Where I stand—Brian Greenspun: Saving face in China

Tuesday, April 3, 2001 | 8:57 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

JUST WHOSE face is it anyway?

President George W. Bush faced the press Monday morning to explain what he was doing about the situation in China in which 24 U.S. Navy crewmen were forced to land in their super secret spy plane. He faced them but he didn't answer any of the many questions that they and the American public obviously have about how it happened and what we were really doing about it.

I don't blame him. There are times to talk and times to hold back, no matter how much it might be in your immediate interests to tell the world what is going on. And even though there are many Americans who think our president was taking a duck when he should have stood up to the challenge, the fact remains that there are two dozen of our people on what could be semi-hostile ground and an airplane that, according to all I have heard the past 24 hours, should not be seen by non-U.S. eyes, and getting them back safely must be our first priority. To the extent that talking publicly might mess up any negotiations, or other actions being contemplated, it is unwise to do so.

That said, it was interesting to hear the news reporters quoting "high-level" sources who said what the president's men and women were doing and what the Chinese obviously were not doing during the first few hours since the plane was downed.

First of all, President Bush said his top priority was getting our people back unharmed. No argument there. But if the plane is carrying such super-sensitive equipment as the news reports would have us believe, shouldn't the return, unseen, of the plane or the destruction of it forthwith be of more immediate concern? Say what we will about our improving relations with China, the fact remains that it was a result of her plane colliding with ours that forced the EP-3 to land in Chinese territory. And it has been China's reaction since that time, not letting our diplomatic people on the scene talk to our airmen or secure our own airplane, that calls directly into question the depth of that relationship.

We heard 30 years ago about the need to allow North Vietnam the opportunity to "save face" in any effort to end that ugly war. We were told that it was vitally important to people in that part of the world that they be allowed to put the best "spin" on any conduct, especially if it looked like they were capitulating in any way to the United States. In the end, we saw who had to save face. It wasn't our enemies.

That was the same kind of language we heard Monday after the president left the podium after giving us his shorthand version of events. Whatever was or wasn't happening, it was designed to allow the Chinese to "save face." I don't know what will transpire between the time I write this and the time you read this, but it seems evident to me that saving the face of the Chinese should be the last thing this administration should care about.

So if saving Chinese face isn't high on this administration's priority list, perhaps there is another face-saving adventure in the works. Like ours!

I know movies often get ahead of real life in the kind and quality of technology that's available, but I have been watching the large screen for years and it is a given that a country as sophisticated as China could have boarded our downed plane and inventoried and studied the contents long before the United States had the opportunity to get embassy personnel on site. The fact that this episode had already dragged on a full day after the incident should give all of us reason to question the ability of our country to respond to such events.

I am not blaming our president. This is still close to his first day on the job and it isn't fair to throw tough problems his way just yet. What I am questioning, though, is our reaction -- officially and unofficially -- to the downing of our plane. I am assuming that the collision in mid-air was an accident. If China didn't care about an international incident, it could have been far more efficient in reaching its goal than risking one of its own planes. Missiles would have worked just as well.

If that is the case, why has it taken so long for China to respond to President Bush's demands to let our people and our airplane go? And why have we allowed them so much time?

There is one practical answer: There is nothing we could do about it anyway. I know we have sent a couple of warships her way but, give me a break, if you want to teach China a lesson it will take far more than a couple of boats to do the trick. We are essentially at China's mercy in getting these people and our plane back.

And who for a minute believes that one of the most paranoid countries in the world has not already learned all it can about the nature of the mission, which resulted in them having 24 people and one spy plane more than it is supposed to have?

It seems to me that if there is to be any face-saving, it will be American faces that are deeply reddened with embarrassment that such an occurrence happened. The question should be: What are we going to do about it?

Accidentally or not, no country on this planet should be allowed to get so close to our people and our planes as have the Chinese this past Sunday. I hope that President Bush has already made that point to everyone in earshot. What he needs to do now is make sure that the United States of America -- not just our people and our plane -- is not made the subject of world mockery because we have allowed this nonsense to happen.

He also needs to explain it to us -- sooner rather than later.

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