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 dm. Dennis Blair,
commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific
Command, said the plane, which contains sensitive cryptological
and other electronic surveillance equipment, is considered sovereign
territory, similar to an embassy.
"We
physically cannot prevent the Chinese from boarding the plane,"
he said on ABC's Good Morning America.
—AP dispatch, 4/2/01, 3:19 pm
With all due respect, Admiral: The hell you say. The U.S. could
have prevented the Chinese from boarding the plane very easily,
by destroying it. The administration should still do this as speedily
as possible, to show the Chinese how seriously we take the theft
of our property. That plane should be destroyed, without any regard
whatsoever to Chinese sensitivities, or indeed lives and property.
The only question worth serious discussion is that of technique.
The EP-3 electronic reconnaissance plane, now in the hands of the
Chinese authorities, is a compact package of state-of-the-art surveillance
technology, used for monitoring Chinese military radio and computer
traffic. The equipment is all highly classified. Says one expert
in the field, Paul Beaver of the Jane's Information Group, publisher
of the respected Jane's Defense Weekly: "It's catastrophic
for the U.S. if the Chinese have managed to gain access to the aircraft
and if they've managed to obtain access to the computers and the
hard disks. …The Chinese will probably sell the information
to the Russians, so it means everyone will have access to one of
the most sophisticated intelligence-gathering airplanes in the world."
It's probably too late now, but the U.S. should have taken steps
to prevent that happening. The way to prevent it happening would
have been to trash that plane. Operational drills in the kind of
situation that has occurred here — a hot-dogging Chinese fighter
pilot clipped the plane over international waters, forcing it to
land an hour later — require the crew to destroy as much sensitive
data and equipment as they can. For all we know, however, something
might have prevented their doing this, or they may not have been
able to finish the job. You can't be too careful. That plane should
have been reduced to a heap of molten junk.
This is, in fact, still worth doing, for reasons I shall enlarge
on below. There are two possible ways to destroy that plane: remotely,
or personally.
To do it remotely, an air assault has to be launched, with precision-guided
munitions targeted on the plane. There are a number of problems
with this.
First, the plane needs to be located. From the news we are getting,
it seems that we know pretty well where it is, and a plane the size
of a large commercial passenger jet is not an easy thing to move
around. Military people can be very ingenious, though. A basic part
of advanced military training consists of presenting the soldier
with large, cumbersome objects that need to be moved or hidden.
(In the British Army's officer training, it's an upside-down tank.)
It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that in the hours that
have elapsed since the landing, some plane of equivalent size and
shape — even, perhaps, a mockup — has been got into place
on a runway, while the original has been towed off into a hangar
somewhere under cover of darkness. Fighter-bomber planes travel
very fast, and have precious little time to scrutinize their targets.
A mockup doesn't have to be correct down to the last rivet.
Second, you have to get attack planes to Hainan Island and back.
This involves either (a) getting a carrier task force in position,
or (b) asking friendly nations in the area to allow the mission
to take off from their soil. Unless, by sheer good luck, a suitable
force is close by, these both present obvious problems, of the military
and diplomatic sort.
Third, we need to know how much of our equipment has been stolen.
An air assault will not tell us this, and for sure it is not a piece
of information the Chinese are going to give us for the asking.
Fourth, supposing there is any top-secret gear still on the plane,
it needs to be thoroughly destroyed. Precision guided munitions
are just the thing for bringing down a building or unzipping a bunker,
but the aim here is to render into unrecognizable scrap some components
no bigger than a home stereo system. We do not, actually, have that
kind of precision from the air. Not even seriously obnoxious ordnance
like fuel-air explosives can guarantee to do it, if the equipment
is protected in a closed container.
All of which leads away from the remote option, and towards the
personal: send a team in there to trash the plane manually and intimately,
with well-placed charges, after first carrying out an inspection
to see what's been taken. The U.S. has plenty of special services
units well capable of doing this job, and I hope a couple of them
are undergoing some intensive training for the mission right now.
This suggestion, which I offer in dead earnest, is going to bring
a couple of predictable responses. One, who do I think I am, some
kind of armchair warrior, proposing that U.S. military personnel
be put in harm's way? Two, am I crazy — trying to start a war
with China?
On the first point, that's what military personnel are for, and
they don't mind doing it. Mind? I was in London when Argentina invaded
the Falklands in 1982. Once word got out that Margaret Thatcher
was going to send a task force to recover the islands, military
men were knocking down doors in Whitehall trying to get on that
task force. There were lines around the block. For one thing, when
you've trained for years to do something, you very much want to
show — show your comrades, show your superiors, show the world,
show yourself — that you can actually do it.
For another, if you're pursuing a career in the military, nothing
lights up your resumé like a spell of combat experience. Military
folk are just as keen on resumé-building as the rest of us.
On the second, the surest way to get into a war with China is to
let them slip into a frame of mind where they under-estimate U.S.
resolve. Talk to a Chinese — any Chinese, the people have been
thoroughly brainwashed on this — about Taiwan. "Oh," they sneer,
"Americans won't fight to defend Taiwan." That's why they're stuffing
their side of the Straits of Formosa with ballistic missiles. Every
war starts with an someone's perception of someone else's weakness.
Against whom would you, personally, be more likely to declare war:
an enemy you believe to be weak and irresolute, or one for whose
military boldness and prowess you have serious respect?
It would be salutary, at this point in a new administration, to
give the Chinese a firm, clear demonstration that the U.S. most
certainly will fight to defend her interests, to protect
her secrets, and to rescue her people. (That last is another mission
I very much hope is on the tarmac waiting for a green light by the
time you read this.) China's behavior so far has been predictably
arrogant and lawless. Chinese politicians are going around puffed
up like poison toads with bogus indignation, emitting clouds of
gassy bluster about the U.S. having "violated our air space." Fine:
when you've been arrested, tried and found guilty of an offense,
you might as well commit it. Let's show these gangsters what a real
violation of Chinese air space looks like.
We all know — the Chinese Communists sure as hell knew —
what the slogan of the Clinton administration was: FOR SALE. Well,
here is a new slogan, for George W. Bush's America: DON'T MESS WITH
THE U.S.
Follow-up
A big mailbag in response to my
piece on Junior ROTC including many, many testimonials from
JROTC graduates and parents about the character-building and self-discovery
aspects of junior military training. Two highlights in particular,
things I learned from readers that I didn't know when I wrote the
piece.
(1) Many U.S. high schools ban military recruiters. Quote:
"At least 600 schools ban military recruiting of all kinds. Fully
one-quarter of America's 21,000 secondary schools place some sort
of restriction on recruiting activities. And more than 4,000 refuse
to share directory information such as phone numbers and addresses
with military recruiters." That is from a fine, well-researched
article by Alan W. Dowd in the current (April 2001) issue of American
Legion Magazine. Amazing — and disgraceful.
(2) There is a private organization, The
Young Marines, that gives youngsters a marine-type training
from age as young as 8. (The more official MCJROTC operates only
in high schools.) It's run by volunteers from the Marine Corps League,
and, though my informant tells me they grudgingly accept some small
subsidies for things like drug rehab, it is mostly government-free.
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