Word: standoff
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...problem with the hard line is that it tends to beget the hard line. Hawkish elements in the Chinese leadership may be content to drag out the standoff over a downed U.S. spy plane in the hope of backing the U.S. away from selling sophisticated weapons to Taiwan - and, perhaps, to score domestic political points against their more reformist rivals in Beijing's arcane leadership struggle. But if anything, by openly challenging President Bush's prestige in its handling of the incident, Beijing may have ultimately reinforced the hawkish trend in Washington...
...Washington, plainly, wants to avoid escalating the standoff over the plane. President Bush used polite diplomatic language Monday despite his obvious frustration with China's slow response to U.S. requests, and the Navy ordered three of its destroyers to leave the region of Sunday's air crash, thus avoiding sending a signal that Beijing might interpret as hostile intent. Beijing's intentions are more difficult to gauge, given the fact that the Chinese leadership is far from monolithic. A fierce power struggle has raged for years between reformist modernizers and more hard-line hawks who fear that modernization is bringing...
...fear losing face by being cowed into doing Washington's bidding, U.S. leaders can ill afford to be seen as weak or irresolute when directly challenged by a foreign power. If Beijing's primary strategic objective right now is to curb U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, the spy-plane standoff may not have helped their case. Because even if the incident serves as a wake-up call on the dangers of even minor confrontations, Beijing's flouting of U.S. concerns over the boarding of the plane may well also have reinforced President Bush's inclination to get tough with China...
...Former U.S. ambassador to China James Lilley says the whole standoff reveals the fault line in U.S.-China relations: "They have extended sovereignty; we have forward deployment." Clashes like this are going to happen until an arrangement similar to the one between the Soviets and Americans can be worked out. "This could be therapeutic, especially if it forces both sides to work out rules of engagement," Lilley says. "They don't want this to happen again, and we don't want it to happen again...
...Recent history and the events since the U.S. plane landed in China suggest, the standoff, and its repercussions, won't be quickly resolved. The plane crash is quickly shaping up as the most serious international challenge to have confronted President Bush precisely because it comes on the eve of his decision over whether to sell the Aegis-equipped vessels to Taiwan. Administration officials had previously expressed concern that Beijing had turned the issue into a test of manhood, thereby limiting both sides' room for maneuver; the standoff over the crashed airplane is likely only to raise the stakes...