On Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee will consider the nomination of Admiral Vernon E. Clark to be the next Chief of Naval Operations. Concerning the latter, Senators and the American people they represent need to know whether Adm. Clark will pander to the radical feminists, for whom combat effectiveness is always to be subordinated to the principle of gender equality. There are signs that the strong scepticism felt by most Americans about Communist China and its intentions is making the well-heeled pressure campaign by the executive branch, the House Republican leadership and their allies in industry trade associations, agribusinesses and establishment foreign policy circles a harder sell than anticipated. This reality has prompted some of PNTR's most prominent proponents to put aside problematic economic arguments for dispensing with annual reviews of China's trade and other practices in favor of claims that U.S. national security requires passage of this legislation. Such claims are, of course, total nonsense.
China is ineluctably and deliberately emerging as a threat to U.S. interests and security.
Making its Communist regime richer will only intensify the comprehensiveness and severity of that threat. Agreeing to do so in the immediate aftermath of explicit Chinese threats to both the United States and Taiwan, moreover, can only encourage Beijing to wield such threats to the detriment of this country and its allies. The Communists have repeatedly warned of such a response to the 20 May inauguration of Chen Shui Bian as President of Taiwan. Despite highly publicized efforts by left-wing activists who will try today to use amateur interpretation of commercial satellite imagery to mislead the public about China's offensive capabilities, we ignore China's growing ability to attack Taiwan at our peril. More importantly, China has obtained the production technology for the missile.