July 20, 2004

Gunboat diplomacy

Pretty much unnoticed, the U.S. has deployed an unprecedented seven aircraft carrier strike groups to the Pacific within striking range of China. The intent appears to be to dissuade China from undertaking its oft-stated threat to invade Taiwan should that democratically governed island formally declare its independence from the mainland. The Straits Times of Singapore (via The Agonist) gives some perspective on this deployment: "ONE aircraft carrier is sent to a trouble spot as a reminder of US presence. This was done several times in the past, when tension was high in the Taiwan Strait. "TWO carriers show serious concern, as was the case when China test-fired missiles over the strait in 1996. "THREE OR FOUR are sent in combat situations -- as in the Gulf War in the early 1990s and the recent Iraqi war. "Sending SEVEN carriers in peace time to the same region is unprecedented." Rather than cowing the Chinese, however, the exercise may have the opposite effect. "Needless to say, the Chinese are not amused," former newsman and Asia specialist Chalmers Johnson writes. "They say that their naval and air forces, plus their land-based rockets, are capable of taking on one or two carrier strike groups but that combat with seven would overwhelm them. So even before a carrier reaches the Taiwan Strait, Beijing has announced it will embark on a crash project that will enable it to meet and defeat seven U.S. carrier strike groups within a decade." Johnson's piece is a bit alarmist. He also wishfully asserts that, "If left alone by U.S. militarists, China will almost surely, over time, become a democracy on the same pattern as that of South Korea and Taiwan (both of which had U.S.-sponsored military dictatorships until the late 1980s)." Well, we can always hope, but it's not a given. In the meantime, the U.S. does have an important and uneasy role to play in trying to prevent hostilities between Taiwan (population 22 million) and China (population 1.2 billion), which would be enormously destabilizing and might lead to a naval conflict between China and the U.S. Whether massing naval power in the western Pacific is the best way to keep the lid on is, of course, the question.

Posted by tbrown at 12:29 PM

Sandy's pants

It's a bit unseemly, to say the least, and potentially criminal as well, to have Bill Clinton's former national security adviser, Sandy Berger, stuffing his notes about classified documents inside his jacket and into his ample waistband, then "inadvertantly" removing some of those documents from the national archive and "accidentally" destroying a few. Berger also is an informal foreign policy adviser to John Kerry, so this is a stick in the eye for his campaign as well. As we know, all this happened while Berger was reviewing classified documents in the National Archives from the Clinton years to determine what should be turned over to the 9/11 commission for its investigation. AP reports that: "Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed the handwritten notes by placing them in his jacket and pants, and also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio. " 'I deeply regret the sloppiness involved, but I had no intention of withholding documents from the commission, and to the contrary, to my knowledge, every document requested by the commission from the Clinton administration was produced,'Berger said in a statement to the AP." And the 9/11 commission says it got everything it needed. It's hard to be sure what, exactly, was going on here, but AP says that, "some drafts of a sensitive after-action report on the Clinton administration's handling of al-Qaida terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration are still missing …" Hmmm. Clinton … al-Qaida … missing. Sounds like a coverup, doesn't it? But was it? The threat in question was the so-called Millennium Plot involving Ahmed Ressam, who was arrested at Port Angeles after crossing from Canada with a car full of bomb-making materials. The after-action report that Berger apparently purloined was written by Richard Clarke, then the administration counterterrorism chief, who apparently was harshly critical of government agency performance and offered some two-dozen suggestions on how things could be improved. But he says it doesn't make sense that Berger would try to hide versions of that memo because it was widely distributed throughout government. There's also the somewhat curious timing of all this. The investigation into Berger has been underway since last October, with the FBI joining in January. How odd that it should come to light just a few days before the 9/11 commission releases its final official report on Thursday. Well, more to come, no doubt.

Posted by tbrown at 12:28 PM