A Chinese military policeman watches the U.S. ambassador's car
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"It's like a speedboat and a sailboat," said a Navy pilot. "The smaller, more powerful guy has the responsibility to avoid the bigger, slower one." Yet recently, as the U.S. stepped up surveillance flights in response to China's buildup in the area, the Chinese pilots had become more aggressive. "Sometimes they're so close you can see their faces," David Cecka, Aviation Electronics Technician 2nd Class onboard the downed plane, had told his mother. It got so bad that U.S. officials complained. "We went to the Chinese and said, 'Your aircraft are not intercepting in a professional manner. There is a safety issue here,'" recalls Admiral Dennis Blair, head of the U.S. Pacific Command. "It's not normal practice to play bumper cars in the air."
By monday morning, some 36 hours had passed without progress. Bush met with Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney and agreed that it was time for him to make a statement and turn up the pressure on Jiang. But there were domestic political pressures at play as well. The White House was keen to show that Bush was in charge, setting the tone, weighing the options. Cheney would spend the week conspicuously busy on Capitol Hill, worrying about the budget. As for Rumsfeld and Powell, now playing tug-of-war with their second generation of Bush presidents, it was the more moderate Powell who had the lead. "It's our air crew — they are military people," Pentagon spokesman Craig Quigley said. "But if you think of a military solution to this, that's not the way ahead. The way ahead is a diplomatic one." Rumsfeld, known to favor a hard line, was ever the good soldier. "Right now he agrees with everything that's being done," a close Rumsfeld aide said. "He's been involved with this thing from the beginning, but he has no desire to stand out." And so it was Bush himself who went before the cameras on Monday to read a statement designed to sound firm but not threatening. The White House had decided not to attack the Chinese pilot for hotdogging near the U.S. plane, and instead called the collision an "accident." "Our priorities are the prompt and safe return of the crew," Bush said, "and the return of the aircraft without further damaging or tampering."
That put Bush front and center, but it was a risk. When those comments failed to win the crew's release, the next move seemed to be anyone's guess. "They put him out," said a foreign policy veteran of the first Bush White House. "But when nothing happened, then it was like, 'OK, what do we do now?'"
By Tuesday, some in the administration felt that they were being stonewalled. Jiang continued to insist that the fault lay with the U.S. The Chinese president also called for an end to U.S. surveillance flights. At 2 p.m., Bush walked into the Oval Office and immediately asked Rice to get Brigadier General Neal Sealock on the phone. Sealock, the U.S. military attaché in Beijing, had finally been allowed in to see the crew, but for just 40 minutes under strict conditions: no recording devices, no individual conversations, the Chinese always present. The crew had been able to convey word that they had wiped out much of the sensitive information before the Chinese had boarded the plane.
So at 4 p.m., after the markets closed, Bush walked into the Rose Garden and reminded China of the consequences of delay. "We have allowed the Chinese government time to do the right thing," he said. "But now it is time for our servicemen and women to return home." The whole relationship was on the line. "This accident has the potential of undermining our hopes for a fruitful and productive relationship between our two countries."
Bush did open one tiny window. Once again he mentioned getting the plane back, but by now this was a bargaining chip. The Chinese were not likely to relinquish such a prize, yet by demanding it Bush might allow them to save some face by releasing the crew but keeping the plane. By the time Rumsfeld issued his first statement the next day, there was no mention of the plane. "The plane doesn't matter anymore," said a Bush adviser. "It's destroyed anyway."
As it retuned the message, the administration discussed even tougher options. Diplomatic meetings and military exchanges could be canceled. Bush could drop his fall visit to Beijing. He could make dark noises about trade, even end normal trading status. The U.S. could get in the way of China's quest to hold the 2008 Olympics. Then there was the question of whether to sell advanced defensive weapons to Taiwan. "He's got a lot of sticks," a former Clinton administration official says of Bush, "but the problem is, they're all too big."
Bush's Tuesday remarks left some old China hands dismayed. "You don't want to talk about harming the relationship until you know what sort of harm you may be inflicting," said J. Stapleton Roy, who was ambassador to Beijing under Bush's father and a top U.S. diplomat under Clinton. "I think it does reflect a certain amount of inexperience when you make statements like that." Roy blamed Bush's tone on administration officials "who are unrealistic in their expectations of how China should behave in these circumstances."
And it wasn't long after Bush spoke that the administration began to dial it back. A tantalizing question through the first tense days was how much the 43rd President was huddling with the 41st. Bush gave no hint, even to some of his closest aides, that he was talking to his father, but everyone in the West Wing assumed he was. Dad's diplomatic alter ego, Brent Scowcroft, was in regular communication with Rice, his former protégé. Scowcroft worked quietly behind the scenes to tone down the initial response. Bush Sr., who spent part of last week in Europe but could have been in secure contact with the White House through embassy phone hookups, has always thought of himself as an old China hand. As president, Bush often told his aides, "I know the Chinese" — and then rang up Beijing for a friendly chat. The habit drove advisers like Scowcroft crazy, not only because they couldn't keep track of what he said but also because Bush Sr. had a tendency to soft-pedal problems. As tensions rose last week, Bush aides began to hope that a family powwow was taking place. One of the many West Wing officials who worked for both father and son put it this way: "God, I hope he is talking to his father."
China had so much to lose by putting Bush in a corner that U.S. analysts found it hard to figure Beijing's motives. Why would Jiang stake so much on one spy plane? He could have fed the U.S. crew a nice Chinese meal and sent them home, earning all kinds of Western goodwill. Instead, he kept raising the stakes, demanding an apology before anyone had a chance to investigate the incident or debrief the pilots on either side.