Reason: Has the public taken this problem seriously enough?
Cox: We have seen a sea change in the approach to national security matters involving the PRC. No one gave it a second thought a year ago. In fact, a year ago most Americans did not even know that during the 1990s for the first time the PLA deployed an entire force of CSS-4 intercontinental ballistic missiles that target the entire continental United States, from Los Angeles to New York and everything in between. I'm pleased with the progress we are making.
Reason: How do we need to adjust our strategic thinking?
Cox: There has been manifest change in the PRC's approach to geopolitics since 1991. The Communist Party has decided to fill the void left by the collapse of the Soviet Union. It has aligned itself with opponents of the United States around the globe. It is stitching together an alliance of misfits. It is engaging in extensive military cooperation with Russia.
One of the main objects of our China policy over the last several decades was to prevent military cooperation between the Soviet Union and the PRC. The Clinton administration's current China policy is producing as one of its most significant results military cooperation between the PRC and Russia. That cooperation, incidentally and importantly, is not in Russia's national interest. Almost no one in Russia thinks it's in Russia's national interest. But the reason it's happening is because massive hard currency reserves in PRC are being used to bribe individuals who are willing to sell the crown jewels of Russia's military.
Reason: The PRC comingles its commerce and defense in order to obtain classified information. You're a supporter of normalizing trade relations with China. Explain why.
Cox: I just mentioned that the hard currency surplus that the Communist Party can lay its hands on is a source of mischief. It's an attractive nuisance vis-à-vis Russia. It is used to purchase military equipment from Europe or Israel. The hard currency surplus is simply the other side of the equation from the trade deficit we hear so much about. If instead of them selling us four times more than we sell them, we were able to make some sales in China of couches, refrigerators, phones, and so on, then they would have a better merchandise balance and less of a hard currency surplus. That's in our national security interest.
I am not one--and I want to emphasize this--who thinks from an economic standpoint that there is any need to have balanced trade with every nation all around the planet. That's absurd. The trade deficit in and of itself is not threatening. In this particular case, one of the things it means in real life is that there's a hard currency surplus for the PRC.
Reason: So you see normalizing trade relations with them as a way for us to export them more real goods, and therefore less currency, and therefore serve our national security interests?
Cox: After all, they are selling us Beanie Babies. They are not selling us nuclear weapons. A mutual trade relationship would have us selling nonthreatening things as well.
Reason: In your mind, what's the difference between trying to stop the flow of encryption technology from the United States to other countries and halting the flow of other advanced technology?
Cox: First, nuclear warheads are not dual use, and encryption technology is. Second, with encryption technology, the question is, How realistic is the U.S. government's position? How realistic is it for us to think that there's a national security benefit in attempting to control the uncontrollable? It is uncontrollable at the level we are trying to control it. U.S. citizens need protection against spying by foreign governments, and encryption is one of the protections.
Reason: So the standard argument that we can't let out encryption technology because terrorists will get it doesn't, or at least shouldn't, enter into this debate.
Cox: I don't mean to suggest that there aren't arguments against encryption. But I spent half a year in classified hearings taking testimony under oath from officials from the National Security Agency, the CIA, the FBI--the entire intelligence community of the Clinton administration--and I left that experience being utterly unpersuaded of the Clinton administration's position on encryption [which prohibits exporting strong encryption software].
Lin Hai is a software designer in jail in the PRC now because he sent e-mail addresses from the PRC to an anti-communist group in the United States. The MSS [Ministry of State Security] would not have been reading his e-mail if he had had commercially available encryption technology. We have to keep our goal in mind. And our goal is getting rid of the communist state and instituting liberty. Not getting rid of one form of fascism and substituting another.
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