Wes Vernon
Monday, June 13, 2005

Story Continues Below

  Get the picture? Can you say "nuclear blackmail"?

The old Soviet Union is dead, but the surviving People's Republic of China appears to be heading for a goal outlined by V.I. Lenin himself – that in the end, capitalism will drop into the hands of (Communist) revolution "like over-ripe fruit." In fact, leftist writer Alexander Cockburn detects a sly smile on the embalmed face of Lenin, as if even today the old bloodthirsty tyrant were pleased with China's role in carrying on the "revolution" to the fulfillment of the "over-ripe fruit" prophecy.

Over the years, since Richard Nixon broke the ice and rushed to China in 1972 for what cynics here called "the Peking primary" of that election year, the U.S. and China have made some sweet music, interrupted by some occasional "bumps in the road" such as the Chinese detention of the American crew of a spy plane in early 2001.

All the while, Americans have been crowding the malls for bargains "Made in China" by slave labor, dollars have ended up in the pockets of a good slice of corporate America as well as the Chinese military machine, and the attitudes of much of Congress and the public have ranged from the blase to wishful thinking about "friendship."

Many Americans in and out of government saw what was coming when the Nixon administration made its overtures to the Communist Chinese government. Pro-American Nationalist China – Taiwan – naturally took great umbrage at what it considered a stab in the back.

During those anxious days of sudden turnabout in U.S. policy, Americans attending receptions at the Nationalist Chinese Embassy here in Washington would walk up to Ambassador James Shen to express their empathy. Being the perfect diplomat, his response was to smooth it over. What else could he say?

Of course, it was only a matter of time before he and his cohorts had to vacate that property, which then became the embassy of the "People's Republic."

Ever since then, slowly but unstoppably, America has been lured into the Chinese spider web. We ignore China's military buildup, and she trades with us, as we console ourselves in the dream that surely with all this commerce going on, China will see the glories of freedom and make peace.

The music to that dance has been humming along for more than three decades. Now the music must stop, as the illusion is about to be shredded in the meat grinder of ugly reality. Time to pay up.

Howard Phillips' Warning

In the fall of 2001, this writer reported for NewsMax that a 23-person delegation had just returned from China with conclusions that were hardly reassuring. The Chinese military was growing "month by month, year by year," in the words of conservative leader Howard Phillips, who had headed the delegation. U.S. trade with China, he warned, was "a horrendous mistake."

Phillips' warning was dark and foreboding. Alas, his wake-up call was buried. The date on the NewsMax piece was September 11, 2001. And of course, you know what event pushed the story out of the spotlight that day. (See Howard Phillips: U.S. Builds China's War Machine)

But as we have declared in this space, the China threat is every bit as real today – only more advanced – as it was on September 10, 2001.

From the grave, Constantine Menges warns that China is pursuing a stealthy, systematic strategy to attain geopolitical and economic dominance. America could be embroiled in a showdown with China in the next decade.

Menges died last year just after finishing his just-released book, "China: The Gathering Threat." As a special assistant to President Reagan for National Security Affairs, he played a key role in the downfall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

People often say that historic event was "the end of Communism." No, it wasn't. It was a blessing for which Ronald Reagan will be forever honored. But it did not end Communism. Communists in this country and elsewhere didn't go away just because the Soviet Union did. Marxism is alive and well today in U.S. academia and entertainment, to cite two examples.

And Communist nations remain, such as North Korea (with its own nuclear ambitions) and Castro's Cuba, which actively collaborates with America-hating terrorists around the globe.

The Chinese threat is alarming, as Dr. Menges documents in his 553-page volume. There are those who see Stalinist North Korea (ruled by a certified head case) and Iran (an Islamic republic with wild nuclear ambitions) as more immediate threats.

But China's potential to do harm to the United States is in a category all by itself, if for no other reason than that the world's largest nation has neutralized so much of America's business and policy-making sectors. In fact, China and the above-mentioned rogue states are interrelated since, as Dr. Menges points out, China has been and remains, "along with Russia, the leading supplier of weapons of mass destruction to North Korea, Iran, Syria, Libya and Cuba."

"China: The Gathering Threat" shows that China is capable of launching nuclear missiles in 30 minutes that can kill Americans. The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) has defined the United States as the "main enemy." Moreover, China has an extensive spy network in this country (See China's Huge Spy Network in U.S.) that employs espionage to steal the designs of nearly all U.S. nuclear warheads and many other military secrets.

Though succeeding administrations and politicians of both parties have – to varying degrees – dropped the ball in the face of this threat, the Clinton White House stands out as having advanced from the hopefully naive to the duplicitous.

The Cox Report

The most meaningful congressional investigation of this mess was conducted in the late 1990s by the House Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China (PRC).

That bipartisan panel, headed by California Congressman Christopher Cox, unanimously found that the PRC has stolen design information on our most advanced thermonuclear weapons, that the next generation of such weapons will exploit elements of such stolen information, and that PRC penetration of our national labs spans several decades "and almost certainly continues today."

In a forward to the Cox report, former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, a patriot to the core, wrote the following:

"Communist China's long march against the United States is as tenacious as it is diverse – from campaign contributions used to influence in the White House, to purchasing an interest in American corporations, to high-tech spying, to plain old-fashioned military buildup threats, the most shocking of which came from General Xiong Guangkai, who in 1995 told an American official that the PRC would call the shots now in the Asian theatre because, 'In the end, you care a lot more about Los Angeles than you do about Taipei.'"

Weinberger then discussed the Clinton administration's move to throw Chinese trade business to Loral and Hughes, and the PRC's use of technology from that trade to target ballistic missiles on the United States and its friends.

Campaign contributors Loral and Hughes were motivated by profit, the former defense chief says, but what motivated the Clinton White House?

"Why would the administration so cavalierly endanger American security? Is it really a matter so simple, so sordid, so base as campaign contributions? Perhaps. But whether the motive was Tammany Hall politics played out in terms of global strategy, or if, instead, it was a particularly virulent form of appeasement," said Weinberger, the Clinton administration has perpetrated "some of the worst and most damaging national security decisions of [the 20th] century."

What the Cox report uncovered regarding espionage by agents of the PRC, Weinberger charged, "is the most serious breach of national security since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg betrayed our atomic secrets to the Soviet Union and Aldrich Ames sold us out for a mess of pottage. For their crime, the Rosenbergs were executed. The crimes uncovered here by this Report have yet to be redressed."

Now Hillary Clinton wants us to believe that cozying up to Red China is a new phenomenon that just emerged since her husband departed the White House. In a typical Clintonian insult to one's intelligence, Senator Clinton – like her husband, always substituting sound-bite rhetoric for substantive deeds – recently warned that we are "giving up our fiscal sovereignty" to China. "How do you get tough with your banker?" she asked.

Do tell! After the Clinton regime gave the Chinese the political and economic keys to the White House and accepted campaign money raised from Chinese sources ("How do you get tough with your banker?"), to say nothing of the security breaches cited by Weinberger, I'm sure we can all sleep better at night knowing that Senator Clinton – now that she aspires to the presidency – has discovered the China threat. One thinks of the arsonist who rushes in to put out the fire.

The Cox committee's 359-page document reads like a detective novel – except that this is no fireside entertainment. It deals with a trail of unprecedented deceit and extreme danger to the United States.

That report, telling though it was, actually resulted from a series of committee hearings behind closed doors. Those hearings apparently elicited so much highly sensitive and classified information that they have never been made public – probably won't in our lifetime.

Congressman Cox, as you may have noticed, has recently been nominated by President Bush to be the next chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. As the Senate prepares for his confirmation hearings, watch the left-wing smear machine gear up and throw everything at him but the kitchen sink.

His detractors likely will not come out and say so, but you can be sure a lot of their venom will be motivated by his committee's report on China and the failure of people in high places to come to grips with so serious a problem.

No doubt Christopher Cox has a vast knowledge of China's machinations in U.S.-related commerce. There may be occasion for him to use that knowledge in decision-making at the SEC. And some powerful people would have problems with that. Fools, scoundrels, dollar-sign-blinded interests, political opportunists and traitors don't like the pitiless light of publicity. They have long memories, and the Cox Report is only six years old.

Constantine Menges' Suggestions

Now the question: What is to be done to meet China's "gathering threat"?

In his book, Constantine Menges offers many suggestions on China. Taken together, their main thrust seems to adhere to what President Reagan, with Dr. Menges advising him, used as guiding strategy to bring down the Soviet Union: Stop helping them.

1. Start telling the truth about Communist China – that aside from its active commercial diplomacy and (most of the time) avoidance of visible conflict, it is also "an expansionist, coercive, manipulative dictatorship."

2. Maintain Cold War alliances, both economic and strategic, and in addition seek a new defensive alliance with India, "a democracy with a population of 1.1 billion that has been invaded by China in the past and that is menaced by continuing territorial claims and encirclement through China's relations with Burma and Pakistan."

3. Shift trade opportunities in Asia "from China to American allies and security partners" so that "the U.S. would bring its national security and its commercial interests into balance."

4. It is "urgent" that "the U.S. move from intention to actual deployment of national and regional missile defenses." Most Americans don't know we are unprotected from "the growing threat of a missile attack." The fallout from this delay in preparedness will have no lasting consequences – if we are lucky. And if we are not lucky? Then the fallout could be "enormous loss of life."

More than twenty countries have missile defense programs, developing ever-larger ranges "that could carry nuclear, biological, or chemical warheads to attack allies of the United States and the United States itself."

5. Maintain the integrity and control over classified information within the U.S. government and among all contractors with sensitive military/technology information.

6. Significantly improve and expand U.S. counterintelligence operations.

7. Expel from the U.S. all companies that function as fronts for "any military or intelligence-related entities in China, Russia or any other nonallied state."

The above is not the complete Menges list. But it will do for now. The history of U.S. relations with Communist China has been marked by a long series of blunders, missteps, wishful thinking and, arguably worse, treason. The latter goes back to the World War II and post-World War II era when people in high places in this country actively abetted the Communist Chinese overthrow of the pro-U.S. Nationalist government, which then fled to Taiwan.

Why bring that up now? It was so long ago. An old saying applies here: "The past is prologue. Look to the past."

We will do that later.

Wes Vernon is a Washington-based writer and veteran broadcast journalist.

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