Historical Education Opportunity




The First Casualty

by Marc V. Mulay


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/"…When China awakes, it will shake the world"/

-Napoleon Bonaparte The Chinese capture of a U.S. EP-3 (an incredibly sophisticated, submarine-hunting airplane, converted into an intelligence gathering tool beyond Ian Fleming's wildest dreams) and the ten day detainment of its crew, put the world spotlight on the U.S. defense establishment's publicly undeclared policy of "containment" toward China's military and economic ambitions throughout all of Asia. Let's take a look at the incident itself, a little historical precedent, and of most importance, what future potential dangers lurk over the horizon, for you, me and Joe Q. Six-pack.

As a former Naval Aviator, I have been somewhat surprised that at the time of this writing, not one single, publicly disseminated media outlet has observed that the Chinese may well have been attempting to force the U.S. plane down with standard intercept procedural flying. Basically, the two fighter aircraft get into a tight formation, sandwiching the target, then begin a series of precisely coordinated reductions in airspeed, altitude and heading change. To avoid a collision, the target is forced to make the same manoeuvers. You don't need to be a leather-helmeted mental giant trailing a white scarf from your cockpit to figure out what might happen if the Chinese interceptors had initiated these procedures and the U.S. plane ignored them, maintaining a constant heading, as is the case say, /when a plane is on autopilot/. Who hit who, how, where and when in the three dimensional world of flight becomes relative and immaterial. The point is, /everyone's/ world got rocked when Wang Wei's F-8 fighter probably lost tail-end horizontal and vertical stabilizer control to the U.S. aircraft's outer port propeller.

The result is today's bickering between Beijing and Washington over "detainees" who very soon, may henceforth be referred to as "hostages". The U.S. posture is one of "regret" over Chinese loss of life (and U.S. compromise of a bonanza of U.S. intelligence information re: "how-to" spy technology of the most advanced nature. Public PR about the welfare of the crew masks deep concern by the Pentagon, CIA and NSA about what information members of that EP-3 crew could provide under "interrogation"). However, the U.S. position, refusal to extend "regret" to "an apology", is not simply a matter of "pride" or semantics, as this look at the situation may reveal to you. The incident occurred over waters recognized as Chinese, /only/ by the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.). The rest of the world sees the waters as international—and they /are/.

The P.R.C., humiliated by the Tiananmen Square episode, and having bolted upright to take notice as U.S. light-years-ahead advanced technology and rapid deployment capability drop kicked Iraq's aggression against Kuwait quicker and meaner than any classic Bruce Lee film, have been on what might be described as a "quicker long march" to advance their nation's military strength, sophistication and power, via economic reforms and growth of unprecedented magnitude (for the Chinese). Two significant things have come of this: first, China has publicly announced an enormous jump in their version of GDP spending on its defense budget from 10% to 18% (remember Adolph H. in the 1930's?).

Second, they successfully stole plans for the U.S. enhanced radiation or "neutron" bomb. Remember that one? Leaves buildings and infrastructure intact, instantly kills all those pesky people, whether we're talking about "a mere" seven or eight thousand in a U.S. 7th Fleet aircraft carrier battle group, or say a few million souls, if an ICBM now targeted on Taiwan or Los Angeles were unleashed. /This isn't drama…-on no less than a diplomatic level, China has actually threatened to carry this out/.

"An unsinkable aircraft carrier". That is how General Douglas MacArthur, whose finest hour occurred on September 15, 1950, with the brilliant 180-degree situation-reversing amphibious landing of U.S. Forces behind enemy lines at Inchon, Korea, is quoted as having referred to the island-state of Taiwan. That was 1950. From a U.S. military perspective, that is true to this day. Additionally, where Taiwan is concerned, the only thing that has changed since is that China claims Taiwan as sovereign territory and, thanks to a signed, negotiated agreement ("the Shanghai Communiqué") that began in 1971 with Richard Nixon and then-Secretary of State Henry Kissenger, so does the United States. Sounds pretty good so far, no?

Taiwan's loss of UN political clout in exchange for Beijing's (read on) was the bargaining chip that opened the gates of communication between China and the West. Taiwan is a matter of significant strategic priority as well as a sore spot for the communist Chinese government. Back In 1955, the U.S. signed a mutual security treaty with Taiwan pledging to come to its defense in case of an attack from mainland China. Full, formal diplomatic relations were established and Taiwan, not Beijing, was given a highly coveted permanent seat with veto power on the United Nations Security Council. This absolutely incensed the Chinese because Taiwan happens to be where the Nationalist Government of China, the Kuomintang, fled upon its overthrow by the Communists, led by Mao, just six years earlier. As far as the world (UN) was concerned, the Communists didn't exist and this little island nation was China. As far as Beijing/the mainland was concerned, however, Taiwan was merely a "renegade province".

Jump ahead now to 1971: from a global perspective, the Shanghai Communiqué legitimized the Communist P.R.C., replacing Taiwan's representatives with those of Beijing on the UN Security Council. This legitimacy served to further underscore the subordination of Taiwan to mainland China, the P.R.C.. /Therein lies the big rub a dub Dubya/.

Today, with 21 million residents, Taiwan has risen to become the world's 19th largest economic state with an U.S. trade surplus of about $7 billion /and the U.S. has continued to arm it to the teeth with war technology far more advanced than that of the mainland/. Why? /Because militarily, the Shanghai Communiqué was a completely duplicitous sham. A ruse employed by Washington at the time, designed to get China and the U.S. into normalized trade relations, almost exclusively useful back in 1971, as the means necessary to isolate America's then-arch nemesis, the U.S.S.R. Washington was looking for a way to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing, and that is what it took/. Militarily at least, the U.S. lied. Surprise!

The good, ugly and repulsive part about all of this is that over the period of a mere thirty years, we have unwittingly helped to create a monster. China, with its repressive, threatening, weapons-of-mass-destruction-exporting record to Pakistan, Libya and Algeria, isn't exactly concerned with the U.S. non-proliferation focus /du jour/.

From selling huge amounts of chemical and conventional weapons to these common and U.S. adversaries Iraq and Iran (main battle tanks, rocket launchers, fighter aircraft, anti-tank guided missiles, surface to surface missiles etc.) to stealing the intellectual property necessary to manufacture the neutron bomb, the P.R.C. has more than demonstrated that they have replaced the now-defunct U.S.S.R as U.S. global enemy #1. The United States is /the/ prevailing world power; China is /the/ prevailing fastest-rising power. The goal of the U.S. has been to thwart and contain China in this regard and China's goal, to obliterate any shackles or attempt at placing them. Continuing to arm Taiwan with hundreds of U.S. F-16's etc., etc. is /the/ most powerful shackle the U.S. has upon China. They know it, Washington knows it and now you, the reader of this article, know it. This /guarantees/ a collision in history, somewhere, somehow.

Not if, -but when.

The most absurd thing here is that, thanks to the complete whoring out ("virtuous-self-interest") of our capitalist system, the trade deficit between the P.R.C. and U.S. has climbed into the $125 billion range, knocking off Japan as the U.S.'s largest trade deficit "partner". From Slick Willy Clinton's 1996 campaign to Chase Manhattan Bank, Coca-Cola, Kentucky Fried Chicken, (the former) McDonnell Douglas, American Express, American International Group, H.J. Heinz, Atlantic Richfield, Continental Grain, Motorola, IBM (who, it turns out also did a booming business with the Nazi's back in its infancy,) Midland Bank, [Thank You] Paine Webber/S.G. Warburg, Proctor & Gamble (who, according to one source, sold more soap in China than it did in the U.S.), and on to Microsoft (Bill Gates, the world's wealthiest man and then-Microsoft's CEO met, with China's President in 1994 and afterwards, announced a goal to boost Chinese sales by 50% per year), the big swinging johnsons of Corporate America lined up to bend over for the holy Chinese Yaun.

For the record, the lone dissenting voice in the U.S. business community has been San Francisco-based Levi Strauss & Co., attributing their stance to China's "pervasive violation of human rights". Meanwhile, back on planet Pentagon, the Brass has been virtually getting "the finger" from the P.R.C.. In addition to all the on-going arms sales to our adversaries, the Chinese have laid claim to sovereignty over the entire South China Sea. This is the same sea that U.S. ally Japan gets most of its energy and raw materials from. That's the same Japan under our "nuclear umbrella".

Separately, North Korea, China's economic embarrassment of an ally, acquired long-range missile technology, then refused international inspection of nuclear plants. Since the U.S. lost over 50,000 men in the viciously brutal Korean war 1950-1953 and since that war technically never ended, but has stood at a DMZ face off at the 38th parallel since the days of Stalin and Mao /and/ since we still maintain an able fighting force of 30,000 U.S. troops in South Korea with about 50,000 in Japan (primarily in Okinawa), this is kinda, sorta, fairly important to U.S. strategic interests. Not to mention the fact that as WWII came to a close in 1945, about 50,000 U.S. casualties resulted from Japan's fanatic defense of Okinawa. Consequently, the U.S. Navy, the most powerful and feared projector of national military force on Earth, has routine interest in maintaining the status quo, earned with the blood of over one hundred thousand U.S. fighting men. In late October 1994, while the U.S. was engaged in a show of force over North Korea's refusal to allow inspection of it's nuclear facilities, the Chinese sent a 330-foot-long Han-class nuclear powered submarine into the Yellow Sea off of North Korea to tail a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group, led by the U.S.S Kittyhawk.

For three days, the Chinese sub menaced the U.S. ships. At one point, coming within a mere twenty-one nautical miles of the Kitty Hawk, and scrambling a few F-6 fighters to conduct fly-bys of the Americans. This was kept secret until it was leaked to /The/ /Los Angeles Times/. Afterwards, China threatened that "if such an incident occurred again, China's orders would be shoot-to-kill." Two years later, in early 1996 the Chinese unmasked their real intent toward Taiwan.

A couple of weeks prior to free and democratic presidential elections, China mobilized forces opposite the island nation. Then, three mobile launched M-II intermediate-range missiles were fired into target zones close enough to Taiwan's two largest ports to disrupt shipping. The U.S. which at the time, happened to have another carrier battle group, the U.S.S Independence, just 200 miles away and immediately sent it, as well as a second carrier group, headed by the U.S.S Nimitz, into the region. The Chinese got the message. However, a visiting U.S. State Department official, Charles H. Freeman was informed by a diplomat that "if the United States intervened militarily on Taiwan, China was prepared to use nuclear missiles targeted on Los Angeles, California".

This recent sunny historical perspective pretty much brings us to April 1, 2001 and the "detainment" of 24 U.S. service men and women on Hainan.

In the mere five years since our last large face off in the Pacific with China (that we know about), China has sealed a deal with the Russians to purchase two destroyers equipped with missiles designed for the specific purpose of sinking U.S. aircraft carriers. Simultaneously, the U.S. has quietly gone ahead with a /massive/ "star wars" type program whose specific goal is to put satellites in orbit, able to assist in knocking out incoming nuclear ICBM's. The inflation-adjusted budget for this program dwarfs that of the "Manhattan Project", which launched the nuclear age in the mid 1940's. It is large enough to enable prime contractor, Boeing, to suddenly announce that it is relocating from West Coast-based Seattle, WA (wonder why?), to the U.S. heartland, either Denver, Dallas or Chicago.

The new home for America's largest aircraft industry and military contractor is now Chicago, not Seattle.

The U.S. owes no apology to China outside of saying "about that Shanghai Communiqué thing in '71, back when the U.S.S.R and we were /the/ global superpowers…Kissinger and Nixon lied to you too? Join the club." An ancient Korean maxim says, "when whales collide, the shrimp in the middle is the one who suffers." This applied to Korea's position between China and Japan, wherein Korea has been the ancient invasion route Japan has used into the Asian continent. Still true today, it applies equally to Taiwan, only Japan is no longer the whale it once was, China has fast become a far larger whale and of course, the United States of America, the other. Where the U.S. public's naiveté regarding international power realities are concerned, the 21st century is likely to take the bloom off the rose. "Fair" is a child's concept and things change. It's time for U.S. citizens to wake up to the Fire-Breathing Dragon at the gate and for China to realize that the U.S. will not roll over and simply hand Communism the keys to the Asian co-prosperity sphere or a "new world order" which aligns China with Russia, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq and every other U.S. adversary to whom they have been selling arms, while U.S. corporate interests invested in China. Sadly, 24 EP-3 military personnel were stuck in the middle of this situation for 10 days. Votes are upcoming in the House and Senate regarding a substantial and significant arms sale agreement with Taiwan, to include the sale of two devastatingly effective Aegis missile cruisers. Interestingly, the very day that the EP-3 went down in China, /The New York Times/ Sunday edition (which was on newsstands the previous day) ran a cover story whose headline read: "Secret U.S. Study Concludes Taiwan Needs New Arms". Even if the U.S. had pulled a feint and "apologized", the larger issue is clearly Taiwan arms sales, necessary to maintain a balance of power favorable to U.S. national interest in that region of the world and ultimately, beyond (ex/ Latin and South America). In acknowledging Chinese dominion of those disputed seas, via "an apology" Washington would have wound up looking /weak/ as well as non-credible in the eyes of its allies, particularly, Japan and South Korea. The Democrats and Republicans have historically united around supporting Taiwan's military strength. Japan's worst nightmare would be to see a replay of the Korean War with China assisting North Korea to overpower South Korea thus becoming a regional extension of Chinese Communist power in the South Pacific. Korean hatred for Japan runs deep and unfortunately, is not without long historic cause. The Chinese themselves have a deep-seated anger and score to settle regarding Japan's "Rape of Nanking" in 1935, when /hundreds of thousands/ of Chinese were raped, tortured and killed. Beheadings and bayonet practice were Japanese soldier's standard use for Chinese human beings. It was so bad, even Nazi diplomats then-posted in Nanking recoiled and Adolph Hitler's propaganda machine buried the story. Politics does make for strange bedfellows. Whatever the public posturing before CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Meet the Press, Firing Line, etc., this is all nothing the Bush administration and U.S. Intelligence is not quite well aware of. The media and U.S. public opinion on the entire matter is something else. Absent a more complete and widely disseminated picture of events, H.W. Johnson's (Theodore Roosevelt's 1912 running mate) observation, "The first casualty when war comes, is truth" will stand as true today, as it has throughout recorded history. The U.S. conflict with Vietnam really began on a large scale after the bogus "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution", a reaction to a supposed torpedoing of an U.S. ship in almost exactly the same region. Welcome to the 21st Century.

"[As for the United States] for a relatively long time it will be
absolutely necessary that we quietly nurse our sense of vengeance…We
must conceal our abilities and bide our time."*

-Lt. General Mi Zhenyu,
Vice Commandant, Academy of Military Sciences
Beijing, China
*(Introductory quote from The Coming Conflict With China by Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro, 1997)

*Copyright © 2001 Marc Mulay. All Rights Reserved.*

/ Marc V. Mulay is a father, husband, //jazz/rock/fusion/funk 'n blues
guitarist, composer, poet, writer, former salesman, stockbroker,
U.S. Naval Aviator,...and yes, practitioner of Stoicism. /

///copyright© 1999 - 2000
bravenewMEDIA/

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