Since 1979, the U.S. and Chinese militaries have had their own bilateral relationship. It began shortly after the resumption of diplomatic ties as an effort to bolster China against the Soviet Union. Chinese military officials tour American bases, and American officers try to tour Chinese military facilities-although they are often left out in the waiting area drinking tea.
That was frustrating; the exchanges were not even. But were the frustrations so great on the American side that it was worth ending the program? Apparently so-at least it seemed that way for a few hours on Wednesday.
This was another case where an aide who was obviously following instructions was later hung out to dry.
Christopher Williams, an experienced deputy to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, wrote a detailed memo saying that Rumsfeld was directing “the suspension of all Department of Defense programs, contacts and activities with the People’s Republic of China until further notice.” The new policy took effect on Monday.
But then on Wednesday, after the memo leaked, the Pentagon spokesman announced that it had “misrepresented the secretary’s intentions,” and that instead of being suspended, the military ties would be reviewed on a “case-by-case” basis.
This bureaucratic backtracking is common enough in Washington-blame the aide when the policy change doesn’t seem to be playing well. But the consequences of this kind of confusion are more serious when the subject is China.
President Bush won high marks for getting the crew of the downed spy plane back quickly. The jumpy Chinese military and political leadership (not to mention the nationalistic Chinese Internet chat rooms) were mistaken on that one. But since then, U.S. policy has been in a downward spiral of incoherence. For more than two decades, the U.S. has followed a policy of “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan and China, where we did not specify too much about what the U.S. would do if the mainland attacked the island.
Just last week, Bush went on ABC’s Good Morning America and was asked by anchor Charlie Gibson whether Taiwan would be defended “with the full force of the American military.”
“Whatever it took to help them defend theirselves,” the president said.
The fact that there’s no such word as “theirselves” was the least of the problems with this statement. For more than two decades, the U.S. has followed a policy of “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan and China, where we did not specify too much about what the U.S. would do if the mainland attacked the island. Bush had seemed to inadvertently change that policy, a major foreign policy gaffe. Indeed, a few hours later, he stressed that he would follow the “one China” policy in place since the 1970s.
“Where once the United States had a policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ we now appear to have a policy of ambiguous strategic ambiguity. It is not an improvement,” Sen. Joseph Biden, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote in The Washington Post on Wednesday.
Now, with the latest Rumsfeld back-and-fill, we’re sending mixed signals in yet another critical area. And this in a week where Bush, in a major speech on nuclear weapons and missile defense, seemed to tilt U.S. policy toward Russia with calls for a “new framework” in our relations with that country.
How is the world supposed to react when it learns that we are determined to deploy a missile defense system that, by our own admission, doesn’t work yet -and isn’t meant to hurt Russia? Other than North Korea and Iraq, is there any other country that the threat of ballistic missile defense might be seen as useful against? (Hint: It’s a really big and fast-growing nation on a continent called Asia).
When you add the new U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan and the whole business with the spy plane, it makes for a chilly spring in Beijing. That doesn’t necessarily mean the United States is wrong in any of these areas, just confused. And confusion, too often, leads to much worse down the road.
title: “From Bad To Worse” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-22” author: “William Robertson”
The weary, stony-faced congressman stirred himself to be sympathetic to the family of Chandra Levy–genuinely so, it seemed. He recalled being “horrified” at hearing from Chandra’s father, Dr. Robert Levy, that the 24-year-old intern was missing. “The tone of his voice even scared me…. Just his hurt and pain,” said Condit. “I do have kids and I know I would say and do about everything to get them back.” He described an affectionate relationship with Chandra, though hardly the hot romance described by Chandra’s aunt Linda Zamsky, who said Chandra talked about having children with Condit. In Condit’s version to NEWSWEEK, the conversations were casual and ran more to federal-prison policy and Modesto politics. Toward the end of the hour-and-45-minute interview, Condit’s anger at the media circus boiled up again and he grew bitter and sarcastic. “The press has sort of made this into a soapbox scandal… to keep their ratings up,” said Condit. “I sat there the whole time waiting for Connie Chung to ask me something other than a sex question.”
The Chandra Levy story had been slowly fizzling before Condit spoke out last week. Why did he bother? The media criticism of his performance with Chung and the other interviewers was unrelenting, and the public reaction wasn’t much better. One NBC poll showed that only 2 percent believed that Condit was motivated mainly by his concern for Chandra, while 93 percent said he was protecting himself politically. Not very successfully: House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt in effect dumped Condit, calling his colleague’s lack of candor “disturbing and wrong.” In Condit’s home district, some voters sympathized with his sullen effort to preserve a shred of privacy, but others agreed with Seth Medefind, 20, who told NEWSWEEK: “He seemed to be saying that everyone was lying but him.”
The roundelay of Condit interviews, hyped to an almost ludicrous degree by the cable news networks, shed no light on the disappearance of Chandra Levy. The spectacle seemed staged mostly for the benefit of lawyers, PR advisers, reporters and media executives. Chung’s interview on the evening of Aug. 23 was watched by about 24 million viewers. But twice as many viewers tuned in to see Barbara Walters interview Monica Lewinsky in 1999. Indeed, by the weekend the dish on Condit tasted slightly stale, like warmed-over takeout. Condit was defensive and self-pitying in the manner of Bill Clinton (or for that matter any other serial adulterer caught in the glare), but he is an obscure congressman, not the president, and his political survival is not all that significant to the fate of the republic.
The gamesmanship between Condit and his pack of pursuers was interesting mostly as an exercise in how to survive–or perish–in the permanent-scandal culture of Washington. According to Condit’s handlers, the congressman failed to stick to the script. He was supposed to begin his interview with Chung by expressing his sympathy with the Levy family. But sources at ABC tell NEWSWEEK that network producers anticipated a “filibuster” from the congressman. So, before he could launch off a prepared speech, Chung hit him with a series of tough questions, bang-bang, culminating with “Did you kill Chandra Levy?” Condit could only force a creepy grimace and utter, “I did not.” From then on, he seemed angrily defiant. It was obvious that Chung would ask him about other romantic dalliances. Condit was supposed to say that they were “irrelevant” to Chandra’s disappearance. Instead, he defied credulity by denying a relationship with Anne Marie Smith, the United Airlines flight attendant who has described a 10-month romance with Condit to two cable-TV talk shows and reportedly offered graphic details to investigators. Last June a lawyer working for the congressman urged Smith to sign an affidavit denying any relationship with Condit–a claim that has drawn the scrutiny of federal prosecutors. Condit has said that he was unaware of the proposed affidavit, and that his lawyer wrote on the document that Smith should feel free to edit it any way she wished.
In his interview with NEWSWEEK, Condit was positively Clintonesque about Anne Marie Smith. “In my opinion, we did not have a relationship,” he said. Asked how he could square his “opinion” with Smith’s detailed description of the affair, he responded, “It would probably be her definition of a relationship versus mine.” Condit was more forthcoming, and more sympathetic, in describing his relationship with Chandra. “We were close,” he said. “I’ve never made any bones about that.” Introduced last October by a friend who was interning for Condit, Chandra and the congressman “hit it off well,” said Condit. “I found Chandra to be full of life and very energetic, very focused on her career in politics, very intelligent, very charming, all those things,” Condit said. Phone records obtained by NEWSWEEK show Chandra’s calling Condit every day during one week in early April, but Condit insisted the calls were neither “heavy” nor contentious. “We never had a cross word,” he said. He denied reports by the aunt that he had taken Chandra to out-of-the-way restaurants to avoid being seen. “We didn’t go out to restaurants,” he said. “We never had a conversation about marriage or a future or children,” he added. “She understood her boundaries very well.” They talked about the upcoming executions of Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh and drug trafficker Juan Raul Garza. “She seemed to have a lot of interest in those two things,” said Condit, “a lot more interest in them than I did.” The last time he saw her, Chandra unexpectedly rang his apartment buzzer on the morning of April 24 or 25. She had lost her internship at the Bureau of Prisons and was heading back to California, but she wanted to come back to Washington to work. In any case, “there was never a thought that we weren’t going to stay in contact or see each other… We were going to maintain the friendship, no matter,” said Condit.
The Condit story is not going away, though Condit’s supporting cast may change. Some of the blame for Condit’s poor performance last week inevitably fell on his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, an old hand at the Washington-scandal game but possibly too aggressive for the delicate business at hand. His PR advisers are essentially throwing in the towel. One said that the NEWSWEEK interview would be Condit’s last. “Frankly, there’s nothing more we can do,” the adviser said. Condit’s family is sticking with him: wife Carolyn, looking thin and wearing dark glasses, gave him a kiss on the cheek just before he began his interview with Chung. Hometown Modesto, meanwhile, remains an unlikely media central, its low-rise skyline dotted with satellite-hookup towers. The locals are becoming wise to the strange rhythms of all scandal, all the time. A hotel clerk offered a visiting reporter a wake-up call midafternoon, “just in case you need a nap before your stakeout begins.”
And the Levys? The grieving couple and their teenage son live behind closed drapes, their every move recorded by a network “pool” crew waiting outside about 14 hours a day. Several weeks ago, when there were reports that police were searching for a body buried under a parking lot on a Virginia military base, Susan Levy woke up in the middle of the night. “It was 4 a.m. and the first thing I did was to walk outside and see if the [TV] trucks were there,” she told NEWSWEEK. They were gone. For a few hours, at least, the Levys’ nightmare belonged only to them.
