With all due respect for Mr. Sheer, the sunshine and butterflies image he presents is not quite the reality we"re seeing right now.
First of all, let me stress the woeful regard I have of the truism that the only people in the US who seem to pay any attention to Taiwan are the likes of Wolfowitz, Tancredo, Bolton, etc. Hawks certainly do rule the US" Taiwan policy, and I personally don"t really get too worked up when Taiwan doesn"t get the American weapons that it wants or that the US wants to sell them.
I believe peace is possible, and I don"t think it has to necessitate a war. On that point, I agree with Mr. Scheer.
That said, where exactly did the author get the idea that war is now seen as counterproductive? One of the first things China did was to UPDATE the 1000+ missiles it has pointing at Taiwan:
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/05/china
Scheer left a lot out of this rosy depiction of the cross-strait flights: http://tinyurl.com/5fxsvj
To be clear, I am no DPP diehard, nor do I think that Taiwan must absolutely be independent. Yet, Scheer"s oversimplification for the purpose of making the argument that the hawks in Washington lack the nuance to understand the relationship between Taiwan and China as anything but military proves that, well, he also lacks that nuance.
Taiwan Declares Peace on China
You can't trust the Chinese. I don't care if you're talking about those communists on the mainland or the other guys on Taiwan; they just won't follow the war-games script that our weapons hawks had counted on. Their mutual passion runs not to matters of tired politics but rather on the lust of venture capitalists. To the Chinese, irrespective of past allegiances, the prospect of war has come to be viewed as counterproductive, and they now have the confidence to show it.
No longer pretending to be enemies, a condition in which they engaged in angry rhetoric while doing much business together on the side, a public love affair now has broken out across the Strait of Formosa. On Friday, there were scheduled direct flights between the mainland and its breakaway island for the first time in 60 years, and the invasion of tourists clicking their cameras was on.
Not that it was much noticed by the media or presidential candidates, but this long chapter of Cold War conflict has been closed and a new era of peace proclaimed by once strident foes. Taiwanese businessmen already are major investors in the mainland, and the new Taiwan government has recognized that reality by quickly pushing for full normalization of trade and other accommodations.
For years now, the Chinese on both sides of the strait have been acting as if they are members of one nation, with the descendants of those who fled the mainland with Chiang Kai-shek building mansions in their old villages and increasingly preferring that their offspring study in China rather than at American schools. Thus, it was not surprising when the leader of the old nationalist Kuomintang Party, which won the recent Taiwan election, quickly went to the mainland to pledge the dawn of a new era. Gone is the prime excuse for a major U.S. military presence in the Pacific, now that the Taiwanese have made their separate peace. What good are our fancy military weapons to people preoccupied with a consumer revolution? The concern over mainland missiles landing on Taiwan has been replaced with a fear that some country cousins from the mainland might be given to spitting on the sidewalks. Those fears were assuaged when tourists from both sides over the weekend conducted themselves with proper comportment while shopping till they dropped.
That peace has broken out is a nightmare scenario for America's military hawks in desperate need of an excuse for soaking up more than half of the U.S. government's discretionary budget. There was real panic when Mikhail Gorbachev formally ended the Cold War and George H.W. Bush announced a 30 percent cut in military spending in 1992. Then came the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the wildest peacetime spending spree in history. No one in power noticed that the expensive weapons were designed to defeat an enemy that no longer existed. That's because we were traumatized by something called terrorism, and few questioned the decision to build weapons such as the two new Virginia-class submarines, at a cost of $5 billion, to catch Osama bin Laden, probably holed up in a cave in a landlocked nation. But submarines obviously have nothing to do with fighting terrorists, forcing Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent who represents Connecticut, where the subs are built, to play the China card: "If we do not move to produce two submarines a year as soon as possible, we are in serious danger of falling behind China."
Fomenting fear of China is essential to making the case for the whole range of high-tech war toys that no longer have a legitimate military purpose. But it's a sick joke. We are paying the Chinese the interest on the money we borrow from them to build very expensive weapons to counter weapons the Chinese have no intention of building. The latest word from the Pentagon is that "[t]he Intelligence Community estimates China will take until the end of this decade or later to produce a modern force capable of defeating a moderate-size adversary."
The only adversary that interested China, according to the Pentagon report, was Taiwan, and as recent events have indicated, that game is over. But don't shed tears just yet for the denizens of the military-industrial complex. Why should they doubt our continued willingness to throw money at weapons that have no targets, when few in Congress or the media ever bother to notice?
It took Gorbachev on Tuesday, in scathing criticism of President Bush and presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama, to note that in the United States, "The subject of military spending has literally been shrouded in the curtain of silence. This taboo must be lifted."
Robert Scheer is the author, most recently, of "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America," published by Twelve Books.
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With all due respect for Mr. Sheer, the sunshine and butterflies image he presents is not quite the reality we"re seeing right now.
First of all, let me stress the woeful regard I have of the truism that the only people in the US who seem to pay any attention to Taiwan are the likes of Wolfowitz, Tancredo, Bolton, etc. Hawks certainly do rule the US" Taiwan policy, and I personally don"t really get too worked up when Taiwan doesn"t get the American weapons that it wants or that the US wants to sell them.
I believe peace is possible, and I don"t think it has to necessitate a war. On that point, I agree with Mr. Scheer.
That said, where exactly did the author get the idea that war is now seen as counterproductive? One of the first things China did was to UPDATE the 1000+ missiles it has pointing at Taiwan: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/05/china
Scheer left a lot out of his article: http://tinyurl.com/5fxsvj
To be clear, I am no DPP diehard, nor do I think that Taiwan must absolutely be independent. Yet, Scheer"s oversimplification for the purpose of making the argument that the hawks in Washington lack the nuance to understand the relationship between Taiwan and China as anything but military proves that, well, he also lacks that nuance.
This is so typical China @ss-kissing pap that the so-called China experts love to spout. However it is pure unadulterated cr@p. China is not a free nation and Taiwan is. If the Taiwanese want to fly there so be it. Taiwan did not to my reconciliation have a vote to join the PRC. BTW you know who was at the airport to greet the citizens visiting free Taiwan, the members of the Falun Gong. Like them or not they have a right to practice their beliefs. Do you think they were able to greet Taiwanese passengers in Chinese airports? BTW Taiwan can always chose not to buy the weapons. It's their choice.
My initial post was a bit too long, so I had to cut it.
The first "forgotten war" was our undeclared war in Korea, 1950-53. (Just Google "forgotten war"). And while an armistice agreement stopped the shooting in 1953, technically the United Nations Command (UNC) and South Korea are still at war with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea since no peace treaty has been signed.
The military-industrial complex as well as politicians like Joe Lieberman who look on defense equipment spending as a jobs program for their home states (as well as the bases and their civilian employees) will never want for a "ten foot tall" opponent.
If not the Soviets after 1991, then the sneaky "Communist Chinese" that Lou Dobbs just loves to bash. But if a de facto peace is breaking out across the Taiwan Strait between the communists and Kuomintang enemies of the decades-long Chinese civil war, one only needs to look north to Siberia and the Maritime Province and west to Mother Russia.
The Russians, now exporting oil, are no longer impoverished, and with deteriorating ships tied up at the docks, etc. And with the skyrocketing price of oil in the last year or so, Presidents Putin and now Medvedev are easily able to afford to crank up the Russian defense industry and its design bureaus to once again field modern tanks, ships, and planes.
So don't hold your breath waiting for a "peace dividend." Even without a resurgent Russian bear, our Army and Marines need tens of billions in new equipment to replace what has been destroyed or worn out by a 24/7 OPTEMPO in Iraq as well as in the "forgotten war" in Afghanistan, while the Air Force and Navy want "stealth" aircraft and ships that are of little use in "asymmetrical warfare" against stateless terrorists.
While I don't disagree with much of your post, this part of it is shortsighted:
"while the Air Force and Navy want "stealth" aircraft and ships that are of little use in "asymmetrical warfare" against stateless terrorists."
They are of great use. This administrations crony appointments to top military posts in charge of them may not be the best use of those resources.
Blackwater, Halliburton, Iraq, now that's wasteful.
Very incisive posting.
Also disgraceful is the global arms trade in which we, the Russians (the two leaders) the Chinese and others happily churn out weapons that help inflame situations everywhere. The Russian AK-47 is the weapon of choice for child soldiers. We and the Russians seek to profit from the India-Pakistan arms race. Tanks, small arms, artillery, oats, aircraft -- we're helping nations everywhere waste money that could be saved if the humans focused on diplomacy to solve problems.
If ever there was dirty money, this is it.
Dont worry, I hear that they are eyeing Nevada as the new Enemy !!
It's quite simple:
1. Bush is not trying to sell weapons to Taiwan. There's been an arms freeze on since 2006. The pro-democracy party here desperately wants weapons so they can defend their nation. A five minute google search could have found this.
2. The Bushites and the Establishment (see recent CFR reports) want to quietly sell Taiwan out to China. They are not using it as a Cold War stalking horse. The Right is very critical of the policy -- see Waldron's dissent from the CFR China policy or Tkacik's writings.
3. The reason neocons are Taiwan's friends is because the Left continues to view Taiwan through outmoded Cold War lenses, as Scheer does here. With its democracy abandoned by progressives, who else is there for the island to turn to in the US?
Michael
Michael Turton
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Posted July 9, 2008 | 01:29 AM (EST)