China fears repeat of Ronald Reagan strategy

China fears repeat of Ronald Reagan strategy

By Ching Cheong

SINGAPORE: The recent downturn in Sino-American relations has
made the Chinese refocus their attention on U.S. policies that
led to the downfall of the former Soviet Union.

This is because they find stark similarities in the policies
of U.S. President George W. Bush towards China and former
President Ronald Reagan towards Russia.

"The need to study seriously how Reagan brought about the
collapse of the Soviet Union becomes imperative now," said social
scientist Lu Jianhua, who specializes in China's foreign
policies.

"It is not just an academic issue but one that concerns life
and death," added the researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences' Institute of Political Studies.

Citing Peter Schweizer's book, Victory: The Reagan
Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened The Collapse Of
The Soviet Union, Lu found that Bush's policy towards China is
surprisingly similar to what Reagan did to the Soviet Union two
decades ago.

The author was a fellow at the Hoover Institute of Stanford
University. His book was written in 1994 using highly-classified
documents like National Security Decision Directives (NSDD).

He also interviewed key personnel in the Reagan
administration, such as Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger,
National Security Adviser William Clark and Secretary of State
George Shultz.

The former Reagan stalwarts also helped review the manuscript
to ensure its accuracy and validity. This amounted to an
endorsement by the top executors of the plot. In his book,
Schweizer concluded that Reagan's strategy, which attacked the
very heart of the Soviet regime, included four main thrusts:

Covert financial, intelligence and logistical support to the
Solidarity movement in Poland that ensured the survival of an
opposition movement in the heart of the Soviet empire;

Substantial financial and military support to the Afghan
resistance, as well as supply of mujahideen (pan-Islamic
separatists in Russia) personnel to take the war into the Soviet
Union itself;

Attempts to ruin the Soviet economy by launching a campaign to
reduce dramatically its hard-currency earnings through driving
down the price of oil with Saudi cooperation and limiting
natural-gas exports to the West;

Aggressive high-tech defense build-up, like the Strategic
Defense Initiative (SDI), designed to strain the Soviet economy
severely.

These were set out in several top-secret NSDDs signed
personally by Reagan early in his administration.

NSDD-32 stated that it was U.S. policy to "neutralize" Soviet
power in Eastern Europe.

NSDD-56 fired the first shot in the economic war that helped
bankrupt the Kremlin.

Said Lu: "Although it was a story about the Soviet Union, yet,
if one substitutes China for the Soviet Union, Taiwan for
Afghanistan, Hongkong for Poland, Radio Free Asia for Radio Free
Europe, and national missile defense (NMD) for SDI, then the
parallels become apparent.

"In particular, we found Bush's May 1 announcement on
installing the NMD and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's May 8
statement suggesting the weaponisation of outer space
particularly disturbing ... according to Peter Schweizer, an
integral part of the strategy outlined in NSDD-75 was to commit
the Soviet Union to an arms race that eventually bankrupted its
economy."

The NMD was estimated to cost between US$60 billion (S$108
billion) and US$100 billion over the next 10 years, according to
Pentagon estimates.

As for the development of space weapons, roughly US$6 billion
a year has already been spent in the past few years, according to
Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of
New York.

If China were to engage in such an arms race, its economy
would be strained severely.

In his book, Schweizer wrote that NSDD-75 declared it would
henceforth be administration policy to exacerbate Soviet economic
problems in the hope of plunging the system into a crisis.

It was signed by the president for a specific purpose, which
was to squeeze the Soviet economy by both reducing income and
forcing an increase in expenditure.

Said former National Security Adviser Bill Clark, who was
quoted in the book: "Ronald Reagan wanted a complimentary
relationship between the U.S. military build-up, futuristic
defense-related technologies like SDI, and econo- mic-security
policies directed at Moscow.

"Frankly, our intention was to divert priority Soviet
resources to meeting future U.S. capabilities beyond their
grasp."

If Reagan's plot brought about the implosion of the Soviet
Union, the social scientist added, "we had reason to be skeptical
of Bush's current policy towards China, which bore much semblance
to Reagan's".

"NMD and space weapons aside, there were other similarities.

"Bush's Taiwan policy was comparable to Reagan's support for
the mujahideen which eventually developed into the separatist war
of Chechnya a decade later," he said.

Beijing had objected to Bush's arms sales to Taiwan on the
grounds that it would embolden separatism.

"This is taking the war into China, like what Reagan did with
the mujahideen," Lu said.

When Schweizer's book was first published, only the orthodox
Marxist ideologues in China paid serious attention to it but,
now, Bush has forced everyone, including the liberals, to revisit
the Reagan plot, he added.

-- The Straits Times/Asia News Network