[NYTr] Beating a Hawk in the Water: China Hand on Bush's Latest Humiliation

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

China Matters - Nov 30, 2007
http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2007/11/beating-hawk-in-water.html


Beating a Hawk in the Water

By China Hand

"Beating a dog in the water” is a Chinese expression meaning
"exploiting the disadvantageous position of an opponent to gain the
upper hand".

I think that’s what’s going on with the Kitty Hawk affair.

As his been widely reported, the Chinese abruptly withheld approval for
the Kitty Hawk carrier group’s Thanksgiving port visit to Hong Kong.

President Bush called some PRC diplomat to the White House to express
his displeasure and the White House announced that the whole thing had
been a misunderstanding.

That, I think, was the U.S. government’s big mistake. It laid us open
to an embarrassment that we should have seen coming a mile away.

The Chinese fired back with a statement that the snub had been
intentional, and triggered by U.S. sales of $940 million worth of
Patriot missile stuff to Taiwan.

>From the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/30/world/asia/30ship.html

"Beijing also said today that Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi had not told
President Bush in a meeting Wednesday that the decisions to deny the
ship visits were a “misunderstanding,” as the White House had reported
after the talks.

"'Reports that Foreign Minister Yang said in the United States that it
was a misunderstanding do not accord with the facts,' a Foreign
Ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, said in Beijing today, adding that
China had 'grave concern' over United States weapons sales to Taiwan."

Ouch.

The Chinese clearly wanted to make a point with the Kitty Hawk—and make
it publicly.

And to have the Bush administration flinch--and trout out a lame,
concocted excuse that the Chinese briskly and completely rebutted—makes
it looks like the truth about what’s going on in the west Pacific is
something that the PRC is ready to deal with, but the U.S. is unwilling
to confront.

As a belated riposte, the Kitty Hawk made a big deal of sailing through
the Taiwan Strait.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N29439533.htm

I think there’s something different and greater at stake than
complaining about Patriot missile sales or President Bush’s grip and
grin session with the Dalai Lama.

What I think is at stake here is whether the United States has the
right to treat the western end of the Pacific as its private lake—or
whether it needs Chinese agreement to sail in the new “Red” sea.

The symbolism of the Kitty Hawk snub would be rather apt.

The Kitty Hawk is a Cold War relic, the last conventionally-powered
aircraft carrier in the U.S. fleet, the only carrier group based
abroad—at Yokosuka, Japan—whose most recent mission was a big joint
exercise with the Japanese practicing sinking (presumably Chinese)
submarines.

The Thanksgiving trip was meant to be part of the Kitty Hawk’s final
victory lap around the west Pacific before it sails to the United
States for decommissioning early next year.

What better way to signal America’s retreat from Asia and declare that
the U.S. naval presence in the waters near China is contingent upon
Chinese sufferance than denying the Kitty Hawk a graceful, triumphant
exit from the scene?

The United States is quite serious about Hong Kong port visits.

As I wrote in March, the U.S. Navy engaged in a frantic scramble to
rush (or, in its terms, “surge”) the nuclear carrier Ronald Reagan to
visit Hong Kong in place of the John Stennis, which was being redeployed to the Middle East.
http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2007/03/power-surge-us-aircraft-carrier-pays.html

If you think the USN jumped through all these hoops to send a carrier
10,000 miles to Hong Kong so its sailors could have the opportunity to
party in Wanchai instead of San Diego, there’s a big bridge I’d like to
sell you.

In August, the Nimitz visited Hong Kong and was welcomed—though,
perhaps significantly, it is based in San Diego and not Japan.

Then, the Kitty Hawk goes to Hong Kong to make a point—that the U.S. is
an indispensable and inescapable presence in the Pacific—and this time
the Chinese wanted to make exactly the opposite point.

I’ve previously argued that the objective of China’s naval build up is
not to slug it out with America’s Seventh Fleet, or create a deterrent
to U.S. intervention opposing a Chinese move on Taiwan.
http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2006/05/chinas-military-modernization-and.html

The Chinese do intend to use military power for Taiwan reunification,
but only to demonstrate to Taipei the advantages and inevitability of
coming to terms peacefully with the dominant power in the west Pacific.

And the true inauguration of the Chinese century—if it’s really
coming—will be marked by the arrival of the Chinese navy at
Taiwan—during a peaceful, invited port call.

By this reading, the strategy is to establish the Chinese navy as the
credible security guarantor (in superpower parlance) for the smaller
Pacific nations falling within its economic sphere--or biggest bully on
the block in the west Pacific in blunter terms--to a line extending out
to the “second line” Pacific Island chain.

A Chinese navy with reach—but not necessarily hyper-power sized
technology or muscle-- removes the “the world can’t accept a power
vacuum out here” justification for a forward U.S. naval presence in the
region, which currently conducts massive exercises in Asian waters on
anti-piracy, disaster relief, and near-shore interdiction missions that
seem better suited to the Coast Guard.

Whittling down the justification for a massive U.S. naval presence in
Japan to Taiwanese security would put the United States and Japan in
the awkward position of admitting we are keeping a carrier group in the
western Pacific only for confronting the PRC.

Since the United States is officially committed to a one-China policy
and we don’t appear ready to characterize our dominant supplier of
socks, underwear, and lead-based toys as a our strategic enemy, this
would at the very least create some diplomatic and propaganda
awkwardness for the U.S.

In a riposte to the Rumsfeld-era unctuousness of “we can’t understand
why the PRC is conducting a military build-up”, the Chinese could say,
“we can’t understand why U.S. and Japan are maintaining a carrier group
in North Asia; our fleet has matters well in hand here.”

“And, in fact, we made it clear in November 2007 that you guys can’t
just sail around here like you own the place.”

So the Kitty Hawk’s replacement, the George Washington, will cruise to
take up its station in Japan next year under a cloud.

I expect that there will be some of what I characterize is “muscular
handwringing”. That’s the pundits’ version of “concern trolling”,
framing a decision or position we don’t like as evidence that the
people doing it are pathetically deluded dingbats.

In the Kitty Hawk situation, that would take the form of more sorrow
than in anger tsk-tsking that the PRC’s civvy-suited Communist
leadership is being led down the wide avenue to destruction by reckless
elements in the PLA who are endangering China’s aspirations to
responsible stakeholderism in the world system.

For the reasons above I, on the other hand, consider the Chinese move
to be a rather savvy one, exploiting an important opportunity to
advance its foreign policy interests in line with its long term
strategic objectives.

And I don’t think the decision to turn away a U.S. carrier group was
made by some disgruntled harbor master. This one went to the top.

I would also consider the Black Thanksgiving stunt a particularly
clever piece of political theater—because it occurred on the Bush
administration’s watch, when the U.S. was trying to inveigle Chinese
support for Iran sanctions and unable to respond to the Chinese insult
with anything more than an "in your face" sail through the Taiwan
Strait.

If the Chinese had pulled this stunt during the administration of the
next (and quite possibly Democratic) U.S. president, the Blue Team
would have been all over the craven appeasers of the Democratic
Party—and the administration might have been stampeded into a harder
line as a result.

But critics will have to deal with the fact—which will be noted in
foreign ministries throughout the world—that the precedent has been
established—and rather meekly acknowledged—during the blood-and-thunder
reign of George W. Bush.

When it comes to powerful entities finding themselves in weak and
vulnerable positions, the Kitty Hawk isn’t the only dog in the water.