NEW MATH
The two main stories in this week's Army Times announce that the Secretary of the Army wants
50,000 more soldiers to ease the strain on the troops at the same time that the service had
its worst recruiting year in the history of the volunteer force -- falling short by some 7,300
enlistees. If the administration's defense and foreign policies continue on their course, we
may have to bring back the draft.
UNITED STATES OF DUPES
Sometime in 1995, the CIA opened the door to a person offering proof that China had acquired
detailed information about America's most sophisticated thermonuclear weapon, the W-88 warhead
that attaches to submarine missiles. The CIA later decided that this "walk-in," as
cloak-and-dagger types call such volunteers, was actually a plant. Chinese intelligence chiefs
apparently wanted to reveal that they had tapped U.S. national security secrets.
The question is why. Perhaps China was subtly flexing its muscles. The walk-in's information,
for instance, was also supplied to Beijing's enemies in Taiwan. Or maybe China wanted to throw
spyhunters off the trail of a particular agent. Whatever their reasons, Chinese officials
probably didn't want to touch off a spy scandal in the United States, one that would chill
relations between the two countries so severely as to threaten the Bush-Clinton policy of
engagement coveted by Beijing (and American businessmen).
Or did they? Writing in the New York Review of Books, Lars-Erik Nelson suggests that China
actually meant to provoke a spy scandal in the United States, and that the Cox Report is an
important tool in this effort. Nelson proposes "an exquisite Chinese strategy: deliberately
trigger a spy hunt, raise suspicions about Chinese scientists in this country, make them feel
unwelcome, and thus stop the loss of top Chinese physicists who remain in the U.S. after
graduating from U.S. universities."
Wow. That turns Rep. Christopher Cox, the report's primary author, into an unwitting
accomplice, a sort of dimwit Manchurian Candidate. Indeed, the Nelson theory sounds like a
summertime movie plot: China flicks America's paranoia switch and covertly solves a
brain-drain problem (which the Cox Report, incidentally, credits with playing a key role in
China's espionage strategy). The theory is itself so paranoid that Hollywood would fall for
it. Can Nelson really believe it?
CLINTON'S ARMED FORCES
We've held our tongues all week about the ludicrous excesses of the media's coverage of the
death of JFK Jr., lest our comments be misinterpreted as a slight to him or to his family. We
do, however, have to raise questions about the use of a U.S. Navy destroyer for his burial at
sea. At a time when the much-shrunken National Guard and active-duty military are struggling
to keep up with military honors for an unprecedented number of veterans' funerals (as the
World War Two generation passes away), Kennedy gets a warship and a Pentagon waiver "due to
notable service or outstanding contribution to the U.S." If Kennedy turned down an honorary
degree from Washington College because he thought he didn't deserve it, we can't imagine he
would have wanted this.
