Burning bridges
Tuesday, May 17, 2005 at 6:48AM Dateline: in the loft at Nona's, Terre Haute IN, 17 May 2005
Yes, I will confess to being rude in the newsletter article on Kaplan. It's a skill set I mastered in DC years ago and I do it well. I try not to engage in such attack writing unless I feel compelled, and I felt compelled with Kaplan's piece on China.
What Newsweek recently did in its story on interrogations was the journalistic equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowed theater. People died as a result, and they should answer for this professionally.
What Kaplan does in the Atlantic Monthly piece is, in my opinion, basically the same thing--only in slow motion, so to speak. Fear-mongering and war-mongering is reprehensible and morally wrong. If you believe a legitimate case for war exists, like enforcing the global community's emerging rule sets against certain forms of very bad behavior (e.g., Saddam, Kim, Mugabe, etc.), that's one thing. But there's no such argument with China along these lines, and Kaplan does not even seek to make such arguments. Instead, he's just pushing the inevitability argument and trying to plant that seed in the minds of Americans: Get used to thinking about war with China!
Again, I think that position is both terribly wrong in a strategic sense (Kaplan seems to have no understanding of global economics whatsoever, and seems very untroubled by that lack of understanding) and VERY indefensible in a moral sense. Some so-callled strategists simply revel in the notions of war and conflict and chaos and suffering, and I think Kaplan is one of them. I personally find that mindset perverse and its application in professional endeavors like high-prrofile articles of this sort to be morally wrong.
And I don't mind being incredibly rude in pointing that out. In fact, I think it's the only way to go until these types are shouted off the stage.
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