The Warrior Class
Bethell, Tom
The Warrior Class Bill Kristol and the National Greatness crowd would love to have a war BY TOM BETHELL ill Kristol and Robert Kagan, the co-editors of a recent book called...
...The metaphor of Munich is never far from their lips...
...It's a trick that no other regime has pulled off, and quite possibly the Chinese won't be able to either...
...That may be the real source of Kristol & Co.'s hostility, of course, for only a I'm therefor you, son inect.pop...
...Imagine that the following "And always remember at Dadman@con passage appeared in a militarist journal in Beijing: "The Americans need to understand that their efforts to force China away from the defense of Puerto Rico cannot succeed...
...A friend of mine in Washington noted recently that the real objection to Beijing seems to be that they want to be No...
...It is a pattern that is alienating an increasing number of states, and that, if persisted in, will ultimately be dangerous for the United States...
...Congress gave the Baby Bells the right to compete in the long distance phone business, in return for what is called "open access," or letting competitors use the Bells' local copper wires to set up competing local phone services...
...But if U.S...
...But it looks more like a pretext than a justification...
...Not surprisingly, few competitors for the local phone business showed up...
...In a stream of furious editorials and opeds, they press upon us a more belligerent attitude, not just toward China, but toward the world in general...
...Against those who had urged caution, because "the removal of one man provides no solution to a problem," Kagan and Kristol write that we "may wish to reflect on the American experiences in Germany and Japan...
...Thus the most important telecommunications legislation in many decades was passed largely to eliminate the Baby Bells' stranglehold over an industry headed for the junk heap of history...
...In his recent New Republic article,"How Bill Kristol Ditched Conservatism," Franklin Foer detailed the many ways in which Kristol and his Weekly Standard ally ed piece was headlined, when the U.S...
...Broadband's arrival in the local neighborhood will likely trigger the next advance in the technology-driven boom that started with Reagan, but it will take a critical mass of connected consumers to achieve lift-off...
...By year-end 2000 just 7 percent of American homes enjoyed broadband (more than 1 megabit per second) Internet connections...
...The Chinese rulers now allow their own people to prosper, perhaps recognizing the truth of Dr.Johnson's dictum that people are never more harmlessly employed than when earning a living...
...apparently the Bush administration does not understand any better...
...We may say that we shall not abuse this astonishing and hitherto unheard of power...
...In so arguing they reject the lesson taught in the mid-1980s by Irving Kristol, who noticed that the collective-defense structure of NATO discouraged our allies from pulling their weight...
...It's worth noting that Irving's political views in general are much more sensible than those of his son, Bill, whose surname for years conferred on him the benefit of a good deal of doubt...
...Such Chinese surveillance flights won't happen any time soon, of course, because over 50 years ago they adopted the self-impoverishing ideology of 19th century Western intellectuals: Communism...
...Navy to stop using the nearby island of Vieques for practice bombing runs...
...Around the world, wherever mobile phone use has exceeded a "tipping point" of between 30 and 50 percent of phone users, traditional land-line voice service has gone into decline...
...Kagan and Kristol and others in the "national greatness" camp are planning to stir up conflict with anyone who aims merely to be the second most powerful country in the world, they have devised a formula that will ensure a hostile relationship with the whole world...
...When Vice President Cheney appeared on the talk shows at that time, both Cokie Roberts and Tim Russert splashed quotes from the editorial on the screen and sought Cheney's reaction...
...They fervently repudiate unilateralism, and believe that American preeminence will require "an even greater U.S...
...The bill in question, Tauzin-Dingell, would allow local phone companiesessentially the remaining Baby Bells-to transform the local copper wires that link their customers to national long distance networks into high speed Internet connections, aka "broadband...
...I believe that the United States is now in dire need of such a warning," Harries wrote...
...We might more sensibly wonder whether the relationship between these two parts of China is any more our concern than the relationship between the U.S...
...In addressing our "world responsibilities" and advocating a "fundamental change" in the way we think about them, Kagan and Kristol set forth a precautionary or anticipatory principle that delivers limitless influence into the hands of those who claim to see danger where others see tranquillity...
...Simultaneously the "carrot" the FCC dane service has gone into decline...
...Without broadband, most users experience the World Wide Web as the World Wide Wait, and neither they nor the economy benefit from the wealth of social, commercial, and educational opportunities it could provide...
...has been a pattern of indiscriminate and irresolute-but unrelenting-busyness, of interfering and lecturing, of a promiscuous though largely ineffectual use of force and of sanctions...
...Simultaneously the "carrot" the FCC dan...
...Oops...
...But confused voters shouldn't feel bad...
...We should "weigh in," they write, not just "when" crises erupt but "preferably before they erupt...
...We had shown the requisite "national greatness conservatism" by bombing Belgrade, but we had inexplicably failed to send in ground forces to "topple the Milosevic regime...
...Their question: "How can Americans love their nation if they hate its government...
...The Warrior Class Bill Kristol and the National Greatness crowd would love to have a war BY TOM BETHELL ill Kristol and Robert Kagan, the co-editors of a recent book called Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy, have been among the leading agitators for less-friendly relations with China...
...In the event, even without nukes and the modern-day equivalent of Patton in the Balkans, the Milosevic regime was toppled anyway-by Serbs themselves.They rose up against their own police state, just as other East Europeans had done a decade earlier...
...aircrew, forced to land on Hainan Island, was about to be returned to American soil in April...
...Their furious editorial in the David Brooks "have come a long way in the past three years," championing environmental protection and campaign finance reform, for example, but he failed to note the extent to which their foreign policy views are congruent with those of Marty Peretz's New Republic, for which Foer works...
...By the time the Act had passed, the Bells' "natural monopoly" was already disappearing.The distinction between local and long distance service has been abolished by ever cheaper mobile phone service, now commonly available for less than ten cents a minute, and headed lower as wireless technology improves.Your mobile phone does not care whether you are calling across the street or across the country...
...But they surely recognize that capitalism is the only system that generates wealth, and they cannot have avoided noticing how well it has worked for Chinese elsewhere, including Hong Kong and TTiwan itself...
...So they can't afford expensive maneuvers...
...At times they have verged on accusing their opponents of lacking patriotism, but they are probably sensible enough not to ignite that fuse...
...Kristol and Brooks, who constitute "a minority in their own office," according to Foer, openly repudiate principles of individualism and constitutional government and substitute for it a philosophy of state power...
...They sounded disappointed that an opportunity to start a war with China had been missed...
...ground troops had done the job for them, we not only would have preempted that achievement but would surely still be stuck there, surrounded by a population far more resentful than grateful...
...advocate a strategy of "regime change" an Orwellian phrase for overthrowing governments they dislike...
...The same was true in Hong Kong, which was filled to overflowing with Chinese and undemocratic until 1995, only two years before sovereignty was transferred to Beijing...
...Those eager for conflict with China contrast Taiwan's (recent) democratic status with that of the unelected government in Beijing...
...But every other nation will think we shall abuse it...
...They think that this creates a moral justification for our intervention on behalf of Taiwan, when desired...
...One example shows just how cockeyed their judgment is...
...The goal was to bring competition to local phone service...
...When their introductory chapter to Present Dangers was written, Slobodan Milosevic was still hanging on to power...
...as eccentric...
...If so, maybe they should argue that China is dangerous not because it is Communist but because it is threatening to become capitalist...
...Not a good idea...
...In a recent article on "The Anglosphere Illusion," he quoted Edmund Burke's comment that "among precautions against ambition it may not be amiss to take precaution against our own...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR N Summer Reading Issue 2001 11 wealthy country has the ability to impose its will on others, and a rich China may indeed prove to be more dangerous than a poor one...
...The Chinese "need to understand," Kagan and Kristol write, "that their efforts to force the United States away from the defense of Taiwan cannot succeed...
...Not surprisingly, few competitors for the local phone business showed up...
...In the decade since the Gulf War, he added, "what we have seen he most important piece of economic legislation pending before Congress turns on issues so obscure that even the multi-million-dollar ad campaigns from both sides avoid mentioning them...
...An outdated regulatory scheme created by the 1996 Telecommunications Act, passed when the Net as we know it was just being born...
...can be charitably described as eccentric...
...For families who are able to buy a car, or farmers who can buy a tractor for the first time in their lives, the right to vote for a different set of rulers in Beijing now and then doesn't matter very much in the scale of things, just as it didn't matter for the residents of Taiwan over the many years when they had little control over who was in charge in Taipei...
...Kagan and Kristol Jr...
...So they have started down the capitalist road...
...Their tirades receive so much attention from the news media that, to Chinese officials accustomed to a government-controlled media, they probably seem like semi-official government policy statements...
...Kristol is the editor of the Weekly Standard, a political magazine published by Rupert Murdoch...
...It's a strategy that would also appeal to their hero, John McCain...
...can be charitably described 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 0 Summer Reading Issue 2001 Their question: "How can Americans love their nation if they hate its government...
...The chief reason...
...and Puerto Rico is China's concern...
...commitment to its allies" than at present...
...2. But if Messrs...
...Would our armchair hawks sit back contentedly and say, "That's their right...
...For the last 20 years, however, their leaders have made an effort to move toward capitalism, while remaining in power under the tattered banner of Communism...
...Let's substitute proper names, put the shoe on the other foot...
...Thank God K & K didn't summon up bombing raids there...
...I must fairly say, I dread our own power and our own ambition...
...How would we react if China were to send their spy planes up and down the East Coast, just beyond the limits of international waters...
...That way they could forget about the GOP, which they want to do anyway, and forge an alliance with the Democrats...
...As to China and the spy plane episode, "this entire crisis has really been about Taiwan," Kristol and Kagan wrote at the time...
...We lost," their prominent Washington Post opStandard, arguing that the spy plane incident had caused us a "profound national humiliation," could hardly have received greater prominence...
...As it happened, at about the same time as the spy plane incident, the Puerto Rican government sued the U.S...
...One who realizes this is Owen Harries, the editor of the National Interest, a quarterly journal founded and published by Irving Kristol...
...Thus the most important telecommunications legislation in many decades was passed largely to eliminate the Baby Bells' stranglehold over an industry headed for the junk heap of history...
...Since their network of copper wires to homes gave the Bells a "natural monopoly," the Feds reasoned, there would never be competition in the "local loop" unless they shared...
...How would our armchair militarists respond if China were to weigh in on Puerto Rico's side...
...Kagan, oddly, is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace...
Vol. 34 • July 2001 • No. 6
