As President Bush met with Chinese President Hu Jintao at the White House this week, the issue of China’s rise as a global superpower took center stage. Serious concerns are mounting in Washington in regards to China’s increasingly aggressive global posturing. Indeed, Beijing continues to militarily threaten Taiwan, to support a nuclear North Korea, and to forge alliances with anti-American regimes everywhere, including with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Iran’s nuclear-aspiring Mullahs.

As the military and economic threat of Beijing becomes increasingly apparent, the question arises: were we complicit in creating this communist monster? If we were, what can and must we do now to reverse course? And whatever happened to economic liberalization leading to democratization – as many optimists had predicted would happen? Did the formula simply not work? Did the capitalist success of the economy simply just strengthen the power of the dictatorship? Or will there be some kind of democratic explosion at some point in the near future?

Whatever the case, the reality now is that the communist giant poses a serious military threat to our allies in Asia -- and to us. Its economic policies, all the while, are significantly undermining our interests.

What can we expect from the Chinese threat in the near future? And what can -- and what must -- we do about it?

To discuss these and other questions with us, we are honored to be joined by a distinguished panel. Our guests today are:

Arthur Waldron, Professor of International Relations in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He was trained in Chinese language and History at Harvard, spent a number of years living in Asia, and has visited China dozens of times since the 1970s.

Gordon G. Chang, the author of The Coming Collapse of China. He has lived and worked in China and Hong Kong for more than two decades.

Ethan Gutmann, author of Losing the New China: a Story of American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal. A former visiting Fellow at PNAC, and a former Senor Counselor at APCO China. He received the "Spirit of Tiananmen" and "Chan's Journalism" awards in 2005.

Kin-ming Liu, currently a freelance columnist based in Washington, DC., writing a bi-weekly column for Insight for the News and writing a weekly column for The Standard, an English paper in Hong Kong. Until recently, he was the US Political Columnist of Hong Kong's Apple Daily.

FP: Arthur Waldron, Gordon G. Chang, Ethan Gutmann and Kin-ming Liu, welcome to Frontpage.

Perhaps to crystallize the key issues involved, it might be best to start with U.S. policy and what it hopes to achieve in China.

Dr. Waldron, what would the U.S. like to see there? And is what we need to do to make it happen?

Waldron: If we look back at the history of US China policy since the early 1970s, we see three distinct phases. The first was begun by President Nixon and concluded by President Carter. During that period we were preoccupied with the power of the Soviet Union. Our impending defeat in Vietnam persuaded them that we could not deal with the USSR alone. We needed a counterweight--and China was the obvious one.

Of course China felt threatened by Moscow too: otherwise no agreement would have been possible. But as the diplomacy played out, it became clear that the United States felt more urgency, was less skilled at bargaining, and more willing to make concessions than China. The eventual result was the agreements Carter made in 1979 that established full diplomatic relations with China, broke all of our official relations with Taiwan (our treaty ally since the early 1950s) not even acknowledging any longer that it was a state having its own government, and ushered in an unprecedented degree of intelligence cooperation with China, perhaps most importantly through advanced monitoring posts near the Soviet border in Xinjiang.

Both Nixon and Carter were advocates of human rights. Yet neither seemed at all concerned about the rights of the Chinese people. They knew that China was a communist dictatorship comparable to the Soviet Union. But somehow they saw it through different eyes. I have always felt they never got beyond the fact that the people who live there were "Chinese" -- having a difficult ideographic language, distinct culture, seemingly uniform appearance, etc. -- they never got beyond all of that to grasp that they were also people having the same rights as any others. They also believed that Mao had somehow solved China's problems and that the system they saw would endure.

So that was the strategic partner phase. Next came the China will change phase. Reagan shifted attention away from Beijing and undid some of the damage to Taiwan. He focused on the USSR directly, calling upon Mr Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin wall, and making clear that the United States no longer felt so weak as she had in the 1970s. The result was of course astonishing change in Eastern Europe--with the Berlin Wall actually coming down and Communism ending in the USSR in 1991.

The democracy movement in China fed hope that China too would change. Already all sorts of economic change had been begun after Mao's death in 1976. But no serious institutional change took place or has taken place up to the present. Private property is not guaranteed, law and justice do not exist -- instead the Party decides what is to be done --and no genuinely significant steps have been taken toward democratization or freedom of speech and conscience.

Nevertheless, during this period the hope and expectation in Washington was that China was going to change -- and become more tolerant, liberal, and so forth, even democratic. Clinton ran on a ticket of supporting democracy in China.

This was a phase during which change had not occurred, but was so widely expected that we acted as if it had, lifting restrictions, pouring in investment, soaking up exports, etc.

Now we are in the third phase. China has reaped the benefits of American policies. Her government is rich and many Americans and other westerners now have so much money invested in China that they are reluctant to do anything other than support the regime. Yet it is becoming clear that the Communists have no intention of giving up power, allowing free speech, elections, freedom of religion, or other serious change. It is also becoming clear that economically China is mercantilist in her behavior, not a true free trader. And finally, she is using the money and access to foreign technology obtained in these decades to engage in a major military build-up.

This is the phase in which we find ourselves now. I think we can call it dawning disappointment and concern. Without intending to, we have helped create a formidable geopolitical competitor, that threatens our friends and allies in Asia militarily, and whose economic behavior is undermining our interests. That competitor now feels strong enough not to pay much attention to what we say, one way or the other. Beijing feels it can make its own way.

I believe our interest is above all in having a China whose government is legitimately constituted, elected by its people, and that honors the rights of its people. This is the fundamental consideration.

Our policies, paradoxically enough, seem in fact to have strengthened the dictatorship, or at least its determination not to reform, and paid for a major arms build up.

Gutmann: Given Arthur's summary, I would only add a point of emphasis. In the mid-nineties, following President Clintons' retreat on linking human rights to business engagement, American business interests have essentially held the whip hand in American foreign policy towards China.

There's nothing conspiratorial about this; as Arthur suggests, US policymakers have never held a particularly unified or coherent view of how to handle China's rise. Business does. They see an incredibly entrepreneurial people who are interested in profits, just like them. This mirror-imaging - really a sort of euphoria - has colored the American business view of international relations as well. Fukiyama's end-of-history essay stated what American businessmen intuitively knew already: interdependence and globalization would effectively end large-scale state-to-state conflicts.

It's a shaky theory (Europe had a high rate of trade on the eve of World War I; Palestinians have a high rate of interdependence with Israelis and so on), and it is interesting that Fukuyama employed China as a key example of the defeat of communism, while assuming that the vital elements of fascism had also been defeated, by the middle of the 20th Century. Yet China's transition from communism to capitalism – what businessmen see - can also be interpreted as a transition from communism to fascism.

Now, I don't take that term lightly. And I am not using it as an epithet, but as a description of recent trends: for example, the recent reports on the Sujiatun death camp, where doctors reportedly harvest 6000 Falun Gong practitioners for collagen, skin, and corneas. Or that the Chinese interest in trade stability doesn't seem compatible with the missiles aimed at Taiwan. Or that the Chinese are currently buying oil assets at a rate that does not indicate confidence in the continued existence of a spot market - in other words the Chinese Communist Party is planning for a world that is not interdependent.

None of these trends would survive free elections in China. So, as Arthur said, that is clearly in the US national interest, but we no longer have a road map. The Chinese Internet as a training ground of democracy has been effectively blocked. The village elections are a fig-leaf. "Rule of law" has taken us nowhere and as, Arthur pointed out, our leverage is decreasing. The US business vision of inevitable Chinese political reform through a rising middle class has not been proved wrong, not yet, but it is no longer in the US national interest to passively assume it either.

Liu: As a long-time student of US policies and attitudes towards China, I am always amazed at one enduring element I call the China Exception. Presidents can come and go; Congress can be led by either the Democrats or the Republicans; but China has always been viewed with a special eye by Americans.

The United States, the bastion of anti-communism during the Cold War, considered the Russians to be wicked and dangerous. The Chinese, somehow, were seen as more benign and misguided. In other words, the Russians were bad communists while the Chinese were good communists. US attitudes toward China swing between love and skepticism but the Soviet Union was always considered the bad guy. What's more, the Soviet Union didn't have Fortune 500 acting as its lobbyists like China does. Gutmann has talked about this in great details in his book so I don't have to repeat it here.

Even George W Bush, the most revolutionary US president since Ronald Reagan, does not seem totally immune to this romanticism about China. The Bush Doctrine seems to be applicable to anywhere else but China. Washington apparently is not pursuing these policies towards Beijing. Imagine the U.S. trying to tell Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union to become a "responsible stakeholder" as the Bush Administration is doing now. It doesn't make any sense.

I understand the U.S. is busy with Iraq and certainly doesn't want more trouble elsewhere. But not being straight about China is only inviting big trouble later, especially on the Taiwan Strait.

FP: Mr. Chang, what do you think of the “China Exception” and the other comments made the guests?

Chang: Beijing has indeed benefited from exceptional treatment from Washington as both Arthur and Kin-ming note. A consensus about China has underpinned American foreign policy for more than a decade. Policymakers have believed that our engagement of Beijing would lead, if not to a more democratic China, then at least to a more benign one. Therefore, Washington’s goal has been to integrate China into the international community. The concept is simple: if we extend a hand, they will respond.

As a result of our indulgent approach, we have helped Beijing and even overlooked irresponsible conduct in the hope that China would eventually evolve. Over time, however, we inadvertently created a set of perverse incentives. The Chinese engaged in bad behavior. We provided benefits in the hope they would change. So they continued their irresponsible conduct. We continued to reward them. In these circumstances, the Chinese naturally became more assertive than cooperative.

Now, however, the general consensus toward China is starting to break down. And as trade frustrations mount, geopolitical concerns will come to prominence as well. It is becoming increasingly clear that China is an obstacle—and perhaps the main obstacle—to America achieving its most important objectives, such as preventing the nuclearization of Iran or the disarming of North Korea. The warming ties between America and India are significant because they signal Washington’s frustration with Beijing. The subtext is that the United States cannot significantly modify China’s behavior so it will turn toward the democratic states in Asia. This could be the first visible step to changing the general approach of engaging the Chinese and ending the "China Exception."

The ending of exceptional treatment could have severe consequences for the Communist Party. The stability of the modern Chinese state depends on prosperity, and that prosperity depends in large part on access to foreign markets and capital. Anything could happen inside China if either were restricted or denied to the Chinese for extended periods.

Gutmann: I agree with Gordon's analysis, yet I can't help feeling that Washington, and even the U.S. defense establishment, is still in denial. Improved relations with India won't significantly complicate China's defense planning in the near term. Similarly, domestic and external political constraints on Japanese re-armament make any real defense interoperability with Japan's defense forces strategically negligible at this time.

Alliances are useful and they make us feel better, but they are not a substitute for broad-based strategic attention to China's rise. Where is the focus in Washington on oversight of American corporate research and development based in the mainland? How, in a crisis, do we maintain escalation dominance when China's force structure is purposely asymmetric, focused on U.S. weak points, rather than matching the U.S. system for system?

How "Cold War" that last question sounds. Yet I think that's part of the trouble; the China Exception's current form is the belief that by asking Cold War-style questions we will create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Chinese strategic thinking has no such constraints. And it should be pointed out that we allow military exchanges with the PLA (despite the one-sided gains by Chinese intelligence) precisely because we developed certain theories about "crisis stability" during the Cold War. I'm not against the military exchanges, but comprehensive strategic planning happens to involve a lot of worst-case scenarios as well.

Liu: I'm getting quite pessimistic and am afraid the China Exception is here to stay. I can't shake off the following grim picture from my head. When China finally invades Taiwan and the U.S. is deciding how to respond, Taipei shall be condemned even more than Beijing by many opinion leaders in this country. Taiwan would be criticized as having unnecessarily provoked Beijing into war. I tend to agree with Gutmann that most of Washington is in denial when it comes to China. Somehow, it's hoped that engagement would take care of the problem. Chang's summary of this attitude -- if we extend a hand, they will respond -- is sadly true.

I must plead guilty of being stupid enough to have once believed this myth: economic openness would lead to political liberalization in China. I'm ashamed to admit that, five years ago, I supported granting the communist state Permanent Normal Trade Relations status. PNTR then smoothed the way for Beijing to become a member of the WTO. With hindsight, I was totally misguided.

I am, of course, not blind to the tremendous changes that have been taking place in China. There's little doubt that, for most of the Chinese people, China is a less brutal country than before. However, behind the glittering skyscrapers and the other signs of modernity, China today is still dominated by one salient fact: the core of the regime remains unchanged, and it will do whatever is necessary to maintain its iron grip on power.

The panda huggers' Achilles heel is Taiwan, an issue which is always conveniently ignored. Once the Taiwan Straits—a flashpoint where American GIs getting killed by the People's Liberation Army remains a real possibility—is introduced into the discussion, it would make all the rosy talks on China sound hollow. People inside China may get a bit more non-political freedom as their country is trading like crazy with the outside world. However, Beijing now is more and not less determined to "liberate" the island democracy through the use of power as the regime is being enriched by the international business community, with Americans playing a significant role.

Chang: Washington extended exceptional treatment to China because America did not feel threatened by Beijing. As the sole superpower, the United States felt it could afford to continue to engage the Chinese, even when they acted in irresponsible ways.

Yet America no longer feels secure and soon will not feel confident. We are beginning to see China not just as a challenger to us but as a threat to global order. China, for instance, is not only supporting rogue regimes but also allying itself with an increasingly assertive and unfriendly Russia. We can see the beginnings of a new bipolar world order in which America is not the predominant power.

As a result, the United States will no longer feel that it can accommodate unjustifiable Chinese conduct. When perceptions in America change, all we know about the current geopolitical landscape will be obsolete. One consequence of the change in perceptions will be that the business lobby in America will lose much of its power to support Beijing--security concerns always trump economic ones once Americans feel their lives are at stake. Soon, Ethan will not sound so "Cold War" and Kin-ming will not feel so pessimistic.

If the past has taught us anything, change, once it comes, will be swift and unpredictable. The great challenge for America is to recognize change and manage it in time. I am confident that, despite indulgent policy in the past, we will. We will because we will have no choice if we want to have a future.

Gutmann: In keeping with the more optimistic tack of the conversation, I'll confess that I was surprised by Congressional determination to scuttle China National Offshore Oil Corporation's bid to buy Unocal.

To be sure, the Chinese had exquisitely poor timing; you don't threaten America's oil supply – however obliquely, however far in the future - during a news vacuum. In fact, the biggest news at the time was high prices at the pump. And certainly chronic concerns such as WTO compliance, the trade imbalance, counterfeiting, and corruption have begun to add up.

Now I was in Taiwan when the Unocal controversy flared up, so maybe I'm wrong in my next speculation. But at the time, I wondered: was Congress was beginning to recognize that China's oil acquisitions are not just the result of the CCP planning for a rainy day, but planning for a world where the spot market in oil has been replaced by a system where oil is sold under the barrel of a gun? Now it's certainly possible to interpret the CCP's actions as simply prudent, but it's also possible to ask: does the CCP know something about the future that we don't? And do they believe that they control the timing of that future?

At the very least, Congressional action over Unocal indicated a new sense that China's trade strategy is not just nationalist - but in some still not-quite-defined way, malevolent.

Liu: I certainly hope Chang is correct. And the example cited by Gutmann certainly is somewhat encouraging.

And yes, "hedging" against China appears more these days in discussions in Washington. In other words, the main line of U.S. policy towards China is still deputy secretary of state Bob Zoellick's "responsible stakeholder" -- encouraging China to become one. But just in case it doesn't work, the U.S. would also have other arrangements to hedge against a future enemy. This due theme is an improvement over the sole stakeholder talk.

My problem with this strategy lies with the order of things. It should be the other way around, i.e., to hedge against China first and then try to change it to a stakeholder. All signs point to the fact that China is already an enemy, not strong enough yet to pose immediate dangers to the U.S. at this point perhaps, and will only gain more power as time goes by. The U.S. should plan its policies based on this fundamental understanding. Since no one wants to have a shooting war with China and serious efforts should be put into avoiding one, Washington therefore at the same time should also try to encourage China become a responsible stakeholder. But the priority should be crystal clear -- treat China as an enemy first and then try to change it into a friend later.

Otherwise, the current strategy is contradictory. Being nice to China and hope it would become a friend will only empower a China which the U.S. is also hedging against. Washington is helping to create a stronger China to hedge against. It doesn't make any sense.

I'm all for China becoming a responsible stakeholder, if it can be done. However, I simply fail to see how the current policies would achieve this end.

Chang: As Kin-ming implies, we could be creating a new Soviet Union. So we certainly need realistic and resolute policies. America was relatively quick to recognize the challenge posed by the Soviets after the Second World War, but that was because the challenge was unmistakable. The Chinese challenge, on the other hand, is more subtle. Yet just because it's discreet does not mean that it is less of a challenge. We need a generation of leaders who will follow in the footsteps of giants like Harry Truman and George Marshall. And Reagan too.

One final point: it's important to remember that, although China may project a strong image beyond its borders, the People's Republic is essentially a weak state. The Communist Party is aggressive abroad, but it's also vulnerable at home. We can help the Chinese people transform their society for the better. So let's engage the Chinese government less and the Chinese people more. That would be the principled--and smart--thing to do.

FP: Arthur Waldron, Gordon G. Chang, Ethan Gutmann and Kin-ming Liu, thank you for joining Frontpage Symposium.

To emphasize the point about intellectual sincerity, I want to reiterate and quote Arthur Waldron's above summary points which do so better than my own. Are there any points which any reasonable analyst can honestly disagree?:

"China has reaped the benefits of American policies. Her government is rich and many Americans and other westerners now have so much money invested in China that they are reluctant to do anything other than support the regime. Yet it is becoming clear that the Communists have no intention of giving up power, allowing free speech, elections, freedom of religion, or other serious change.
It is also becoming clear that economically China is mercantilist in her behavior, not a true free trader. And finally, she is using the money and access to foreign technology obtained in these decades to engage in a major military build-up.
This is the phase in which we find ourselves now. I think we can call it dawning disappointment and concern. Without intending to, we have helped create a formidable geopolitical competitor, that threatens our friends and allies in Asia militarily, and whose economic behavior is undermining our interests. That competitor now feels strong enough not to pay much attention to what we say, one way or the other. Beijing feels it can make its own way.
I believe our interest is above all in having a China whose government is legitimately constituted, elected by its people, and that honors the rights of its people. This is the fundamental consideration."

This is precisely what we conservative anti-communists always warned of. Our policies merely strengthened them in all ways that threatened us, and undercut our own ability to resist their oppressions and threatening capabilities. I am not here merely to say "I told you so." or crow over how everyone was misled by the Panda-Huggers...but we conservatives weren't.

As Ronald Reagan always was proud to display on his desk a placard which said:

There is no end to what you can accomplish if (or when) you don't care who gets the credit.

I am begging for people to wake up...not give up or give in to what the Appeasers will say is now unstoppable or simply too inconvenient to oppose... We need to change course. We need to do the Right Things. Now.

"China has reaped the benefits of American policies. Her government is rich and many Americans and other westerners now have so much money invested in China that they are reluctant to do anything other than support the regime. Yet it is becoming clear that the Communists have no intention of giving up power, allowing free speech, elections, freedom of religion, or other serious change. It is also becomi"China has reaped the benefits of American policies. Her government is rich and many Americans and other westerners now have so much money invested in China that they are reluctant to do anything other than support the regime. Yet it is becoming clear that the Communists have no intention of giving up power, allowing free speech, elections, freedom of religion, or other serious change. It is also becoming clear ithat economically China is mercantilist in her behavior, not a true free trader. And finally, she is using the money and access to foreign technology obtained in these decades to engage in a major military build-up.

China does not have parity with the U.S. militarily. And it doesn't surprise me a bit that you're spending most of your time worrying about China as an economic power (not to mention the griping about some other large countries in the developing world). China is going to do what is in "China's" interests regardless of what we do. We should do the same. The difference is that China is basically centrally controlled by an entrenched undemocratic regime that won't give up much of its power voluntarily (this is news to you?) and the U.S. is most certainly not (last time I checked anyway). The fact of the matter is that China is not going away regardless of what we do, just like Mexico. You can fanticize all you want about how some indespensable CIA operatives, protectionist economists, and weapons systems could "contain" China and keep it a backwards hellhole full of illiterate rice farmers or get all hysterical about how Iowans are soon going to be speaking Chinese or lick your chops over the prospect of a short, glorious war with a nation of a billion people, but I have less and less patience for that. Mercantilism is dumb policy on the part of the U.S, because the country's real problems are increasingly domestic (our shitty education system, our out of control entitlements and debt, creeping government, the public's inability to embrace change). U.S. policy towards China is incoherent at best and needs to be changed drastically in places, but we should be careful to pick our battles. Even Sun Tzu would agree on that point.

We need to do the Right Things. Now.

I wholeheartedly agree. I just don't think you have any clue about what the Right Things are.

Cluelessness?:

CIA operatives, protectionist economists, and weapons systems could "contain" China and keep it a backwards hellhole full of illiterate rice farmers

Too late, genie is out of the bottle, all we can do is at least staunch hemhorraging. And no one is opposed to the Chinese People getting a better life Who.

or get all hysterical about how Iowans are soon going to be speaking Chinese

?What are you smoking? Who believes that? No. They will simply kill us if we get in their way. And take what they want. They have said so. Of course, you probably think that's "hysterical".

or lick your chops over the prospect of a short, glorious war with a nation of a billion people,

Nope. Standard leftist drivel about purported arm-chair warmongers. The late Dr. Constantine Menges laid out what our strategy should be...in China the Gathering Threat. but of course you are too knee-jerk Panda-hugging and free-trading to listen to his wisdom.

but I have less and less patience for that.

Yes, it is doubtful you have patience for wisdom.

Mercantilism is dumb policy on the part of the U.S,

But its okay for the Chi-Comms? Its most definitely working for them. There is only one way to fight this. You fight fire with fire. Dr. Menges indicates we must expressly tailor our trade policies to choke off the threat.

because the country's real problems are increasingly domestic (our shitty education system,

Standard Leftist Drivel. They create the problem, then they harp about throwing them still more money to "correct" the problem...LOL! The only problem is one of the Federalists making. It has enabled the Leftists to use Federal mandates and interference in local education to polticize it and use it as a tool for indoctrination.

our out of control entitlements and debt,

Made worse by the principle Free Traders, this Administration (can you say Prescription Drug Benefit, or No Child Left Behind?), its Treasury Secretary (apologist deluxe for evading admitting China's violations of "Free Trade" and being "manipulative" of its currency), the Federal Reserve Chiefs, both Greenspan and Bernanke.

creeping government,

Again a problem of those free traders who believe in the oxymoronic notion of Big Government Conservatism. Fundamentally self-contradictory.

the the public's inability to embrace change)

Actually, it is the Free Traders who have shown an inability to either admit reality...their schemes in China are backfiring...BIG TIME...and they have overtly made themselves enemies of our freedom and liberties. Very explicitly in their actions, such as Google and Yahoo. But we warned the free traders all about that. And they pooh-poohed, exaggerating the infinite power of the internet. LOL! The Free Traders had "no patience" for that obviously "hysterical" concern.

U.S. policy towards China is incoherent at best

You're too charitable. It is totally contrary to reality. And needs to be completely redirected.

and needs to be changed drastically in places, but we should be careful to pick our battles.

Maybe. But as you recall, Reagan did a "full court press" short of a shooting war...and prevailed.

Even Sun Tzu would agree on that point.

Somehow I don't think Sun Tzu would abdicate the power of our nation's right to police its foreign trade...and take that tool off the table. Especially while the other side is manifestly exploiting that same tool...to the hilt.

We need to do the Right Things. Now. I wholeheartedly agree. I just don't think you have any clue about what the Right Things are.

But you, in your humble opinion, you do?

I'm not too wild about scientology either.

What, pray tell, has that got to do with the late Dr. Constantine Menges? I am not going to venture any speculation as to what you could be driving at there.

Do you know his religion? It wasn't Scientology. Here is a brief obit from National Review.

Constantine Menges, a Turkish-born freedom fighter and rightwing revolutionary, has died at the age of 64
* Constantine Menges, a Turkish-born freedom fighter and rightwing revolutionary, has died at the age of 64. From helping East German refugees escape over the Berlin Wall, to working for equal voting rights in Mississippi, to organizing civil resistance after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Menges sought to extend the sphere of freedom to the oppressed. In the early 1980s, he worked as a Latin America specialist for the CIA and the White House--from which perch he helped plan the liberation of Grenada from the Castro-backed Communist government, threw his weight behind the Nicaraguan Contras, and supported the Salvadoran rebels. "Constant Menace," as he was nicknamed by his friends (and foes), firmly believed in rolling back Moscow by turning the Soviets' own methods against them through sponsoring "national liberation movements," authorizing covert action, and underwriting democratic revolutionary insurgencies in anti-American despotisms.
More recently, Menges cast his eye on the rise of China and Russia, the emerging pro-Castro constellation in Latin America, and the dubious role of Iran in Middle Eastern affairs. We will miss his wisdom and spirit in the tumultuous era to come.
R.I.P.

There are thousands of books out there that aren't worth my time.

Perhaps your time isn't too valuable to read Dr. Menges. I am extremely busy too, but found his insights absolutely solid. And others were also profoundly effected by him. He was a solid warrior for freedom in the Reagan Administration:

July 26, 2004

Constantine Menges: A Tribute

By Kenneth R. Timmerman

With the passing on Sunday of Constantine Menges, whose hauntingly-prescient columns on foreign affairs have graced these pages for many years, the free world has lost a revolutionary strategist.

An academic by training, Dr. Menges was recruited by incoming CIA director William Casey in May 1981 to become his National Intelligence Officer for Latin America. It was not just Constantine's impressive intellectual firepower that attracted Casey, but his fierce independence, his tenaciousness, and his over-riding vision that it was America's destiny among nations to serve as the standard bearer of freedom to the oppressed of the world. Casey wanted to challenge the corporate views of Agency insiders, and saw in Menges the right man for the job.

Constantine's goal in life was to devise strategies for defeating tyrannies, just as V.I. Lenin and Trotsky had devised strategies to create them. He was a professional revolutionary on the side of freedom.

Just before joining the CIA, Menges proposed that the U.S. government establish a "National Foundation for Democracy" to promote nascent democratic movements in countries living under communism and other forms of tyranny. President Reagan embraced the idea, and two years later convinced Congress to fund the National Endowment for Democracy.

While working for Casey, Dr. Menges urged the CIA to adopt a "pro-democracy" approach toward defeating communism in Latin America, that skillfully blended support for pro-democracy political movements with the selective use of force. When he moved to the White House in 1983 to become a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, his very first assignment was to draw up plans to restore democracy in Grenada after a Communist coup. It was this part of the Grenada mission, more than the military intervention alone, that marked the definitive end of the Carter era and demonstrated that it was possible to "roll back" Communism, surely Ronald Reagan's greatest legacy.

When I met Constantine four years ago, I never would have imagined it would be in the "sunset" of his life. He had just turned sixty; he and Nancy, his wife of twenty-five years, were enjoying Georgetown like a young married couple. Dining with them at restaurants, or in their home or in mine invariably became an intellectual fireworks display. Constantine was not only bursting with his own ideas, but knew how to inspire others.

Indeed, over the past two years, Menges has been more active than ever in warning of new threats looming just over the horizon. He has warned the Bush administration repeatedly about the active infiltration of Iraq by thousands of Iranian government thugs and intelligence operatives. Even as the U.S. was celebrating the end of major combat activities in May 2003, Constantine predicted that the lull in violence would be only a respite. The Iranians had established no fewer than 42 Arabic-language radio and television stations beaming anti-American propaganda into Iraq, he said, without an effective U.S. response. The results were predictable, and deadly.

In Iran itself, Constantine urged the Bush administration to aid pro-democracy groups to build a broad-based national movement capable of challenging the tyrannical rule of Iran's clerics. As a strategist of freedom, who knew that dictators could be defeated - but that it required hard work, good planning, training, and dedication. Arm chair revolutionaries, who ran for cover at the first shots, would never do the trick, he knew. But equally dangerous were armed Marxist-Islamic groups who sought to replace one dictatorship with another.

The son of German refugees from World War II, he had a special understanding of appeasement, and blasted the Clinton administration for caving in to Communist China. But in a just-completed book-length manuscript called 2008: The Preventable War, he was scarcely more tender toward the Bush administration for its failure to recognize the threat of the growing military and strategic cooperation between Russia and Communist China.

Those whose loss is arguably the greatest, however, are those who have never met him and who don't even know his name: freedom-lovers in countries such as Iran, who aspire to break the yolks of tyranny. They have lost not only a friend, but a revolutionary thinker and strategist who understood that if you failed to fight for freedom you inevitably die in chains.

Kenneth R. Timmerman is a senior writer for Insight and author of The French Betrayal of America, just released from Crown Forum.

[I previously said that the Dept. of Education and those for federalizing education had]...enabled the Leftists to use Federal mandates and interference in local education to polticize it and use it as a tool for indoctrination.

Everybody here at Free Republic knows EXACTLY what I'm talking about. Nobody with a shred of conservative constitutional convictions or knowledge or sentiment would then make the response you did:

I'm afraid I haven't a clue what you're talking about.

And what's more, I no longer care.

Mayhaps you will care to at least learn of a fallen oak...

EULOGY FOR CONSTANTINE MENGES
by Curtin Winsor, Atlas Economic Research Foundation,
July 16, 2004

Constantine Menges has passed from us -- a great tree fallen in the forest before its time. As in his sunlit clearing, we now gather to honor him and to share grief that has come to linger -- but not to last. Our sorrow for his passing is not for him, but for us. As we were made better by his presence, his passing diminishes our nation and each of us.

Constantine was the child of democratic opponents to Hitler. He was born on the first day of the Second World War, after their flight to safety in Turkey. He once explained to me that he was sent alone to America at the age of four, identified by a tag on his overcoat coat, with other children of refugees in 1943. He was to live with family friends that he had never met for the next three years. He described his childhood memory of the Statue of Liberty as his ship entered New York harbor in the morning light. Its torch infused him with the spirit of democracy. It was a light that would shine forth from Constantine throughout his life and work.

I met Constantine in 1978 and immediately found him to be a kindred spirit, a warm, considerate and true friend, and a rock of principle. He stood strong for democracy when destiny thrust us both into the storm of the Central American Crisis in 1980. He expected no less of his friends, and our friendship, warmed by his positive outlook and broad interests, gave me an opportunity to share the challenges and heartaches that arise from standing on principle…

Constantine's ability to conceptualize and guide political warfare in support of democracy was his strongest contribution to America’s victory in the Cold War and after. He offered a rare combination of analytical ability, idealistic orientation and practical implementation. This balance of talents enabled him to support active freedom movements against communist dictatorships and to encourage transitions to democracy.

Constantine was prescient as an analyst. Many of his recommendations tended to look too far into the future for the reactive "professionals" who comprise much of our foreign policy establishment. Had Constantine’s proposal to then-Vice President George H. W. Bush's Commission on Terrorism been heeded in 1987, problems we now face would be less significant or even absent. He was almost alone in warning that Iran would pose a major threat to post-Saddam Iraq, a year before the Second Iraq War. He long foresaw the dangers to democratic prospects in Latin America from the Foro do Sao Paolo, the alliance of Chavez in Venezuela, Castro in Cuba and Lula in Brazil. He warned us that this dark alliance would endanger the South American continent and Mexico. Evidence increasingly suggests that he was correct. His final work, now at the printer, raises unpopular but increasingly evident concerns about the danger of links between Russian corruption and advanced military technology feeding the capacity and ambitions of the Peoples Republic of China.

Constantine was a kind hearted, cheerful and friendly human being. He strongly believed that most people contained goodness (albeit temporarily impaired in some instances) and that they were inclined to do the right thing if enabled to do so. He listened well at an interpersonal level and was always concerned about the wellbeing of others, even when he was confronting his own mortality.

He was a dedicated family man. He and Nancy were married for 29 years. He was considerate and generous. He was devoted as a father to their only child, Christopher, and as a loving son to his own recently deceased parents. As a family man, he embodied the very principles that he stood for in all aspects of his life. As a friend, he was caring and supportive. His broad interests, positive and articulate nature were uplifting for those so fortunate as to be his friends and he sustained these qualities to the very end.

Constantine was brave. Adversity was his lot. But he was armored by inner light and conviction that his message of optimism and active opposition to evil must be heard.

He was modest without being humble. Although Constantine endured scorn and rejection from some of his peers, such was his nature that these encounters with negativity did not abash him. He was a confident man, fortified by his strong belief in a just God and in the essential link between his work and the summum bonum that must eventually prove God’s will.

Like a giant oak that stood against the wind, alone in a field, where each bough was as great as a full tree, so was Constantine Menges -- scholar, patriot, linguist, humanist, man of ideas, man of understanding, man of action, and warrior in the truest sense.

Today, it is for his friends who are gathered here to carry forward the political vision and ideas that he championed. His chapter has ended - and we who are left behind must find ways to sustain both his unheeded concerns and his transcendent optimism.

We need to sustain his forward looking political vision more than ever in the unfolding battle of Liberal Civilization against the dark and chaotic forces of international terrorism. It will require many of us to take up the duties that he sustained alone -- standing against the wind.

Resqueat en pacem et luce aeternum, Constantine.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.