Clinton Legacy Watch # 28: ‘Peace In Our Time’ With China

(Washington, D.C.): Sixty years ago in September, the leader of the free world returned from
a
visit to the homeland of a potential adversary. Neville Chamberlain gushed about his ability to
work with Adolph Hitler. He promised his people “peace in our time.” And in a turn of phrase
more important for its metaphorical import than its literal meaning, he urged those who
enthusiastically welcomed him back from his Munich meeting with the Fuhrer to “go home and
get a nice quiet sleep.” History may well treat Bill Clinton’s 1998 trip to Communist
China
with the same contempt as is now reserved for Prime Minister Chamberlain’s catastrophic
diplomatic mission to the Third Reich in 1938.

A Bill of Particulars

While there are, to be sure, differences — most notably, the President’s televised, if tempered,
comments about the benefits of democracy — consider a few of the eerie parallels:

• Hyping Sitzagreements: The most palpable similarity is the
  placebo agreement reached by
  the President and his hosts to de-target ballistic missiles aimed at each others’ nations. As was
  true of Hitler’s promise at Munich to confine himself to gobbling up Czechoslovakia’s
  Sudetenland, this commitment is of no strategic value. We cannot verify that the Chinese have
  stopped pointing at us the thirteen-or-so ICBMs which U.S. intelligence believes are targeted
  against American cities. Even if they were actually to do so, within a few seconds — or, at
  most, a few minutes — the original coordinates could be re-entered.

The effect of this accord, however, will — like the deal with Hitler that Chamberlain
represented as “peace for our time” — be to encourage Western publics to “get a nice
quiet sleep,” by discounting an emerging danger.⁽¹⁾ Like
their British counterparts two
generations before, Americans today want desperately to believe that conflict can be
avoided with Communist China. Nothing makes the people of democracies happier
than the soporific assurances of their leaders that no threats exist. They understandably
welcome representations to the effect that sacrifice will not be needed to transform a
potential foe into a reliable “strategic partner.” Unfortunately, this is rarely the case
and does not seem to be so in this instance.

• Abandoning a Fellow Democracy: In China, President Clinton effectively
  abandoned
  Taiwan in much the same way that Chamberlain in Germany turned his back on democratic
  Czechoslovakia. While experts debate whether the formulation he used went beyond the
  rhetoric of appeasement of Beijing dating back to the 1972 Shanghai Communique, the
  practical effect was unmistakable: The United States will support the hegemonism of the
  Communists on the mainland over the aspirations for self-determination of the people of
  Taiwan.

The Clinton Administration is now in the absurd, not to say strategically inane, position
of signaling its willingness to see an entity without appreciable territory or resources
become a Palestinian state, despite the considerable threat such an entity will
pose to
a valued democratic ally, Israel. At the same time, the Administration is denying
Taiwan — a democratic nation in all but name, which enjoys both territory and
considerable resources (indeed, it has some of the largest hard currency reserves of
any country in the world) — the right to be recognized as an independent sovereign
state, in deference to the largest despotism on the planet.

• Legitimating a Despot: The President went to considerable lengths to
  legitimate Jiang
  Zemin, in much the same way as the Prime Minister in 1938 felt obliged to invest in Hitler a
  stature that went beyond the requirements of diplomatic politesse. One could almost hear
  echoes of Chamberlain’s enthusiasm for the man who was modernizing Germany while acting
  as his partner in avoiding war as Mr. Clinton gushed that Jiang is “imaginative,” “an
  extraordinary intellect,” a man of “very high energy” and the “right leadership at the right time”
  for China.
• Undermining Alliance Relationships: In a manner reminiscent of
  Chamberlain’s disregard
  for his French allies in the run-up to Munich, President Clinton has exacerbated the strategic
  problem posed by China’s rising influence in Asia through his stiff-arming of America’s
  regional allies: Japan, South Korea and the Philippines — to say nothing of Taiwan. Madeleine
  Albright’s banal post-facto assurances that U.S.-PRC relations will not be improved at the
  latters’ expense are unconvincing. In any event, they are unlikely to dissuade American friends
  in the Pacific Rim from seeking to reach their own accommodations with the ascendant
  dictatorial power. If history is any guide, and it generally is, such accommodations will only
  serve to make conflict more likely.
• Buying Time for the Dictators: Finally, with his equivalent of the “Good
  Housekeeping Seal
  of Approval” on Communist China, Mr. Clinton has (like Chamberlain before him) bought time
  for a potentially fatal disease to metastasize. According to the President, there is no need to
  rethink the wisdom of transferring U.S. and other Western dual-use technology to
  China’s military; we need not worry about the policy of allowing the People’s
  Liberation
  Army access to America’s capital markets (where it is raising inexpensive, undisciplined
  funds for its ambitious modernization program); and since he believes the biggest threat we
  face from the PRC is an environmental one, we can safely allow the further “hollowing
  out”
  of our own military⁽²⁾ — even as theirs becomes
  better able to conduct devastating, if
  “asymmetric,” attacks against U.S. forces and infrastructure. The contrary is true in each
  case.

The Bottom Line

In short, chances are that President Clinton’s trip will be seen historically for what it was: an
exercise in appeasement. Jiang Zemin may be no Hitler (any more than he is a visionary
democratizer), but the government he leads has the potential to be every bit as dangerous a
problem for the Western democracies as was the Third Reich, if not considerably more so.

Should this potential be actualized, Mr. Clinton’s conduct — both while paying court abroad
as
well as while policy-making at home — is likely to be held substantially responsible for the tragedy
to come, in much the same way as his British counterpart’s behavior continues to be six decades
after the fact.

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1. For more on President Clinton’s deliberate effort to mislead the
American people about the
missile threat, see the op.ed. article by J. Michael Waller published in today’s
Washington Times entitled “No nukes pointed this way? Think again.”

2. The splendid “Inside the Ring” column in today’s Washington
Times reports that a powerful
briefing entitled “Averting the Defense Train Wreck” prepared by the Center for Strategic and
International Studies’ Dan Gouré and Jeffrey Ranney is making the rounds of Pentagon
leaders to
generally favorable reviews. This study adds further urgency to the warning issued to President
Clinton in a private letter sent last week by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. According to
news reports, Sen. Lott offered a “flat-out condemnation” of the current state of the U.S. military.
See in this connection Clinton Legacy Watch # 22: More Evidence of a Hollow
Military (No.
98-D 62, 7 April 1998) and Clinton Legacy Watch # 17: Dangers of a ‘Hollow
Military’ (No.
98-D 23, 5 February 1998).