Advisers to Obama, McCain Tied to US Multinationals that Profit from Beijing

President Bush is heading to China this week, where he will attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Summer Olympics on Friday. The Games' presence in Beijing have helped spotlight opposition to China on a number of policies, including its repression of the Tibetan independence movement, its support for the Sudanese government in Darfur and its crackdown on dissidents and civil liberties at home. In the latest issue of Harper's Magazine, Ken Silverstein says many of the bipartisan experts who have advocated so-called "constructive engagement" with China are tied to major US multinational corporations that profit heavily from the Chinese market.

AMY GOODMAN: President Bush arrived in South Korea last night on the first leg of a trip to Asia that will also take him to Thailand and to China, where he’ll attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Summer Olympics on Friday. In China, Bush will meet President Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders. His visit to China will be the fourth of his presidency. No other US president has visited China more than once.

Bush has been criticized by a number of lawmakers and human rights groups for his decision to attend the Beijing Games. He has rebuffed calls to boycott the opening ceremonies over a number of Chinese policies, such as repression of Tibetan independence movement, its support for the Sudanese government in Darfur and its crackdown on dissidents and civil liberties at home.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Bush said, “One of the reasons I’m going is because I want to show respect to the Chinese people, and this is a proud moment for China.”

Well, in the latest issue of Harper’s Magazine, Ken Silverstein says many of the bipartisan experts who have advocated so-called “constructive engagement” with China are tied to major US multinational corporations that profit heavily from the Chinese market. Ken Silverstein joins me now from Washington, D.C.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Ken.

KEN SILVERSTEIN: Thanks.

AMY GOODMAN: Lay out your thesis in “The Mandarins,” the title of your piece.

KEN SILVERSTEIN: Well, basically I looked at—I started looking at the campaign advisers, actually, to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton—this was a few months ago when I started, and she was still very much part of the fight for the Democratic nomination—and John McCain. And I didn’t have a—I mean, the story ended up being a little bit different than what I had initially imagined, but what I discovered was that many of these advisers, not just advisers on China policy, in fact, although that’s what I focused on, but many of the presidential advisers to the top candidates worked for some of these international consulting firms whose whole business model is to open up doors abroad for US and other Western companies, in fact.

So, for example, in the case of China, you have a guy named Jeffrey Bader, who is at the Brookings Institution, which I think maybe we can get back to in a minute, but who also has worked for Stonebridge International, which is a big consulting firm headed by Sandy Berger, who used to be with the Clinton administration and in fact who was primarily responsible for—or one of the people primarily responsible for the big opening with China under Clinton. Remember, Clinton came into office promising that he would honor the spirit of Tiananmen Square and left having put into place permanent normal trade relations with Beijing.

But you found time and time again that the key advisers to the major presidential candidates had these economic conflicts that were never stated when they wrote op-eds or were interviewed on TV or radio. You know, they were always—or typically, they’d be identified as belonging to a think tank or simply as a former government official. Well, what about their relationship with, say, Stonebridge, where not only Jeffrey Bader, Obama’s—a big adviser for Obama, but Ken Lieberthal, who was the senior adviser to Clinton on China policy, both of them hold positions there?

Now, it’s fine if they want to, you know, acknowledge where they work and let the listener or the viewer decide if this might influence their point of view, but to put people on TV or on the radio and to simply let them appear to be an independent observer, when in fact they have a direct stake, really, and a close relationship between Washington and Beijing, and when their business model actually requires them being on reasonably good terms with Chinese government officials, and in fact, you know, generally much better than reasonably good terms, generally very warm, positive terms with Chinese officials, because they’re door openers—you cannot open doors with Chinese government officials on behalf of Western companies unless you are on good terms. I mean, if they don’t like you, if you say a lot of nasty things about Tibet or human rights or anything else, then the Chinese government officials that you need to help you in your business are not going to be there for you. So it’s an inherent conflict that’s just very, very rarely discussed.

AMY GOODMAN: The company that’s—Sandy Berger, chief adviser to President Clinton, also perhaps the foremost architect of the administration’s dramatic shift in China policy, you point out that he, before he came into the Clinton administration, was with the law firm of Hogan & Hartson, and he coordinated business lobbying for China at that law firm.

KEN SILVERSTEIN: Yeah, I mean, most of the people I’m talking about, most of these advisers, previously worked in government. Now they may be off in the business—the private sector. Some of them are going to end up going back into government, I’m quite sure of that, in either a Obama or McCain administration.

But yeah, Berger is a classic example. I mean, he started off in the private sector lobbying for permanent normal trade relations for China. This is back in the ’90s. And this—you know, I think probably many of your listeners may have forgotten, but ten years ago, fifteen years ago, the US relationship with Beijing was extremely heated. I mean, the debate about permanent normal trade relations with China was almost as heated as the debate over NAFTA. Millions and millions and millions of dollars were spent by the business community to lobby for this policy. And the Clinton administration reversed itself, completely reversed itself, and decided that it would prioritize—over human rights policy, it would prioritize commercial relationships. And that was what—that’s what happened. And Berger was one of the architects of this policy. After he left Hogan & Hartson, he joined the Clinton administration. So he basically lobbies for China in the private sector, joins the Clinton administration, where he lobbies for China, then goes to Stonebridge International, where he’s basically lobbying for China still.

And you find this pattern time and time again. There are senior government officials who, you know, had previously worked on behalf of China in one form or another, they go into government, then they retire, and they still have very, very important ties to China that benefit them financially in a very direct personal manner.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk, Ken Silverstein, about Alexander Haig and about Brent Scowcroft? Talk about, first, Haig.

KEN SILVERSTEIN: Well, Haig is—you know, the Chinese love Haig. I mean, there’s probably no American who they are more fond of than Al Haig. He worked with President Nixon and helped arrange the historic visit that Nixon made to China, which marked the opening. He worked with—you know, he was Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, and he, you know, very actively promoted Chinese interest against Taiwan, which also had a very powerful lobby.

And I should say here that, you know, Haig and many of the generation of foreign policy advisers from those years, the Reagan years and the Nixon years, the Republican presidents pre-George Bush, looked upon simply—or the Cold War Republican presidents—looked upon China simply as a buffer against the Soviet Union or as an ally against the Soviet Union. They didn’t really look at China in any way other than as a geopolitical, geo-strategic vehicle for the United States. And, you know, our primary enemy was the Soviet Union, and even though China was communist, it was not close at all to the Soviet Union, and so we made an alliance with China, you know, in this grand strategic game.

So, Haig develops very close relationships with China then. Then he retires, after becoming somewhat controversial, some of your listeners may recall, when he tried to take over the US government after Ronald Reagan was shot, claiming that he was next in line for power. He made a number of blunders. Yet he then goes into the private sector, opens up a firm called Worldwide Consulting, and, from there, becomes a door opener, and he does a lot of business in China, very close to the Chinese government.