China's got our men and our plane

Great Debates
121

let me spell it out for you then Milo.

  1. Clinton isn’t the president of the US right now.
  2. Bush is.
  3. Clinton, as such, shouldn’t be answering questions in the media about current diplomatic issues. Certainly not in this circumstance. Very bad form, at best.
  4. I was angry at Clinton. you should be jumping in the aisles, as you’ve labled me (incorrectly) as the supreme Clinton appologizer.

From the first, the US ambassador to China urged patience. That’s what should have been exercised (IMHO). Instead of making statements like Failure of the Chinese government to react promptly to our request is inconsistent with standard diplomatic practice and with the expressed desire of both our countries for better relations , said in the very early moments.

a better response would have been to acknowledge that a collision occured, that we were certain our crew was safe, and that both countries were working together to resolve the situation. (IMHO, shared by some experts)

Now, please note that I am not saying that Mr. Bush’s was inaccurate about the “inconsistent with standard diplomatice practice” etc. , just that his timing sucked. He issued that statement on April 2. That’s issuing them an order and hinting at repercussions should they not do what they’re ordered to do. And pretty darned quickly as these things tend to go.

Obviously, you disagree.

122

international diplomacy is governed by a rigid sense of protocal. Who issues statements, when they are issued, what they are, all of these things go into the balance. Clinton at this point should refrain from publically commenting on the situation at all. The fact that he’s asked the question doesn’t (in this case) mean he should answer.

123

Cripes, wring, you’re forcing me to agree with Milo! (on this limited issue of public statements by Bush and Clinton, at least). You are henceforth denied permission to complain about my making you agree with Freedom.

(Insert smiley face.)

Bush: while I’ll agree that he could have been slightly less abrasive in the opening hours, I hardly think it matters. It’s not as if China is refusing to give us back our plane and our men because we didn’t use the magic word.

Clinton: you say that he shouldn’t be commenting on the situation at all. I agree, and I don’t think that he has, really. Aside from saying that it’s not his place to say anything, he has stated only the thunderingly obvious. “Gee, I hope everything works out.”

124

What I don’t understand is this attitude that we were caught spying when we shouldn’t have been. What’s up with that?

Are you all saying that we should stop gathering information about the military capabilities of other countries? That gentlemen don’t open other people’s mail? Should we stop intelligence gathering?

How can we protect our country if we have no idea what kind of readiness, technology, and manpower other countries have? We gather this information about ALL other countries, not just ones we plan on having wars with. We send “spyplanes” all over the world, not just China.

This was not some secret mission that the Chinese accidentally found out about. We do this ROUTINELY. We have satelites going over every inch of the earth. We have agents and aircraft everywhere. Is this bad? Should we stop trying to figure out what other countries are up to?

I can’t understand this feeling that we shouldn’t have been “spying” on the Chinese. This is what countries do. They figure out what we’re up to, we figure out what they’re up too. It would be much much much more dangerous to stop “spying”, since doing the right things requires having accurate information.

Think about how many wars could have been averted if only the people involved had had accurate information about what their opponents were up to. Spying PREVENTS wars. We have a moral obligation to “spy” on China, to understand their military capabilities and objectives. To do otherwise would be morally wrong.

Given that, I imagine and expect that our people will be returned soon. The plane will be returned much later, after experts have gone over it. This is regretable from our standpoint, but understandable and expected. Hell, if our plane went down in Israel, or France, or pretty much any other country, they’d at least take a quick look inside.

That said, if our personnel aren’t returned within a few days this will become a huge problem. If they are tried, ala Gary Powers, I hate to think what might happen. Public opinion in the US will force the President to do something. Cutting off trade with China would be only the first step. However, I imagine it won’t come to that. The Chinese are holding them to demonstrate that they can. Once they’ve been held for a while, they’ll be released.

125

So if a Chinese spy plane nosing off the coast of Florida has to make an emergency landing at Ontario, you’ll be the first one to stand up to all the hawks in Washington and argue that we should just help them fix their plane and send them home?

Realistically, if the situation were reversed, we would be detaining the Chinese crew and their craft while we determined (a) what information they gathered about us, (b) whether or not the airplane contained a bomb or other danger, © whether any of the crew members wanted to defect, and (d) any other information we can gleam from the intruder.

The Chinese are simply applying the same hard-nosed tactics that we would apply to them. To whine that this is somehow unfair (because we’re the heroic red-white-and-blue, rah rah) is to be either incredibly naive or incredibly hypocritical.

Fortunately, Dubya is both…

126

ACK!

Orlando, not Ontario. My goof…

127

Another cultural view. Mainland Chinese think that “expressing regret” means nothing but if someone in Washington would “apologize” that such an incident occurred then we could move on. Perhaps it’s a matter of semantics, but to the Chinese the english word “regret” does not express or imply “apology”. Wish Washington would grow up and use a word that would be accepted.

When Nato bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, my staff was perhaps outraged most that the word “regret” was used. Now if Washington would simply just hit the replace function and substitute in “apology”, relations with China would improve.

I really wonder who are the advisors on China policy? Clearly some new ones are needed.

128

Yes, and if China would hit the replace button and say that it “accepts” Taiwan independence instead of “rejects” its independence, a lot of people in Taipei and Washington would be happy. If Israel “apologized” for occupying Jerusalem, if Russia “apologized” to Chechnya, if France “apologized” to the rest of the world (not for anything specific, just on general principles), then the world would be a sunnier place. Wonder why all those countries don’t do that?

I tried to make the point more subtly a while ago in this thread, but now I’ll be blatant: If London and Paris hadn’t been so “apologetic” to Hitler in the 1930s, do you think he would have kept on going and going like the Energizer bunny all over Europe? He looked at Chamberlain and saw a weakling, and if GWB “apologizes” for an incident where we were demonstrably not at fault, then the Chinese will look at the US and see exactly the same thing. And that will be increadibly destabilizing.

129

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by rjung *
**

You know, I thought Great Debates was a little better than this. As many times as this opinion has been asserted, I’ve yet to see a single citation backing up this view. Come on people, we have half a century of Cold War history behind us here, surely you can come up with something instead of just repeatedly pulling this opinion out of your ass full formed like Athena springing from the forehead of motherfucking Zeus?

We know what international law stipulates, and until I see evidence for the notion that the US would in fact deviate from it in similar circumstances, I’m going to disregard this “argument”.

130

Thus Spake Zarathustra:

This is something of a hijack, but I don’t feel that this is a fair comparison. The Allies were (A) dealing with a regime intent on world war, and (B) on the brink of said war. I see no reason to believe that the relatively moderate government in China has any intentions of starting such a war.

More importantly (and this is a total hijack), I am sick and tired of all your Chamberlain bashing, young man! He was an elected official who made, politically speaking, the only decision he could have. Had he “stood up” to Hitler at Munich, he likely would have been shot upon returning to England. As it is, he was cheered. The British civilian casualty estimates for the next war were truly horrific, mostly because the British vastly overestimated the effectiveness of strategic bombing. There was commonly a serious fear that war with Germany would mean the end of British civilization as it existed. The objections of a very few aside (Churchill, e.g.), Chamberlain’s actions at Munich were met with mass approval both in government and the general population, and understandably so.

131

First of all, international law doesn’t really mean a whole lot to the US. We ignore it when it suits us.

Second, we have deviated from it before, when a MIG from the former Soviet Union was captured (in Japan I believe) and thoroughly taken apart by the US. My memory on this is a little hazy, someone can correct me if I’m wrong.

132

Originally posted by* Zarathustra:*

**
you missed it already page two. Jonas Marainen reminded us all

and that wasn’t even on our shores. Nope, I think it’s pretty clear that we would take our time.

133

I don’t think it’s that much of a hijack. What we have here is an emerging regional power with a list of historical greivances that it uses as a blanket for its irredentist ambitions. Substitute the Diaoyutai Islands for Alscace-Lorraine, substitute Taiwan for Austria/the Czech Sudetenland, substitute the South China Sea for the eastern Lebensraum . . . Of course, it’s silly to try really to force such parallels, but we might still draw a few lessons from history.

In regard to Chamberlain, I’ll admit that I’m not as familiar with that period of history as I’d like to be. All the same, I do gather that the old boy needn’t have been quite so slavish toward Hitler, especially in negotiating with him on the fate of Czechoslovakia even as the Czech government waited pathetically outside the conference room door.

This is where I think historical lessons need to come in, because we need to resist any temptation to sell out our weaker allies in East Asia for the sake of some kind of “great power” stability. (This applies especially to Taiwan.) Any “peace” that we derive this way will be like fairy gold–turning into trash by morning.

I think the position of Russia was/is especially interesting in this light. Remember that Stalin was watching the actions of the Western allies in Munich, and when he saw that Paris and London wouldn’t stand up to Hitler, he decided to make his own peace with Germany. And this gave Hitler a free hand in the West. I wonder what Putin is thinking these days?

134

Chamberlain may have been approved of, but we now have the hindsight to know it was the wrong move.
China has, so far:

  • Invaded and annexed Tibet.
  • Invaded and been repulsed from India.
  • Ditto for Vietnam (who I am sure is a VERY interested party in this bit about the South China Sea being ALL Chinese.)
  • And now, blown up a simple accident and emergency landing into a major confrontation against a power it has no hope at all of being able to best. (By the way, the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. admitted that the plane was in international waters. He still wanted an apology. For what, I can’t figure out.)

For better or worse, the international stage is now occupied by two major powers: the U.S. and China. This incident is simply the opening salvo in what is now going to wind up being, depressingly enough, a new Cold War.
I noted with some small interest (equivalent to the small amount of money I have in a gold mutual fund) that gold stocks, for the first time in years, managed to put together two days in a row of back to back very sharp gains. Somebody out there must think this is a for-real crisis.
For the record: if they’re right, this person thinks the fault will lie entirely with the Chinese. They should grow up already and stop thinking about their faces all the time, if that’s what’s bothering them.

135

wring: that was the case of a defecting pilot. He wanted to come here, and he wanted to give us his plane. Show me a case where we stormed a vessel in distress seeking safe harbor on our shores. Show me a case where we held a flight crew against their will and incommunicado.

136

what -do you and Milo suffer from the same compulsion? In the history of human events you will rarely if ever find two identical situations happening independently. There’s simply too many variables.

You asked for evidence that we would violate international laws about such things, et voila. We did. We took another nation’s property not only without it’s permission, but specifically not returning it right away, took it apart, kept it for a couple of months and returned it in crates (according to the previous poster).

Now, are there differences? of course. it was the Soviet Union and not China. They landed in Japan, not the US, but, it demonstrates quite effectively, that when it suited our purpose to “well we have to check it for bombs and so on”, we did, and took our time about it.

If you don’t wish to admit that the US can at times ignore international law when it suits it’s purpose (Noriega anyone?), then, I’m sure you’ll be quite happy. However, if you wish to contend that we’ve not been able to demonstrate that the US would most likely do just about the same, were the tables turned, well. You’re free to re-interpret damn near any event you wish.

The fact that I can see when my country has been less than ethical does not mean I’m unpatriotic. I’d rather have both my eyes open, though, than to close them fiercely and try and pretend that it’s not true.

137

Thanks for the clarification on the Clinton story link, wring. I’m now coming to the defense of Bill Clinton, against wring. [sub]The Universe will implode into nothingness in a matter of moments. Thank you for your time.[/sub]

Like Varlos said, I’m sure Clinton was asked a question, and he gave about the only answer he could have given.

If you want to be mad at Clinton for something related to this incident, be mad at him for this:

**

138

Two simple questions, wring, can’t you answer them?

Of course we’ve violated international law time and again, but then again, international law has to start somewhere. I would argue that if there is to be any form of law at all between nations, let’s at least start with the basics–don’t slap chains on a crew that issued a “mayday” and landed at your airport because they had no other alternative but to die. I don’t have a cite handy, but I believe that this safe harbor concept forms one of the earliest foundations of international law–i.e., it’s a practice that goes back centuries. Our violations of international law tend to be much more sophisticated–mining harbors, overthrowing governments, and so on–and rarely do we descend to a level that’s so, well, barbaric.

And when the Soviet Union was our enemy back in the 70s, sure, when someone offered us one of their planes, we took our time in sending it back. But is China our enemy now? Did any of our servicemen say, “look, China, I’ve brought you this plane, please go ahead and pick it apart”? I offer this respectfully, wring, but I think you’re the one who’s trying to force a parallel on two entirely different situations.

Zarathustra

139

and I repeat. in the course of human events you will not find exact matches over actions.

Simple fact is that maydays into foreign territories are not common in the first place, let alone on our shores. So, of course, I’ll be unable to match your requirements.

So, have we taken liberties with other nations belongings? yep.

Have we always immediately allowed access to other foreign nationals? Hmmm. seems to me there was a case of a little Cuban boy not to terribly long ago who’s father was denied access. Yes, it’s not an exact match. see above.

How do we treat aliens? Wasn’t there an entire camp full of Haitians? Check back here- there was a thread about immigration agents holding folks w/o communications for extended periods of time.

Are any of these exact matches? No, of course not, see above. Does that mean we are prevented from an honest evaluation of how our country would act under similar circumstances? no, not at all. We chose to see sovreignity when it suits our purpose. And chosen to see our own interests first. Is that rare or wrong? neither. It’s a reality. But once again, to simply deny that we’d ever ever do anything remotely like this, is IMHO, naive.

(and Milo, the earth came to a screeching halt a while back when I agreed with Freedom on something)

140

**

Why apologize when there apparantly isn’t anything to apologize for. Unless we were in their air space they should apologize for running into one of our planes.

**

You are aware that the embassy was located in an area where the United States was dropping bombs, right? You are also aware that China, and the rest of the world, knew exactly when the US was going to start throwing bombs in that general direction. It is a shame that China thought so little of the embassy staff that they did not evacuate them from an obviously dangerous situation.

**

Maybe we should just take our business elsewhere. China isn’t the only place in the world where we can get cheap plastic toys.

And who do the Chinese have advising them? We’ve got no reason to apologize for the lack of training their pilots have.

Marc