Rep. Barr rips U.S. China policy

Editor's note: In collaboration with the hard-hitting Washington, D.C., newsweekly Human Events, WorldNetDaily brings you this special report every Monday. Readers can subscribe to Human Events through WND's online store.

Today's offering is the text of an interview Human Events conducted with Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., regarding the increased military threat posed by China.

Q: The U.S.-China Security Review Commission, set up by Congress to study the impact that U.S. trade policies are having on the Chinese military threat, just issued a report indicating that U.S. trade with China is indeed increasing China's ability to threaten U.S. interests. Do you think that means that the policy of economic engagement with China has failed?

TRENDING: 'Dementia thing': DNC cut out anti-Trump mental joke for fear it would remind viewers of Biden

Barr: I think it's clearly another indication that it has. But does that mean that there's going to be any change made? Probably not.

Q: Two weeks ago, the Defense Department issued its annual report on Chinese military power and strategy. It suggested that China's massive military buildup not only threatens Taiwan, but also Japan and the Philippines. Do you see that as another indication that the United States has followed a failed policy toward China?

Barr: Yes. And one could add to the list of Chinese threats their increased presence in Central America, South America and Cuba.

Q: This increasing Chinese threat is happening at a time when the United States is very much focused on events in the Middle East and has focused its military resources on that region. Do you think we could have a problem in that we are all looking to the Persian Gulf and then something happens in the Taiwan Strait?

Barr: I think so. I worry about that, and I think a lot more Americans ought to worry about that.

Q: How do we move forward from here to deal with that problem?

Barr: It's very difficult because there seems to be this basic desire on the part of one administration after another to appease the Chinese. The lure is trade – even though we continue to have a huge trade deficit with China.

We seem to be just blindly saying, "Oh, this is going to pay great trade dividends to the United States. We're going to have great opportunities over there. All of these wonderful things are going to happen because we're freeing up trade with China and giving the Chinese special benefits." Well, what is really happening is our market is being flooded with communist Chinese goods, and China is getting huge amounts of much-needed foreign currency in exchange.

Q: According to the congressional commission, that foreign currency is being used to buy very high-class Soviet weaponry.

Barr: I think that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Q: So what policy direction should the U.S. take now to deal with the fact that the Chinese are using a trade surplus they glean from us to purchase high-tech weaponry from the Russians?

Barr: We ought to shore up our relationship and our commitment with Taiwan and with South Korea. We ought to speak out diplomatically as well as publicly against what the Chinese are doing. We ought to view the Chinese communists, once again, as a very serious threat in our own hemisphere as well as in the Pacific Rim and take a very hard look at the trade policy we've implemented over the last several years. Now, is that going to happen? Unfortunately, I don't think so.

Q: Given the personal entente President Bush seems to have made with Russian President Vladimir Putin, shouldn't he ask Putin to stop arming the Chinese?

Barr: I don't know that he has or hasn't done that. But we should focus on stopping the flow of former Soviet arms, including very sophisticated arms, onto the world market. Given Russia's need for foreign currency to address its domestic needs this is a serious concern that should be a focal point of U.S. foreign policy.

Q: How should we link our policy toward Russia with what they do with China?

Barr: Well, the Russians need U.S. dollars, and they do have something we need, which is oil. The Russian government also needs the legitimacy that comes from a warming of relations with the United States. They want to be seen as a legitimate partner in European policymaking. They can't do that on their own. They have to have us to give them that legitimacy. But we ought to extract a price for it. That price ought to be, in the economic area, access to their oil. In the nuclear area, very, very tight restrictions and accountability for their nuclear weaponry and their nuclear warheads; and, vis-?-vis China, a prohibition on selling or transferring arms of any sort.

Q: Now, if we put this to Putin, he could turn around and say, "Mr. President, some of your own major defense contractors – Boeing and others – are not only doing business with the Chinese, they're building manufacturing plants in China and trading technology to the Chinese." How do we deal with that?

Barr: Whatever the Russian translation is for "Watch what we say and not what we do." It's a problem; it's an inconsistency. You're right.

Q: What ought to be the policy of the United States toward corporations that are building facilities in China that materially help China become a military power?

Barr: I think it ought to be the same policy that a number of us tried, unsuccessfully, to get the prior administration to implement: that is, you don't help your enemy. You've got to put something ahead of dollars to private corporations, and that is our nation's security.

Q: Conservatives shone a very bright spotlight on all the different ways that the Clinton administration aided the Chinese: the technology transfers, the U.S. manufacturers that were going over there and building plants, accession into the WTO. Do you think our policy toward China has substantively changed since Bush has come into office, or are these things essentially continuing?

Barr: I'm not sure yet. I don't think that as an overall policy matter – the view that it is acceptable to trade with the communist Chinese, that it is acceptable to allow major investment there, including investment with potential military applications – it has changed. That still seems to be a part of our foreign policy, and that's unfortunate.

Q: Do you see any hope of these policies changing in the near future?

Barr: In the near future, no, unfortunately. There just seems to be this juggernaut of continued movement in that area with communist China. We just seem to have a blind spot.

Q: Do you think this policy is more an effort to appease the Chinese directly or to appease big business interests here in the United States that profit from this policy?

Barr: I think it's primarily economically driven.

Q: You used to work at the Central Intelligence Agency. Sen. Richard Shelby [R.-Ala.], vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has repeatedly said he would like to see George Tenet removed as director of the CIA. Do you agree with that?

Barr: I think they definitely need new leadership at the CIA and a complete overhaul of both the mechanism and the personnel in our intelligence community.

Q: You believe Tenet should definitely leave?

Barr: I think that we definitely need new leadership at the CIA.

Q: Why?

Barr: Because there seems to have been no change at all in recent months and in recent years in the lack of direction for our intelligence community and the CIA in particular. The CIA is operating far below its potential, and the deficiencies that I think were pointed out very starkly on Sept. 11 clearly have to be laid at the doorstep of whatever the leadership was. And that leadership has not changed. Therefore, we're leaving ourselves vulnerable to the same problems.

Q: Tenet is responsible for not having directed the CIA in a way that we were able to better monitor what al-Qaida was up to before Sept. 11?

Barr: That is an accurate statement. Now, there also are other reasons why we weren't able to do that, but that is an accurate statement.

Related story:

China attacks WorldNetDaily by name

Subscribe to Human Events.