January 31, 2003

Smiles and Nods and Handouts

It is now clear – if it wasn't during the Cold War – that the only way to keep your country free from invaders and despoilers is to maintain a nuclear arsenal and a large army. Missiles and cruisers are important as well, to kill the enemy from afar and threaten his cities.

North Korea may yet receive an aid package of some sorts, perhaps a stake in the railroad leading from Asian ports to the European cities, perhaps renewed shipments of oil, wheat, socks etc. that it so desperately needs.

All the while, Iraq is bracing for Bush the Conqueror to follow in his papa's footsteps and annihilate the
desert and break assorted promises to the "brave people of Iraq." How a man can possibly stretch out to the son a hand covered in the blood of the father, I'll never understand. With Bush the Younger, it is most ironic.

Iraq is weak and rich, therefore it must be conquered. Other weak (or not powerful) countries are scrambling to arm themselves in order to stand as North Korea does and not kneel like Iraq will. Russia and China are benefiting greatly from our President's reckless foreign policy – monetarily, militarily and politically.

Russia is selling planes and missiles by the shiploads to China, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan and virtually every other Third World country on the planet. Together, the two former, current and presumably future "strategic competitors" of the US are doling out nuclear technology and renting out scientists and manufacturing plants to these same rogues.

China, as the economic darling of the world, is able to lobby for the Northeast-Asian-Europe Railway to pass through China instead of Vladivostok. Ports and railways in Burma and Pakistan further link the once-isolated China to the markets of the world. Dams on the Mekong and the Yangtze help relieve energy pressures as well as linking the hinterland with those all-important ports. China is able to circumvent ASEAN concerns, Indian concerns and Russian concerns in all these matters because smiles and nods and handouts accompany many a Chinese deal.

China is going even a step further. The West has debated forgiving the debt of the ridiculously poor nations of the world for some time, but just cannot bring themselves to do it. Instead, controversial entities such as the World Bank and the IMF along with underpaid overworked NGOs and UN programs struggle to make a difference.

China merely loans with little or no interest and forgives debts. The Caribbean nations were slightly dumbfounded when a delegation of Chinese bigwigs swooped through the area signing business deals, letting cash drop from their bejeweled fingers and singing the praises of those who recognize the one and only China. Historically and socially, one could describe this as a typical Chinese diplomatic mission.

Some of the largest ships ever built – roughly 1800 years ago – carried Chinese explorers, goods and largesse to India, East Africa and up to Egypt. After the eunuchs were defeated by the scholars at court, shipbuilding ceased.

Now it has begun again: both militarily, with the acquisition last year of Russian Soveremeny class destroyers and more recently with the purchase of Su-147 fighters specializing in air-to-sea combat; and commercially, with the establishment of Cross Straits flights, purchases of Boeing 737 and 747, the slow but sure liberation of Chinese airlines and their prices and with the various missions to Nigeria, South Africa, South America and the Caribbean.

China has the nukes and the missiles and the army to deter a US Army petrified of losing even one soldier or plane to the enemy. So the tactics the Chinese are using to sway world opinion – already nigh unanimous in condemnation of US policy – can afford to be smiles, nods and handouts.

The US, on the other hand, must fortify its consulates and embassies with high walls, surveillance equipment, marines and assorted secret booby-traps for the enemies that will eventually storm the gate. Here in Chengdu, a veritable boiling hotbed of terrorism and bloodthirsty anti-Americanism (I'm joking everybody), Halliburton's subsidiaries are fortifying the Consulate.

Machiavelli, that evil lover of despots (again, a joke), mentioned the advantages of a leader having a people love him over having a people fear him – a leader needs no walls if the people love him.

In this the Year of the Sheep, a most lucky one for Chinese, China may yet see the international image it has so lovingly cultivated with Games and Festivals and Gifts and soft words (to offset the executions, net crackdowns, imprisonments, and mindboggling corruption/unemployment) blossom in the Third and Second Worlds while the First looks on desperately from the walls it has built around itself.

To quote a friend of mine:
"The First is the Worst, The Second is the Next, the Third is the word we use to describe all the rest."

–Sascha Matuszak

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Sascha Matuszak is a teacher living and working in China. His articles have appeared in the South China Morning Post, the Minnesota Daily, and elsewhere. His exclusive Antiwar.com column (usually) appears Fridays.

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