Note: due to recent suspected surveillance (probably by some bloody secret service) this part of my site may regretfully be closing down soon
1. London Times article on Pat Buchannan, how he split the Republican party
with his refusal to join the Bilderberg etc..
2. London Times obituary of
Mr Packard of Hewlett Packard fame mentioning his Bilderberg connections.
3.
Straits Times, Southeast Asia, prints a paper on China which was submitted to
the Bilderberg group in 1996
4. Albert Reynolds confirms that the Irish
state jet is used to fly politicians to the Bilderberg conference, from the
Irish Times.
5. European Union Weekly report explains that Commissioner
Ritt Bjerregaard is to take part in 1995 Bilderberg Conference.
6. UK Foreign Office Press Release which mentions Malcolm Rifkind's 1996
Bilderberg trip.
The London Times, 4th march 1996, page 16
Every conspiracy theorist in the United States seems to be backing Pat Buchanan, along with one or two in Britain as well. One of my occasional correspondents is Mr Peter Johnston; I suspect that he also corresponds with quite a number of other people. He has taken up the cudgels on behalf of Pat Buchanan and objects to my reference to Buchanan as "too fascist". He has sent me an open letter and copied it to Norris McWhirter and others.
I do not think his open letter will attract much attention, because his views will be regarded as outside the boundaries of reasonable discourse in Britain, though they would be common enough on the Internet or talk shows in America. However, they interest me precisely because they do fall outside the boundaries of what is discussed on the BBC or in most of the broadsheet press. His views are worth considering, if only because he and quite a few people like him hold them passionately. Certainly, many of Pat Buchanan's voters do, and, up to a point, Mr Buchanan does himself.
Let me quote from Mr Johnston's letter on Pat Buchanan:
"A merchant of fear", "A merchant of anger" might have been better more honest! but then, I suppose your readers would have expected an explanation of why Americans are so angry; that just wouldn't do, would it!
Pat Buchanan is the only Republican candidate who has spurned the blandishments of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission, and denounced the New World Order a conspiracy to establish "World Government". Pat Buchanan is the only Republican candidate committed to reform of the Federal Reserve "system" the biggest and most far-reaching fraud ever perpetrated on a free nation, except for the Maastricht Treaty!... Even if Pat Buchanan is "stopped" in his bid for the presidency, already he has swept away the hollow shams of Press and Money Power, and demonstrated by personal example what one man, armed only with integrity and the courage to act upon it can achieve . . . P.S. To denigrate Mr Buchanan is to denigrate his millions of supporters too.
This is punchy stuff, and I enjoy receiving Mr Johnston's letters, even though I disagree with most of what he has to say. They show what the world looks like from a completely different point of view. I do not know whether Mr Johnston has an American connection himself, but his belief that America has been taken over by Establishment conspirators is very widely held in the United States.
In 1984, the year of President Reagan's second election, I was given a lecture on the world conspiracy by a black taxi driver in Atlanta, Georgia. He explained that in 1917, General Motors, US, and General Motors, Russia, had agreed to divide the world between them. Since then they had been in control of their respective countries, employing such characters as Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin as convenient figureheads. They had organised the Second World War in order to sell arms, and, because they had surplus arms factories after 1945, they had arranged the Cold War. In effect, Reagan and Gorbachev were senior employees of the same company.
At this level of myth, conspiracy theories become completely grotesque, though that does not mean they can be disregarded, as Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing showed. At Mr Johnston's level, the theories may be equally erroneous, but the fact that so many people believe them shows that they possess psychological attraction. To these conspiracy-mongers, as to Pat Buchanan, the world is a place manipulated by the Establishment of which columnists like myself form a part to the disadvantage of outsiders, of ordinary Americans, ordinary Britons or ordinary Russians. There is indeed one American propagandist who has broadcast the view that I am the head of the British Secret Service, and that I have conspired with the Dalai Lama to put the Queen on the throne of Mexico. That would be news to MI6, the Dalai Lama and the Queen.
How can one be sure that one's own perception of reality is more reliable? Last time I went to a Bilderberg conference, it was held in Athens, about three years ago. Tony Blair was there, not yet leader of the Labour Party [and now, of course, prime minister], Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel were there, the Queen of The Netherlands was there. It was all pleasantly grand. Yet it is hard to think of any subject on which we would be likely to conspire. The Queen of The Netherlands is as Euro-fanatic as Ted Heath, Tony Blair is a modest good European, I have been an anti-Maastricht campaigner and Mr Black is a Canadian neo-realist who owns 500 newspapers. The idea that we all join hands on some witches' Sabbath to manipulate the world is almost as absurd as the belief that I am trying to make the Queen of England the crowned head of Mexico. Yet Mr Johnston is not alone in turning shadows into bogeys. Mr Buchanan himself is threatening to take the United States out of the World Trade Organisation, which he regards as another sinister international body, conspiring against American interests.
Such popular fears of a conspiracy of power are nothing new; even John of Gaunt suffered from the belief that he controlled a sinister Establishment, which included Geoffrey Chaucer. My American grandfather was an active local Democrat who worked on Wall Street; indeed, my mother was kissed as a baby by Grover Cleveland during the campaign of 1892. In 1896, my grandfather could hardly bring himself to vote for William Jennings Bryan because of Bryan's populist attacks on the Wall Street conspiracy. My grandfather did not believe that "mankind is crucified upon a Cross of Gold". He thought gold was a very useful monetary commodity, as I do myself.
Mr Johnston is probably right to say that Mr Buchanan is "a merchant of anger", though I still think he is also a merchant of fear. There is an anger running through modern society, a terrible anger in Russia, a gallic anger in France, a mild anger in Britain, an anger that could conceivably elect Buchanan in America. It is not a reasonable anger; many of its targets are hard-working people doing useful jobs which hold the world together. Yet anger and fear go hand in hand. Our late-20th-century fear is the natural product of accelerating economic change.
In my last article on Pat Buchanan, I referred to the opposition he faces from the so-called "cognitive elite", the people who are the beneficiaries of the information age. The phrase comes from The Bell Curve, by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. These are the people with high IQs and good education, who get the highly skilled jobs that pay the best; they often marry other high-earners. They are a pivotal group in the modern world economy, but they are a minority, and people are jealous of their success.
An identifiable privileged minority, like Wall Street financiers in the 1890s, Jewish businessmen in Weimar Germany or the brightest and the best in America of the 1990s are always likely to attract suspicion, fear, anger and hatred. These are dangerous emotions which arise naturally from the resentment of those who believe that they stand outside the windows of the clubhouse of power and cannot quite hear what is being said inside. Mr Buchanan both shares these emotions and plays on them; he is the hero of the disempowered, and they help him to split the Republican vote.
David Packard, businessman and former United States Deputy Secretary of Defence in the Nixon Administration, died on March 26 aged 83. He was born on September 7, 1912.
In the cut-throat environment of modern American industry, with its massive worker lay-offs and remote senior executives, David Packard was a remarkable example of a very different management philosophy. By keeping in constant touch with his employees and giving full rein to their creativity, sharing profits and providing security, he built the Hewlett-Packard Company into one of the largest and most innovative electronics companies in the world.
Together with his partner, William Hewlett, Packard founded the concern in 1938 with a capital of $538 and a workshop housed in his garage. Today it has 100,000 employees, and annual revenues of $31billion, with factories across the world.
Packard and Hewlett had been friends as electrical engineering students at Stanford University, where the 6ft 4in Packard had also been an outstanding athlete and football player.
Both enjoyed tinkering with electronics, and in short order they had invented a weight-reducing machine, an electronic harmonica tuner, and a foul-line indicator for bowling alleys. Their first commercial sale, however, was to Walt Disney, who ordered eight audio-oscillators for use on the sound-track of Fantasia at $71.50 each. The Hewlett-Packard partnership turned a profit of $1,653 in its first year, reinvested it in the business, and never looked back. The garage, recognised as the birthplace of Silicon Valley, is now a California state landmark.
As the corporation grew, Packard strove to maintain its small company atmosphere by creating numerous divisions and giving each a high degree of autonomy which extended to the shop floor. Managers were encouraged to set objectives and to let the workers get on with the job. Combined with a technique known as "management by walking around," which had senior executives making themselves visible and accessible on the shop floor, it proved extremely effective. Packard himself, who had a horror of executive pomposity, insisted on being called "Dave" by his workers.
A lifelong liberal Republican, who had made substantial financial contributions to the party, Packard found himself the centre of controversy in 1969 when he was selected by President Nixon to become deputy to Melvin Laird as Secretary of Defence. The reason was a potential conflict of interest: Hewlett-Packard was a major defence contractor, selling an annual $100million worth of electronic instruments to the Pentagon, and Packard owned about 30 per cent of the stock, worth $289million.
He resolved the issue by leaving the company, exchanging his $1million income for a government salary of $30,000, and putting his shares into a charitable trust. Although some, including Senator Albert Gore, were unconvinced, calling the move a book-keeping exercise, Packard won Senate confirmation easily and served with considerable success for the next three years before returning to Hewlett-Packard as chairman.
Packard was later appointed by President Reagan as chairman of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Defence Management, recommending changes in the system of weapons procurement, and served as a member of the Trilateral Commission from 1973 to 1981.
During the 1980s Packard went into semi-retirement, though maintaining his official position with Hewlett-Packard. But, when the company got into financial difficulties in 1991, he returned to full-time work, and inspired the reorganisation which restored its fortunes.
David Packard is survived by one son and three daughters. His wife Lucile died in 1987.
Extract of paper submitted to Bilderberg 1996 conference from STRAITS TIMES 30/6/96 (SE Asia)
China has risen from slumber, so help it find a place in the world, argues former American Assistant Secretary of Defence Chas W. Freeman Jr. Outlining the economic, political and military challenges of China, he warns that if it is excluded from the global order, it will not adhere to global norms. Edited extracts of his paper begin here:
The Chinese believe that, for most of recorded history, China was not just the most populous but also the most prosperous, technologically most advanced, most powerful, and arguably the best governed of all human societies.
The Chinese regard their eclipse by the West in what they call "the recent past" as an anomaly that time and hard work will correct.
Most Chinese now believe that, in the century to come, their nation is destined to resume its natural place as the pre-eminent society on the planet. They may be right. Even if they are wrong, their cocky self-confidence that time is on their side has major international implications.
China's rise to wealth and power is the leading factor in the Asia-Pacific region's progressive displacement of the Atlantic community at the centre of world economic affairs.
The challenge of fitting China into the existing world order does not, however, stop with economics. China's rise also has enormous political and military implications. The Chinese economy is the engine that is accelerating the global shift of wealth and power to East Asia. Events in the region or between China and its trading partners may alter the rate of growth but are unlikely to reverse it.
But its growing economic weight and central position have yet to be reflected in its inclusion in global institutions and regulatory regimes.
China is excluded from the Group of Seven nations, the World Trade Organisation, the New Forum (successor to CoCom, the Co-ordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls), the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and other global institutions.
No one has even thought about how to work toward the ultimate admission of China to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The effort by the United States and others in the early '70s to incorporate China into the world order, shaped by the Atlantic community over the past half century, has faltered.
Yet, it is hard to imagine that the institutions that constitute this order can retain their leading position if an economy that is soon to become the world's largest is not fully integrated with them.
Meanwhile, a rapidly-expanding list of global and regional economic and politico-economic issues cannot be successfully managed without Chinese cooperation.
For example, China will soon overtake the US as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Clearly, no effort to moderate the damage to the global environment can hope to succeed unless China is fully a part of it.
China's rapidly-growing exports and internal market continue to develop to a considerable extent outside the norms of the global trading system. This is creating vested interests in patterns of Chinese economic behaviour that disrupt and damage trade and investment with the industrial democracies.
The fact that China is not a member of most multilateral regulatory regimes leaves Beijing free to ignore complaints from its trading partners until they escalate into bilateral confrontation. In such raw tests of power, only a major trading partner like the US has much chance of prevailing.
As China's economic prowess grows, Beijing's bargaining power will also grow, making bilateral solutions to problems with China that are of wider international concern even more problematic.
Yet, the West has no apparent strategy for achieving China's integration into the multilateral institutions it hopes will regulate the post-Cold War international economic order. Almost without exception, institutions formed since the end of the Cold War have excluded China.
The country is already an exporter of high technology goods, many of them with military applications. Clearly, no effort to regulate trade with "rogue states" or in technologies relevant to weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems can hope to succeed if China remains outside it.
The limits of what can be accomplished by bilateralism are already apparent. Consider, for example, the decidedly mixed record of unilateral American attempts to regulate exports of Chinese nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan.
As China grows, the bilateral leverage of the United States and other countries over it can only diminish. Yet there is no effort being made to bring China into membership in the multilateral regimes that attempt to regulate the international transfer of sensitive technologies.
Finally, China's opening to the outside world and the concomitant collapse of Chinese totalitarianism have allowed the emergence of transnational Chinese criminal gangs. Such gangs are now involved in the drug trade and the smuggling of Chinese emigrants under conditions approximating those of the 18th century African slave trade.
They are developing linkages to organised crime in Russia, Europe and the Americas. The full cooperation of the authorities in Beijing with multilateral institutions like InterPol is essential to deal with these problems.
The Asia-Europe Meeting, held in Bangkok earlier this year, has created a multilateral forum joining European and Asian Customs officials in discussion of them. Yet the principal market for drugs and destination of illegal migrants are the US and Canada, which are not part of this forum.
A persistent problem in dealing with China is the inability of the central government in Beijing to obtain the compliance of provincial and local authorities with the agreements it concludes with foreign governments.
The current difficulties over intellectual property rights are a case in point. China lacks the legal system, including the courts, trained judges, and legal enforcement mechanisms that more developed countries can rely upon to implement effective controls over commercial behaviour.
Everyone knows this to be the case. Even the Chinese will admit it when embarrassed into doing so. Yet there is no concerted international effort underway to aid China in law and administrative reform or in public administration and judicial training.
The absence of an international strategy by which to promote China's adherence to the norms fostered by global institutions is especially striking given the successful efforts to integrate China into the world order registered in the '70s and '80s.
The country can, of course, be counted upon to bargain for privileged status and exemption from the rules applied to other countries. Nevertheless, once admitted to a club, the record shows, China works hard to learn, adopt and apply the group rules.
China's socio-economic transformation over the past two decades owes much to its admission to institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Asian Development Bank, and the UN specialised agencies, and to its subsequent adoption of the modes of analysis and policies they favour.
The lack of a Euro-American (and Japanese) strategy for speeding China's integration into global institutions and Chinese effective application of global norms is potentially very serious, given the high stakes involved.
It cannot be in the world's interest to wait to begin managing the consequences for the international state system of China's rise to wealth and power. Problems are accumulating, not diminishing. The counrty's bargaining position is strengthening, not weakening.
As China's wealth grows, both its military power and political influence are also growing. The implications of this for the Asia-Pacific region are well understood by China's neighbours.
Without exception, they seek economic benefits from closer ties with China, while keeping a wary eye on Beijing as they move to accommodate it politically.
China now enjoys its most cooperative relations with South-east Asia in 500 years. Its relations with Russia are the most mutually respectful in over 300 years. Its relations with Europe, including Europe's great powers, are the most satisfactory in nearly two centuries.
Beijing's relations with New Delhi are the least strained since the 1962 Sino-Indian border war. Its relations with Islamabad and Dhaka are as sound as ever.
Despite an audible undercurrent of Japanese concern about China, Sino-Japanese relations are as good as they have been in a hundred years.
Yet two centuries of weakness have left China with many points of dissatisfaction.
It is now the only great power to have had major portions of its historical territory and population detached from it by the military intervention of other great powers - European powers in the cases of Macau and Hongkong, Japan and the United States in the case of Taiwan.
Beijing is determined to reunite these disparate Chinese societies under a single sovereignty, if not single politico-economic system. China will accomplish such reunification through negotiations, if possible (as it has proven to be for Hongkong and Macau), or by force, if necessary (as India did with Goa and Indonesia with Irian Jaya and East Timor).
China is also the only great power to lack secure and recognised borders with most of its neighbours. China has now settled all of its inner Asian frontiers through negotiations with Russia and the newly independent Central Asia states.
The list of Chinese border disputes remains, however, the longest in the world. China has unsettled economic zone (seabed) boundaries with both North and South Korea. It disputes the Senkaku (or Diaoyutai) archipelago with Japan.
China contests sovereignty over islets and reefs throughout the South China Sea with Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia. Its claims to economic zones in the South China Sea generate a seabed dispute with Indonesia.
The Sino-Indian border has been established de facto but not de jure. China is determined to define secure and recognised borders with all these neighbours by negotiated territorial adjustments as in the case of its inner Asian frontiers, if possible, or by military action to defend its sovereignty, if necessary.
Unlike unification with Taiwan, none of these border issues requires major territorial or politico-military adjustments for its resolution.
Sino-Korean differences must in practice await Korean reunification for their resolution. Neither China nor Japan has so far seen any pressing reason to address the question of sovereignty over the Senkakus.
A Sino-Indian border settlement is implicit in the status quo and could be formalised whenever the two sides are politically inclined to formalise it.
China's full acceptance of the Law of the Sea Treaty (expected to be ratified by the National People's Congress later this year) will provide a legal framework for negotiation of claims in the South China Sea.
China's neighbours have few concerns about its actions in the short term. They are all concerned, however, that China's military power relative to them is steadily growing.
The re-emergence of military tensions, including Sino-American naval confrontations, in the Taiwan Strait has changed this situation. Until the last two years, Chinese leaders (like most politicians in Taiwan) believed that Taiwan had only two conceivable futures: the status quo (as it might be amended by cross-Strait interaction) or reunification. In these circumstances, Beijing felt no sense of urgency about the Taiwan issue.
By 1995, however, it had become deeply concerned that Taiwan's democratic politics were centring on the quest for an identity separate from China.
Responding to popular opinion on the island, the leadership in Taiwan began to provide inducements to Third World capitals to allow the establishment of Taipei embassies alongside Beijing's diplomatic representation.
Taipei redoubled its effort to upgrade its represention in the capitals of great powers. It vociferously sought a separate seat in the United Nations General Assembly. The Taiwan leadership launched a campaign of nominally private but very political travel abroad to raise Taiwan's international profile.
Beijing concluded that Taipei was bent on acquiring the attributes of independent statehood on the diplomatic instalment plan.
Notwithstanding Taipei's protestations of fidelity to the principle of "one China", Beijing saw Taipei's effort as crafting a basis for long-term separation from China.
This conclusion was buttressed by the main opposition party in Taiwan's open espousal of independence. From Beijing's perspective, Taipei's actions threatened to alter the status quo in such a way as to preclude peaceful reunification.
Taipei's effort to expand its options gave Beijing a sense of urgency about the Taiwan question it had previously lacked.
When political warning failed to deter Taipei, Beijing resorted to intimidation through military measures short of war, such as exercises and missile tests that underscored Beijing's ability to strangle Taiwan's economy.
These measures were intended to force Taipei to reverse course or to come to the negotiating table. Chinese posturing, however, belatedly evoked countervailing shows of force by the US, neutralising Beijing's pressure on Taipei to negotiate.
American naval deployments were undertaken to underscore the long-standing interest of the US in a peaceful, rather than violent, settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.
They were not intended to signal support for Taiwan independence. Ironically, however, by making it clear that the US would counter and offset Beijing's use of measures short of war to force Taipei to the negotiating table, American actions have greatly diminished the prospects for peaceful reunification.
If Beijing cannot force Taipei to the table, and the US will not, it is highly unlikely that Taipei will ever negotiate.
From Beijing's point of view, China now has only two options: doing nothing while Taipei works towards a "two Chinas" or "one China, one Taiwan" outcome, or going to war for reunification, despite the danger that the US might be dragged into the conflict. Revising this calculus is now an urgent task for American diplomacy.
Beijing is on the verge of embarking on the long-term military build-up necessary to acquire the ability to overrun Taiwan even against US opposition.
China's recent embrace of Russian positions on various international issues provides a basis for expanded military cooperation with Russia while calming China's northern flank.
As Beijing increases its military capabilities against Taiwan, it will not abandon its efforts to achieve reunification by peaceful means. It will continue to attempt to intimidate Taiwan into negotiations while seeking to minimise the resulting strain in its relations with the US.
At the same time, it will wish to limit collateral damage to its relationships with its Asian neighbours from tension and possible conflict in the Taiwan Strait.
As a result, China is likely to pursue compromise on South China Sea territorial issues (and perhaps even the Senkaku dispute) as it did with Russia and the newly-independent Central Asian states.
By eliminating potential sources of conflict with the members of ASEAN and Japan, China can hope to provide reassurance that its aggressive stance on the Taiwan issue is sui generis and without wider implications for the region.
These ominous trends might, of course, be reversed were Taiwan to be persuaded that it should enter into active negotiations on reunification with Beijing or otherwise provide convincing reassurance that it does not seek a future distinct from association with China.
Taipei is, however, unlikely to be willing or able effectively to press it to do so. Taiwan will continue to attract Western and Japanese sympathy as a democratic underdog menaced by the communist dictatorship on the Chinese mainland. This will stimulate widening concern about the implications of rising Chinese military power - no matter what Beijing does to allay such concerns.
Chinese defence expenditure has heretofore been relatively low in relation to its gross national product. The relatively low priority assigned to military modernisation over the past decade and more reflected Beijing's judgement that the short-term risk of a major conflict on China's border was slight and that a resolution of the Taiwan issue could be peacefully achieved.
Recent events in the Taiwan Strait have clearly altered these judgements. The Chinese defence budget is likely to rise accordingly, though the focus of PLA modernisation will shift largely to building the eventual capability to conquer Taiwan.
Strategic nuclear forces and other weapons systems with the capacity to deter US intervention in any battle for Taiwan are similarly likely to receive much greater emphasis in People's Liberation Army modernisation.
The prospect of a more powerfully assertive China inevitably awakens memories of the recent Euro-American struggle with the former Soviet Union. It leads to speculation that China, like the USSR, may disintegrate. It is, however, a mistake to draw many analogies between the two.
The Soviet Union was a multinational empire, established by czarist and communist conquest from Moscow. Its dominant Russian nationality was a bare majority within its imperial structure. The Soviet Union was driven by the impulse to spread its ideology wherever opportunities presented themselves.
To that end, it maintained a huge military presence in satellite states along its borders. Moscow's strategic ambitions led it to provide expensive military and economic assistance to like-minded states as far away as Cuba and southern Africa. Rigid central planning ultimately produced a declining economy unable to bear the very high level of military spending the Soviet state demanded. Until its final days, Moscow sought to overthrow the international status quo.
By contrast, China grew to its present borders over the course of millennia of gradual expansion and assimilation of minority peoples. The 94 per cent of the Chinese population who consider themselves Han share a nationalist passion for unity, order and international respect for their country's historical borders.
They have no sympathy and even less tolerance for efforts by Tibetans or other minority peoples within these borders to exercise self-determination. They do not seek to bring additional non-Han peoples into their polity.
Contemporary China has no ideology it can explain to its own people, still less one it seeks to export to others. It has no satellites and maintains no forces beyond its borders. China's increasingly decentralised economy is the fastest growing in the world. Its defence budget could be greatly increased without putting much strain on its economy. China seeks to join the existing international order, not to overthrow it.
Nor is China likely to disintegrate as the Soviet Union did. Economic growth has indeed altered the relationship between the central and provincial authorities. As acquisitive individualism succeeded austere communitarianism as the national ethos, the Chinese Communist Party lost much of its discipline, along with its ideology.
In the absence of government institutions to replace it, the provinces, to some extent, went their own way. In the early stages of economic reform, new challenges to government posed by the requirement to manage a market economy were met, if at all, largely at the provincial, rather than the national level.
Beijing is, however, now well along in its efforts to create the central institutions necessary to manage an increasingly dynamic and integrated national economy.
Resistance to this re-centralisation by the provinces has not led to separatist sentiment. On the contrary, the spirit of nationalism is on the rise throughout China.
Finally, the Soviet Union was a horrifying violator of the human rights of all whom it controlled. For all the Western pressure on Moscow on human rights issues, it took the collapse of the regime to bring about significant improvement.
Unlike the former Soviet Union, however, China is carrying out far-reaching economic and social reforms. These may or may not lead in time to political reforms, as happened, for example, in the formerly Leninist Chinese society in Taiwan.
Nevertheless, it is arguable that the course of events elsewhere in East Asia will prove to be a better predictor of China's future than that in the Soviet Union.
In short, Beijing does not think or behave like Moscow when it was the capital of the USSR. China is not an implacable foe of the West or the world order the West has created. It is unlikely to follow the Soviet Union into disintegration and collapse. The challenge to the world posed by the rise of China is different. In some ways, it may prove more daunting.
Nearly two centuries ago, Napoleon advised his fellow Europeans, "Let China sleep. When it wakens, it will shake the world". There is now no prospect that China will return to the slumber of past centuries.
The 21st century will see China resume its traditional pride of place among the world's societies. The question before Europeans and North Americans is not how to prevent what cannot be prevented. It is how to ensure that the rise of China in the new millennium buttresses rather than erodes the international system we have constructed with such difficulty in this century.
To that end, we must urgently consider how to speed China's integration into existing institutions on acceptable terms.
Equally important, we must decide how best to ensure that China's determination to rectify the borders imposed upon by the ages of imperialism, fascism and the Cold War does not lead to long-term confrontation and strategic realignments adverse to Western interests.
ACCORD: Between the US and China on strengthening safeguards against piracy of intellectual property. However, the central government has problems getting local authorities to comply with agreements it has with foreign governments as it does not have the legal system to enforce controls over commercial behaviour.
BUILD-UP: Of the military by Beijing. It sees a long-term plan in this area as necessary, so it can overrun Taiwan if it needs to, even against US opposition.
The writer, Chas W. Freeman Jr., is now chairman of Projects International Associates, a Washington-based business development corporation. His paper was submitted to the Bilderberg Conference in Toronto, Canada, held from May 29-June 2.
"Getting foreign businesses to set up here cannot be achieved by a small peripheral nation like ours by simply sitting at home and waiting for the world to knock on our door. I make no apology for pursuing this strategy and I intend continuing to do so in the national interest," the Taoiseach, Mr Reynolds, told the House when he strongly defended his extensive foreign travel.
He disclosed that since last October, when he had replied to a similar question, the Tanaiste Mr Spring, and himself were out of the State simultaneously on Government business on 12 occasions. These included three meetings in London with the British Prime Minister, three European Council meetings in Brussels and one in Corfu.
"Throughout these periods, both the Tanaiste and I remained in charge of, and in direct contact with, our Departments at all times. In accordance with longstanding practice, it was not necessary to assign our duties and functions during our absence to other members of the Government," he added. Later, Mr Reynolds defended the use of the Government jet to fly the Minister of State for Social Welfare, Ms Joan Burton, her husband and a presidential party home from Zurich last month.
The leader of Democratic Left Mr Proinsias De Rossa, pressed Mr Reynolds to confirm that the trip had cost about £30,000, as estimated by sections of the media. He also asked if it was a fair cost, given that a woman in Cork had to thumb her way to a hospital with a young child because she would not get funding from the health board. Mr Reynolds insisted that questions relating to the cost should be addressed to the Minister for Defence, Mr Andrews. He asked Mr De Rossa: "What about the trips to Moscow? Who paid for them?"
During exchanges with opposition deputies on the use of the jet, Mr Reynolds said that he might, if he was tempted and driven to it, look up how it was used by Ministers in the past.
Warning that "people might get red faces" if he started to open the files, he added: "Maybe you are as well to stay a little quiet."
He said that a former Taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald, had travelled abroad for two weeks, mostly in a private capacity, to the Bilderberg conference, and then went to see Cardinal O'Connor in New York and Governor Dukakis.
"If that represents a good fortnight's work on behalf of this country, I wouldn't even compare it with the sort of work that I do when I go abroad," he added.
Outlining the circumstances in which the Government jet was flown to Zurich, Mr Reynolds said that Ms Burton and her husband had travelled, at the request of the Government, with the President and Mr Robinson on the State visit to Tanzania. It was customary for spouses to accompany Ministers on State visits, if possible.
The scheduled return date was October 13th. But the arrangements for the President changed at a very late date and she went to Rwanda.
The rest of the party of nine returned to Europe as arranged. The ministerial air transport service was used to bring Ms Burton and the other member of the presidential party home from Zurich on the evening of October 13th as previously arranged.
Mr De Rossa suggested that it would have been more appropriate for the party to return to Dublin by scheduled flight.
On the use of the Government jet, Mr Reynolds said that 195 missions were flown in 1992, 281 in 1991 and 341 in 1990. These compared favourably with 193 missions last year and 114 to date this year. The opposition parties, he added, were trying to exploit the issue because of the Cork by ectleions.
Mr De Rossa said that the purpose of his question was to solicit whether or not a cost effective use was being made of the jet, and whether a Minister of State and her spouse should be able to summon the jet to Zurich to return at her convenience.
Mr Reynolds said that Ms Burton had not summoned the jet to Zurich.
Mr Paul Bradford (FG, Cork East) queried the use of the jet to fly Mr Reynolds to the recent Cork County final, which he claimed also allowed him to attend his pay'rts selection convention for the by elections.
The Ceann Comhairle, Mr Sean Treacy, said that this was a separate matter.
**** HIGHLIGHTS ****
[extract]
BURGENSTOCK, Switzerland (NEW ITEM) - Environment and Nuclear Safety Commissioner Ritt Bjerregaard and Commissioner for Relations with east Europe and CIS Hans van den Broek take part in Bilderberg Conference.
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DATE OF ISSUE: 24/05/96
VISIT OF PRESIDENT SANTER - RELEASE OF JOHN PAUL MOKUOLO - FOREIGN SECRETARY TO VISIT UNITED STATES, CANADA AND ICELAND - 28 MAY - 2 JUNE 1996 - VISIT OF PRESIDENT SANTER.
[extract]
FOREIGN SECRETARY TO VISIT UNITED STATES, CANADA AND ICELAND: 28 MAY - 2 JUNE 1996 Spokesman issued the following press release: "Malcolm Rifkind, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, will visit the US (28-30 May), Canada (30 May-1 June) and Iceland (1-2 June).
In Washington Mr Rifkind will meet Vice President Gore, Mr Warren Christopher and other senior members of the Administration and Congress, and will speak on the transatlantic relationship at the National Press Club.
In Ottawa Mr Rifkind will meet Prime Minister Jean Chretien and Mr Lloyd Axworthy, Minister of Foreign Affairs. He will also attend the Bilderberg Conference in Toronto. The final leg of the Foreign Secretary's trip will be to Reykjavik, where he will meet the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. He will also formally open the new British Embassy.
Notes to Editors
Mr Rifkind last visited Washington 18-19 July 1995. He is visiting Canada for the first time as Foreign Secretary. The Bilderberg Group is a well established and highly prestigious discussion forum, which has been meeting since the 1950s. The participants are invited by a steering committee and include high level representatives from the worlds of politics, economics and commerce. This will be his first visit to Reykjavik. Mr David Heathcoat-Amory, Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, was the last British Minister to visit Iceland in June 1994."
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HERMES - UK GOVERNMENT PRESS RELEASES 24/5/96