Navy’s Maneuvers Send a Message to China

Re “Sailing Toward a Storm in China,” Commentary, July 15: Chalmers Johnson’s piece is full of exaggerated, apocalyptic predictions regarding the U.S. military maneuvers near Taiwan.

It seems that he would prefer the Communist Chinese to continue the intimidation games that they play so well year after year against Taiwan’s freely elected government. For comic relief, he asserts that China “will surely become a democracy if left alone by the U.S.”

The reality is that as long as China continues its economic growth, to which we in the West are unwittingly contributing, it’ll have no incentives to democratize its society and give some liberties to its oppressed citizens.

Alexis I. Torres

Burbank

Johnson’s warning that our Navy’s Operation Summer Pulse ’04 -- the deployment for training purposes of seven of its 12 carrier strike groups off the coast of China -- will produce fear and enmity among that nation’s leaders is surely well founded. The motivations for this risky maneuver no doubt vary among our own leaders, but they likely all agree that it was by ratcheting up our military threats against the Soviet Union that we drove that nation into unsustainable responses and, finally, into insolvency.

That such a strategy may have worked once does not, of course, guarantee a second success, and China’s response, though for now much like the Soviet Union’s, may not remain as placid.

The lives of America’s ordinary citizens, if perhaps not all of its corporate citizens and their neoconservative government, would be better served by reducing the pulse of that summer task force by five- or six-sevenths.

Parker Coddington

Sudbury, Mass.

Seven U.S. Navy aircraft carrier strike groups plus the Taiwanese navy parading through the Formosa Strait! Hopefully Vice President Dick Cheney will be available to take the salute.

Paul A. Myers

Pomona