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

To: Neocon who wrote (42069)	4/12/1999 4:52:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

The Manchurian Candidate can't deliver all the goods to his masters: April 12, 1999 Zhu Knows Bill Clinton certainly knows how to make friends fast. Judging from the $300,000 contribution from the head of China's military intelligence to the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign, by 1996 Beijing had overcome whatever reservations it might have had about a candidate who vowed not to "coddle tyrants." As Prime Minister Zhu Rongji found out last week when Mr. Clinton shot down China's bid for WTO membership, however, getting the President you want is not enough. What's important is a President who can deliver. The irony here is that the associations and assistance that helped return Mr. Clinton to the White House now help render him impotent to push through any agenda. With regard to China, America has two compelling interests: first, to do its best to see that China continues to wean itself off the Communist system in the direction of more economic and political openness; second, to ensure that in the interim stages China's newfound wealth does not become the source of increased belligerence. This, after all, is what distinguishes engagement from acquiescence. After a meeting in which Mr. Clinton attached what proved to be unacceptable conditions for WTO membership, Mr. Zhu sagely cited an unfavorable "political atmosphere." In other words, Congress, the media and the public were upset at reports that China meddled in U.S. election campaigns and stole sensitive nuclear technology. Such episodes are bound to break out now and then, moreover, as long as China remains a Communist power that violates the rights of its citizens, lobs missiles off Taiwan in a fit of pique and increasingly sees U.S. forces in the Pacific as unwelcome. Mr. Zhu's bland denials of wrongdoing to the contrary, it was his government that a year ago promoted Ng Lap Seng--the shadowy figure who helped transmit $1 million in Chinese donations to the Clinton campaign--to posts with the Chinese People's Consultative Conference in Beijing and the Preparatory Committee for the Macau Special Administrative Region. Especially under such circumstances, promoting normal trade relations requires the expenditure of a considerable part of political capital by American leaders. Mr. Clinton's problem is that he has no such credibility. Congress, to be sure, is an obstacle. But it is the nature of Congress to incline in this direction--just ask George Bush--because it is a collection of parochial interests. Likewise it is in the nature of presidents to seek the broader national interest. Yet instead of pushing China on its commitment to openness, Mr. Clinton chose to scuttle Beijing's WTO bid on the reef of overtly protectionist conditions. Again, American interests were subverted to Mr. Clinton's domestic straits. However much attaching conditions favorable to labor unions, steel and textiles may advance Mr. Clinton's standing among domestic constituents, it will only make the long-sought-after goal of depoliticizing trade that much harder for any future President. Only a year back everyone thought the MFN issue had been put aside forever. This present difficulty is not simply a matter of Chinese missteps, or even a function of the Clinton Administration's entanglements with China, from White House coffee klatches with Chinese gun runners to Vice President Al Gore's solicitations from inexplicably wealthy Buddhist monks. It is instead a function of a larger irresolution, the inevitable offspring of a foreign policy born less of vital interests than of interest groups, not to mention the empty threats now coming home to roost. That may be one reason that when it comes to dealing with problem regimes, people look to men and women with a reputation for toughness: Richard Nixon with China, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher with Mikhail Gorbachev, John Paul II with the leadership of his native Poland. Engaging dangerous powers is always tricky. When that power happens also to be the world's most populous nation, one still committed to Communist rule, the shoals are all the more treacherous. The easy way out is simply to view the enormous contradiction that constitutes a modernizing China as either all black or all white, whereas the American interest clearly lies in distinguishing between the two, often amid a cacophony of conflicting social, political and economic passions. This in turn requires not only judgment, but a public credibility built on past action that will see a leader through the tough calls. Having been sent home nearly empty-handed, perhaps even Mr. Zhu now appreciates the real price of character in an American President. interactive.wsj.com