Peter Zhang
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 31 May 2004

Four years ago I predicted that Beijing would grind its teeth if Bush won. Well, it did more than that: it threw a "right tantrum" as my old English teacher used to say. (He was full of delightful and colourful sayings). Even as I wrote party hacks busily churned out anti-American and anti-NMD propaganda.

The party line was the predictable one of arguing that the proposed missile defence system is hostile in intent and is meant to target Russia and China. (Democrats, Kerry among them, basically push the same line).

But by the same logic, the Nazi's would have been justified at levelling the same accusation against Britain's pre-war radar installations.

Beijing said that "Some Americans do not want to give up the Cold War mentality and retain a fierce hostility to the rise of China." This was truly rich coming from a mob that sanctioned an article in a Chinese military paper that threatened a loss of 200 million Americans as the price of defending 20 million Taiwanese (sic).

It should be clear as the nose on one's face that any country that does not take defensive measures against this kind of threat needs its collective head examined. Moreover, Americans should not forget the Chinese general who threatened to incinerate Los Angeles.

But no one ever accused our militarists and their politburo allies of having much in the way of brains. Theirs is the way of the jackboot, the club and the blackjack, as Tiananmen Square amply demonstrated.

Even these largely witless thugs feel the need, as the Nazis and Soviets did, to justify their threats. And as always, it comes down to the bully boy, the uniformed thug being the victim. Yes, those wilting flowers in Beijing were victims of American aggression and that's why Bush should have abandoned the NMD. One can now understand their enthusiasm for a Kerry and his merry band of appeasers.

Beijing's line that America was redeploying forces from Europe to the Asia region in an attempt to intimidate and contain China was such an obvious crock that it was quickly dropped, even though it was mainly used for internal consumption in a crude attempt to rouse nationalist feelings.

However, one should never underestimate a potential enemy's paranoia. When the US held a five-day war game in Colorado nearly four years ago Chinese militarists asserted that it proved America was plotting war against China.

Setting the war in Asia was, in the opinion of these militarists, the clincher that persuaded them that China was the target and that the NMD system was part of a long-term plan to annihilate China.

If this sounds paranoid, that's because it is. Why do these militarists think like this? Because that's what they would do if they had America's resources and technology, so they naturally assume America is as thuggish and as aggressive as they are.

They're also a touch schizoid. One minute America is a "paper tiger," a country in an advanced state of moral decay. The next minute she's a psychotic thug intent on world domination, a favourite lefty trope.

So what's the good news for the US? That's it. Make no mistake about it, these militarists' shrill cries contained a genuine note of apprehension. Motivating them is the fear that a successful NMD system (and our militarists don't doubt America's ability to build one) would turn China's expensive missile arsenal into a heap of scrap and render North Korean threats useless.

Unlike half-witted leftwing journalists, they know the "arms race" argument is hollow because attempting to breach such a system would require a horrendously expensive programme of trying to develop technologies to penetrate the shield, knowing that the shield itself was being continuously refined.

Beijing does not want to get caught up in the kind of technological race that finally broke the Soviet empire. Her only hope was to intimidate, by whatever means, President Bush into abandoning the project. This failed tactic mercifully failed. Her last hope is a Kerry victory.

In the meantime, their stupid support for North Korea's loony dictator has backfired. Instead of Kim successfully frightening Japan into jettisoning her reliance on American military might by firing off missiles in the direction of Tokyo he persuaded her Government to invest in America's missile defence system. Given enough time these geniuses might even outwit themselves into extinction.