Dr. Strangelove Gets Confused about China Policy

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May 3, 2001

Rumsfeld's Office Reverses China Ban

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

WASHINGTON, May 2 — The office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered the suspension of military exchanges and contacts with the Chinese armed forces and then abruptly reversed the order today after the White House objected, Pentagon officials said.

The reversal, which the Pentagon announced in an unusual retraction this evening, reflected a degree of confusion in an administration that had tried to project a disciplined management style.

It also underscored divisions among President Bush's advisers over how tough to be with China after the confrontation over an American surveillance aircraft that remains at a Chinese military base on Hainan Island.

A memorandum dated April 30 and signed by Chris Williams, a senior adviser to Mr. Rumsfeld for policy matters, directed the United States armed forces to suspend contacts between their civilian and military officials and their Chinese counterparts "until further notice," according to an official who read it.

Several hours after the order became public, in a CNN broadcast, the Pentagon issued a statement saying that the memorandum had "misinterpreted the position" of Mr. Rumsfeld, even though Pentagon officials had earlier confirmed the memo's main points.

A spokesman for Mr. Bush, Ari Fleisher, said in an interview later that his office had objected to the disclosure because it did not reflect what the White House understood to be the thrust of Mr. Rumsfeld's guidance.

Other Pentagon officials and lawmakers contradicted the account that Mr. Rumsfeld had not approved the cancellation of military- to-military contacts.

John W. Warner, the Republican of Virginia who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he had spoken with Mr. Rumsfeld about suspending contacts with the Chinese military and heartily endorsed the tougher line that it suggested.

"I strongly support his action for the following reasons," Mr. Warner said. "That has been a very valuable series of contacts for China. It gives them stature in the eyes of the other militaries of the world. They learn from it. I'm not suggesting secrets. But they learn about how a professional military is run. And China did not handle, from beginning to end, the tragedy of this forced downing of our aircraft in a professional manner."

He added that the suspension was "a purely understandable message" to the Chinese military that it had inappropriately detained the 24 crew members of the American surveillance plane, an EP-3E Aries II, for 11 days after it and a Chinese fighter collided on April 1 over the South China Sea and made an emergency landing on Hainan island. The Chinese jet and its pilot were lost.

The order and its reversal occurred at a delicate moment in the administration's efforts to retrieve the aircraft. A team of American technicians from Lockheed Martin, the main builder of the aircraft, arrived on Tuesday on Hainan to begin examining the damage to determine whether the plane can be flown off the island.

It was not clear whether the announcements today would affect those efforts. But they seems highly likely to strain relations with the Chinese even further. China has pointedly objected to Washington's plans to sell advanced weaponry to Taiwan and to deploy missiles in a move that China contends would be destablizing.

The administration suspended its military-to-military contacts with the Chinese in the midst of the tense diplomatic standoff last month, saying it planned to review the status of the contacts in the months ahead.

The Pentagon statement this evening said that Mr. Rumsfeld planned to review any contacts case by case and that it was not imposing a blanket suspension. A spokesman for the Pentagon, Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley, said there were no contacts planned for this month.

The memorandum, now disavowed, appeared to have resulted in at least one Chinese scholar's losing an invitation to a security seminar at the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies of the Pentagon, in Hawaii, according to two officials.

The question of contacts between the American and Chinese militaries, which includes activities like high-level visits by senior commanders and civilian leaders as well as lower-level exchanges of officers and experts, has been politically sensitive for years.

Compared with similar programs with Russia, the China contacts remain relatively limited, and they have repeatedly fallen victim to the ebbs and flows of Chinese-American relations.

"It's very clear that over the years the military-to-military relationship has been the most vulnerable link between the two countries in times of stress," said David M. Finkelstein, an analyst for the CNA Corporation's Center for Strategic Studies who has studied the exchanges.

The United States suspended all military-to-military contacts after the military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989, resumed them in 1994 and suspended them again in 1996, after China fired missiles off the coast of Taiwan.

After a brief restoration of contacts, China angrily halted them after the American bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in May 1999 in the NATO's air campaign against the former Yugoslavia, only to restart them in January 2000.

Senior military commanders, including Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the commander of American forces in the Pacific, strongly support the contacts and exchanges as valuable tools to reduce tensions, build confidence and learn about the Chinese strategies and programs.

The American ambassador to China, Adm. Joseph W. Prueher, was appointed in part because of contacts developed with Chinese military and civilian leaders while he was commander of American forces in the Pacific.

In recent years, the contacts have been criticized by conservative lawmakers as ineffective. Last year, Congress mandated that the Pentagon evaluate the program's goals and effectiveness and report back by March 31, a deadline that the Pentagon missed.

Mr. Finkelstein said it was important to resume the contacts. "If you have potentially serious security disagreements," he said, "then that's all the more reason to find a proper venue for continuing contacts."

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company

-- Our Chaotic Administration (another@flip.flop), May 03, 2001


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