mbs
Anybody besides me noticed Rumsfeld's increasing hostility to China?
What the hell is he up to? Why?
I thought our corporations wanted to do business with China. It doesn't seem to be urged by our military.
So, why Rumsfeld's hostility? It doesn't seem to me to serve any US purpose. Is there some deeper purpose I'm missing?
-- John K. Taber
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/04/world/04MILI.html?pagewanted=print
June 4, 2001 Rumsfeld Limiting Military Contacts With the Chinese By MICHAEL R. GORDON Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has cut off virtually all of the Pentagon's contacts with the Chinese armed forces in a move that is prompting concern among China experts within the United States military establishment.
The Pentagon says that it is conducting a case-by-case review of seminars, visits and other contacts with China and that no sweeping decisions have been made.
But internal Pentagon memoranda indicate that Mr. Rumsfeld is personally deciding which contacts should be allowed with the Chinese and that he has rejected an overwhelming majority of them.
Under Mr. Rumsfeld's policy, no direct contact between American and Chinese military officers has been authorized in recent months.
A trip to China by Vice Adm. Paul Gaffney, the president of the United States National Defense University, which had been scheduled to occur last week, was canceled.
And Chinese officers are no longer being invited to seminars at the Asia- Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, the Pentagon's primary research center on security issues in that region.
Mr. Rumsfeld authorized American officers to attend multinational seminars on relief operations to which Chinese officers were also invited. But the defense secretary issued specific guidance that the American officers were to "minimize contact" with their Chinese counterparts at the April symposia, according to a Pentagon memo obtained by The New York Times.
Under the new policy, the United States is also no longer requesting port calls in Hong Kong, requests that the Pentagon had previously made to reinforce the territory's unique status.
Senior aides to Mr. Rumsfeld said the decisions were intended to signal deep displeasure over China's handling of the collision between a Chinese fighter and a United States Navy EP-3E, which resulted in an 11- day detention for the crew, the loss of the Chinese pilot and weeks of wrangling over the return of the aircraft.
But even before the collision, the Bush administration was taking a more skeptical approach toward China, though it had maintained military-to-military ties. And it is not clear how energetically the Pentagon will pursue contacts, even once the dispute over the EP-3E, which remains on Hainan island in China, is fully resolved.
"It is not business as usual," a senior Pentagon official said. "The Bush administration was going on the belief that the relationship was not balanced and that China perhaps was obtaining more access here than we were from our visits there. We were in the process of reviewing this to try to strike a better balance when the April 1 collision occurred."
Mr. Rumsfeld's policy worries some former and current United States officers. They argue that an interchange gives the United States insight into Beijing's thinking, develops contacts that may prove useful in the future and contributes to deterrence by showing China the high caliber of the United States military.
H. C. Stackpole III, the retired three-star Marine general and Vietnam war hero who leads the Pentagon-funded Asia-Pacific Security Center, said cutting off contacts is counterproductive.
"I think it ensures that the hard- liners in Beijing have ammunition for an increased arms buildup," he said in an interview. "When you have the kind of position we are taking right now, only one view becomes prevalent. Those in China who do not wish to have the U.S. as an enemy find their voices become muted."
Bernard Cole, known as Bud, a professor at the National Defense University and a retired navy captain, said China's penchant for secrecy about its armed forces makes military exchanges a potentially valuable tool for learning about Beijing's military.
"I would agree that the Chinese have more access in the United States than we have in China, but we get more out of the relationship," said Mr. Cole, who is a leading expert on the Chinese Navy.
Mr. Rumsfeld's decisions also suggest that the Pentagon's policy on contacts with the Chinese military is tougher than the Bush administration has previously acknowledged. On April 30, the Pentagon issued a memo instructing the United States armed forces to cut off ties with Chinese military and civilian officials until further notice.
After the White House raised concerns, Mr. Rumsfeld later dismissed the memorandum as the work of a policy aide who had misunderstood his intentions. But Mr. Rumsfeld's rulings suggest that the spirit of the initial memo has prevailed after all.
Asked to comment, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, Mr. Rumsfeld's spokesman, said: "There is a dearth of activity right now. First things first. We need to get the plane back."
After the plane is returned, Admiral Quigley said, Mr. Rumsfeld will consider future contacts on the basis of two main factors: is the United States being provided with reciprocal access, and are the exchanges of equal value.
The Pentagon's contacts with the Chinese have a long history. During the Reagan administration, Washington's goal was to contain Soviet power. The United States sold arms to the Chinese and provided the Chinese military with advice on logistics and personnel.
After the crackdown at Tiananmen Square in 1989, United States contacts with the Chinese military were suspended. But during the Clinton administration, William J. Perry, then the defense secretary, restored the ties.
"I think there are a couple of things we have gotten out of it," Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the head of the Pacific Command, said in an interview. "I have sense of what is going on on the other side. I think that this is a fundamentally safer situation, even if it does not lead to a nice, neat solution of a crisis, than a situation in, say, North Korea, where none of us know who those people are.
"On the Chinese side, although they don't much like it, they are generally impressed with the superiority of our armed forces. That is a useful antidote to their self-propaganda," Admiral Blair added.
Republican conservatives, however, have long questioned such exchanges, arguing that the Chinese use them to learn about tactics that would strengthen their ability against Taiwan. Last year, Congress adopted legislation limiting the content of the contacts.
In additional to canceling the trip to China of the president of the United States National Defense University, Mr. Rumsfeld called off two separate visits by students at the National Defense University.
The visit of a senior Chinese officer, Gen. Guo Boxiong, which had been scheduled for May 10, was also canceled.
As a result of another ruling by Mr. Rumsfeld, a Chinese general was disinvited from a one-week program for senior military and civilian officers at General Stackpole's Asia- Pacific center.
The defense secretary also disallowed the participation of a Chinese professor at a three-day seminar at the center. The professor is the deputy director of a Johns Hopkins University program in Nanjing.
Later, when the center sought to invite two Chinese military officers for a 12-week program this summer its invitation was blocked by the American Embassy in Beijing. Instead, the center invited two Chinese Foreign Ministry officials, but the Chinese turned down the invitations. As relations have deteriorated, the Chinese have rejected some contacts as well.
Washington has proposed that a working group be convened under the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement, an accord aimed at avoiding incidents at sea. The purpose would be to discuss procedures to avoid incidents in the air as well. The Bush administration had hoped to hold the meeting last month, but the Chinese did not agree.
Advocates of contacts with China are fighting an uphill battle. General Stackpole was initially rebuffed when he sought approval to invite a Chinese researcher to his institute, but the Pentagon eventually relented. The researcher is from the South China Sea Institute, on Hainan.
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company