Wampum

I write such small things

I write such small things, responses to the æether actually, the little things, odd ripples wandering over and between and unpreturbedly across the faces of busy waves rushing on their way to somewhere else.

I spent a pleasent hour in O'Hare one morning after an over-night flight from Montevideo. My seat-mate was a civil servant in the diplomatic corps of the PRC, and we had time for breakfast before our flights, one east to Portland, one west to Beijing, departed in their respective directions. We talked at length about the change in how the US Consulate in Beijing treated PRC nationals seeking visas from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration, and how the crash of a US intelligence aircraft and a PRC interceptor aircraft (the pilot was lost) had played out. He had to use his diplomatic passport, not his personal passport, to take classes in goverment and management and get a Master's. Chinese students pursuing degree programs without diplomatic status were simply left to find other programs to enter, or finish from, in Canada or Europe. The US was closed to China. We parted, amicably, as we had a common purpose in being in Montevideo that week, and in a few weeks I would return to Beijing, again as a guest of the Chinese Academy of Science and the Ministry of Communications, who share responsibility for the oversight of the China Network Information Center, CNNIC.

The next day the policy of provocation, daring-do, and all the high-minded rhetoric about reform and labor conditions and non-entry into the WTO were put on hold, when Jim Roux and many, many others were incinerated, asphixiated, or crushed in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and the Bush administration went from attempting to start a pleasant little war, to being on the wrong end of someone else's pleasant little war. Jim was going to represent Jonah, my constant companion at all hours of the day, except when he is at theraputic nursery school, or I'm on very reluctant travel, in a toxic tort case -- lead.

The confluence of Dwight's piece on the non-appointment of Anthony Raimondo, which had its own off-shore-to-PRC nuance, and a piece in today's Le Monde, and my prior piece on Richard Perle's detachment from the shared reality of children that ice cream may be bought most anywhere in Europe with a € and his vision that France is pursuing a policy hostile to the United States, all sort of slide into each other, like the collisions of ghosts.

France, and Germany, and now Denmark and Holland, seek to remove the embargo on military sales, and dual-use sales, to the PRC. The US wants the embargo to remain in place. France published a four page paper entitled "Réflexions sur l'avenir des relations entre l'Union européenne et la Chine", which advocates the "développement harmonieux des relations euro-chinoises". The US intends to introduce a resolution of condemnation of China before the Human Rights Commission of the UN, and keep the sino-american relationship on cold-war footing.

Richard Perle, blind and vain as he is, is the seeing-eye dog for the current administration in all things hostile -- Iraq, France, China, and points in between. I don't know what his views on Africa, South America, or the Polar regions are, but he's pretty clear that Eurasia needs fixing, except that Europe is good, except that France is bad. He may have it in for penguins too, I simply don't care.

What makes me sigh at this point in this little essay is that we don't really know that Richard Perle isn't also selling light bulbs to the only competitor the current administration has. Is John Kerry's "B" Gaming of the Raimondo non-appointment just local to the target and the opportunity? Is his China policy closer to Paris or to Washington? Will we get a choice between cold-war brinksmanship and cold-war brinksmanship as the policy of the US towards the PRC, and Europe, for the rest of this decade, or a choice between cold-war brinksmanship and "développement harmonieux des relations euro-chinoises et amero-chinoises", and consequently, "développement harmonieux des relations euro-american"?

And that is why Dwight's comment in passing, on the toughness of John Kerry, to lead a electoral campaign that would cause an unelected, divisive, predatory, and above all, "war-time" administration to surrender power still has me troubled. Can we win if we lose Gay Marriage? If we lose France and Europe? If we lose India and China?

I don't care that Raimondo out-sourced 75 jobs to some free-trade zone in the PRC, it isn't a black-and-white issue. Microsoft is wiping out the potential for open source software developed in China and India, just as completely as it has been wiped out, by M$ and by shrinkwrap worshiping policy wonks here in the US. What M$ is doing in sofware, other intellectual property pirates are doing for film and music and ... Monopolies here and v-sweatshops there -- the holy call-centers, is mutually assured de-industrialization. This shouldn't be a litmus test issue, it is complex. Fertilizer production followed natual gas and production is now in ... Germany. Raimondo may or may not be an idiot, and neither possibility matters greatly.

What is important, or should be to Dems, is whether or not the US is going to be pursuing a policy that fits into the general framework of international development, as we knew it before the WTO made policy irrelevant, or a policy that fits into the general framework of international distruction, the "axis of evil" rhetoric of GW Bush, expanded to include the PRC, and bits of Europe, or the "illegal immigrants" rhetoric of Pat Buchanan, inverted to include off-shore manufacturing -- the tedious nonsense of another decinal or longer round of crypto-aggression.

How can we win in November, if before then our party does not choose Paris over Washington? If it does not, shouldn't Richard Perle have a title that corresponds to his actual role in policy making?

This isn't a criticism, or at least I'm not aware of being critical about Dwight's piece on the message management and timing the Kerry Campaign exercised this week w.r.t. Raimondo as a "Manufacturing Czar". I'm simply concerned that Perle's vision is mirrored in both houses here in fair Verona.

The only appology that needs making is to France, not to our frail and foolish King and his salons of wigged and powdered grandious fops, and it would be prudent to think about Beijing, and Dehli, as something other than rhetorical targets of opportunity.

Posted by at March 12, 2004 10:57 AM | TrackBack