I've been relatively silent, for the most
part, when it comes to the U.S. presidential election. None of the three
remaining candidates excite me all that much, and the statements each of them
has made on foreign policy issues make me rather nervous – some of McCain's more
belligerent comments are downright scary.
There have been some real whoppers when it
comes to China policy of course. No surprise, I suppose, since half of the
politicians in D.C. bash China on a regular basis. On the campaign trail,
pandering to folks in areas that have been hit by losses of manufacturing jobs
means saying misleading and inaccurate things about trade policy and
China.
McCain was actually the only candidate who
even tried to be honest about trade and jobs – during the run up to the Michigan
primary – and he lost that contest, at least in part, because of that honesty.
Many of his recent statements on other issues suggest that this straight talk on
trade was just an aberration anyway and that he will no doubt stick with
traditional pandering from now on.
I bring all this up because Clinton has gone
one step further, this time in Indiana. In a region that has suffered from
manufacturing job losses, she threw out this
red meat over the weekend:
"We are so dependent upon decisions
made in other countries' capitals," Clinton said, singling out China's potential
power over U.S. foreign policy decisions because of its financial leverage.
Clinton cited a discussion she had with a retired general who raised a
"nightmare scenario" in which China threatened Taiwan and the U.S. president
wanted to send ships toward the island to ward off Beijing."He said, 'You know, suppose the Chinese decide that they're going to go
after Taiwan the way we see them, you know, with Tibet,'" Clinton said,
describing the general's remarks and referring to the recent unrest in
Tibet."'We start to move the fleet, and the Chinese say, 'Fine. You do that, we
will dump your dollars. We will flood the market. We will not buy any more of
your debt.'"
Apparently her speech was primarily focused on
China, which has been the whipping boy of choice throughout her Indiana campaign
stops. Nice.
That quote from one of her speeches does shed
some light on her thinking, though, and before I jump to conclusions, I should
probably consider the possibility that she is misinformed as opposed to simply
pandering. After all, apparently she is getting advice on international monetary
policy from a retired general. Unless Paul Krugman used to be in the army, I'm
not sure that a retired general is such a great source of economics
advice.
Would China actually dump dollars, and
significantly reduce the value of its foreign exchange reserves in the process,
during a military incident? Anything is possible, but this one is highly
unlikely. China maintains a realist foreign policy, and drastically reducing the
value of its reserves is certainly not in its best interests.
But this is almost beside the point. Setting
up this whole Taiwan doomsday scenario is irresponsible and reminds me of the
ridiculous "What If" hypotheticals bandied about by U.S. officials looking for
reasons why torture should be legal.
Remember? "What if there was a scary Arab guy
with a beard who had hidden a suitcase nuke at the Superbowl and refused to tell
us where it was and there was only 24 hours before the game? Wouldn't you
sanction torture in that case?"
Hypotheticals suck, unless they are on law
school exams, in which case they are evil. The only exception would be if I'm
the one writing the exam.
Let's not overlook Clinton's timely
comparison between Tibet and Taiwan. That must have been dreamed up by some
speechwriter at 3:00am who was hopped up on Ritalin and watching a rerun of
Red Dawn. I'm sure that this was quite valuable and relevant
information for those nice working-class folks in Indiana. I suppose the Clinton
campaign was just trying to educate them about world affairs, huh? I mean, she
wouldn't deliberately try to demonize one of America's largest trading partners,
would she?
OK, back
to being relatively silent on the campaign again.