Bush Plays Chinese Checkers

Based on his staggering strategic failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is an obvious fact that as a kid our President GW Bush never played battle checkers or chess; his current dangerous economic debacles indicate he never played Monopoly. Now it is obvious, despite his privileged background, he never learned to play Chinese Checkers. His China policy so favors the ravaging trade exploitation of the USA by the Chinese, I fully expect his presidential library to be built at SMU in Texas in the form of a Chinese pagoda, illuminated by Chinese lanterns, festooned with banners of red five-toed dragons chasing pearls in the sky. Ears of Texas will be upon Chinese bongs, gongs and exploding fire crackers.

On this Thanksgiving eve the Red Chinese blocked a port visit by the aircraft carrier battle group USS Kitty Hawk to Hong Hong. This was a previously sanctioned visit by the Chinese. This battle group was under steam to Hong Hong when it was ordered to return to Japan. After the ships had turned around, the Chinese recanted and re-extended the invitation, but the Navy Admiral in charge understood Chinese Checkers and took the action that really said SCREW YOU CHIANG. He knew the US Navy was being jerked around... This decision was complicated. It was made after the Navy had flown hundreds of families to Hong Hong to unite them for a four-day holiday with the crews of the US ships in the battle group. Bravo for the US Navy. It even would have been a better response had the task force redirected itself into Keelung Harbor, Taiwan and buzzed the Straits of Formosa with its carrier aircraft for a week.

This Chinese rebuff followed the rejection of requests by two US minesweepers three to four weeks earlier to put into Hong Hong in a storm. The sharpness of the incident is brought more into focus by the fact the Chinese Navy had been welcomed to Pearl Harbor and San Diego for port visits last year. This was on top of SECDEF Gates recent visit to China that allegedly ended with a warm fuzzy hotline agreement between US and Chinese defense establishments

Stressed Condoleezza and her clueless State Department are still trying to figure out why the Chinese behaved the way they did. Bet they wet their pants in dismay over the affair. For explanations, they are tossing out reasons such as tensions caused by the US Freedom Medal presentation for the Dali Lama and recent US anger and umbrage over many toxic Chinese imports. Wrong as usual. The Chinese simply do not want the US Navy near the Chinese Coast or Taiwan; from their perspective these are Chinese waters despite International law to the contrary. Bumbling GW Bush de-facto swallowed this contention when he meekly appeased the Chinese on the force down of a Navy US intelligence reconnaissance aircraft over international waters early in his first term.

A week after the incident, the US State Department launched a formal protest over the mess to the Chinese government.

Show the flag port visits are usually frosting on a diplomatic cake that signifies warm relations between two countries – sailors have a good time, shopping, drinking, getting tattooed, and chasing women. The Navy has shore patrols that manage the visits without serious incident. The host country enjoys a financial boomlet of free spending by the sailors and local dignitaries are hosted by the Navy aboard ship. Rarely a visit goes haywire when the host country is offended, because it perceives some sort of territorial violation, but in most cases the visits go off without a hitch. Both parties win. So it is even more mysterious why the Chinese intentionally sabotaged the agreed visit after all the planning.

Inscrutable Chinese? Nonsense, their checker game is obvious: first take Macao; second Hong Hong; third take Taiwan. In this last case the US Navy has to be neutralized and that has already started. Number 4 will be Southeast Asia where the Chinese have a score to settle after the Vietnam war. Historically they believe this region belongs in their sphere of influence. The Chinese are relentless and patient. They believe time is luck...

You can also expect to have the Chinese leverage their enormous dollar holdings to curb the employment of the US Navy. Right now the dollar is worth about 49 cents on a Euro – the Chinese are watching their astounding 1.4 trillion US dollar holdings dwindle in value each day, but are stuck with them. If they dump some, they destroy what is left of the dollar and cut their own throats on their remaining dollar reserves. So they are trying to buy anything of intrinsic value world wide with their cheap dollar over flow. It is equally obvious GW Bush is trying to discourage the Chinese on converting their dollars to other currencies by treating them generously diplomatically, in trade, and looks the other way on national security issues.

How the US got itself into this pickle really started under FDR and Truman on who lost China? At that time pro-communist US envoys stationed in China did their best to promote Soviet sponsored Communist Mao as a agrarian reformer and Nationalist Chiang Kai Shek as a crook. US finally dropped aid to the anti communist forces in China. Under the Republicans, the US finally woke up, and resumed military aid to Chiang Kai Shek, but only after he retreated to Formosa... Communist Chinese gradually consolidated power as the US stood by – Nixon kept the ball rolling with detente as he tried to develop a Chinese ally against the Soviet Union. Clinton opened the trade doors with NAFTA, encouraged by eager Republican cooperation. The Chinese built factories in Mexico and dumped cheap goods tariff free across the Rio Grande. GW Bush drove the trade nail deeper into our coffin with the admission of China into the World Trade Organization; this move permitted the Chinese to dump their cheap, substandard products on US markets directly, almost unrestricted, without even going through Mexico. Remember the Clinton administration was so eager for Chinese trade that he permitted technology transfers that improved the reliability of Chinese long range missiles. Mr. Clinton and now his wife's presidential campaign have major problems with illegal Chinese sourced campaign donations; may explain much about the problems with excessive Chinese influence in the US.

That China is a rising military power is unquestionable; they have greatly developed their general purpose forces, missile forces and deep water Navy with Russian military aid, espionage and through US foolishness with commercial technology transfers. The Chinese successfully tested a missile defense weapon against a space satellite. The FBI considers the Chinese espionage threat the most dangerous foreign menace to the US long term security.

Russian Communist Vladamir Lenin, attempting to defend his hypocritical position on selling raw materials to capitalist countries, said that Soviet Russia would sell the West the rope to hang themselves. Well, Vladamir never came close to watching the West swing on his rope; but now this proposition seems to be working well against the US as instituted by the Peoples Republic of China. The noose is now tightening on GW Bush's neck.

See you at the Olympics in Peking – just do not drink the water, visit a Chinese coal mine, or participate in a Chinese fire drill at your hotel... Colonel Robert E Bartos USA RET