out of MFN. By muddying the lines between trade and human rights, between engagement and appeasement, between foreign policy and domestic politics, Mr. Clinton has made a hash of U.S. policies. The scandal of his China policy has spawned hostile lobbies on both sides of the Congressional fence, from Democrats and Republicans alike, and virtually guaranteed it will be an even larger issue in the 2000 Presidential campaign. Naturally, these folk are now reaching for the most immediate club around, which happens to be China's pending membership in the World Trade Organization and the permanent MFN status that comes with it. In normal times this would be a difficult enough issue on its own. Mr. Clinton's cynical playing of the China card for his own domestic purposes will make it much harder for those of us who believe that trade must not be made the whipping boy for either China's--or Mr. Clinton's--sins. The irony here is that the legacy of Clintonian engagement may ultimately prove to be a weakened U.S. defense system and a more restricted trade relationship, when what American interests require is just the opposite. It was said of President Nixon that the Watergate break-in lost America Vietnam. The cost of Mr. Clinton's scandals may well be China. http:wsj.com/