Journalist and blogger Thomas Crampton is now posting some of his work on Danwei.
Systemic corruption of the US foreign policy elite colors advice given to Obama and McCain about China, Ken Silverstein warns in this month’s Harper’s (subscription only).
Today most of America’s so-called experts on China, including advisors to both Obama and McCain, have a definite if unacknowledged stake in keeping close ties with Beijing. Constructive engagement isn’t working well for the United States or the Chinese people, but it is working quite well for the very individuals from whom we might hope to see a new approach emerge: namely, America’s foreign policy elite, our own Mandarins.
These so-called Mandarins consult for major corporations in private, but maintain more impartial sounding titles for public appearances. They often appear in the media or speaking engagements under an academic title or referenced as “former US official”, Silverstein writes.
Stonebridge, for example, supplies a number of Obama’s China advisors, including Jeff Bader:
Stonebridge might best be seen as a sort of one-stop shop for international fixers—a collection of former government officials who replicate, in miniaturized form, the official foreign-policy apparatus … Stonebridge serves as a holding pen in which to draw a prodigious salary while awaiting a return to the State Department.
On the Republican side there is The Scowcroft Group of Brent Scowcroft and Alexander Haig‘s Worldwide Associates, Inc.
Scowcroft and Bader deny that their business relationships could compromise their advisory role about China.
Bader: “My views are not uncritical.”
Scowcroft: “Whatever small business I do over there is irrelevant.”
Perry Link, a Princeton professor of East Asian Studies who has been banned from visiting China since 1996, thinks otherwise:
“When the route to lucrative consultancies after leaving office is as clear as it recently has been, officials might be induced to watch their words while still on the job,” Link said.
Hat tip to FEER.