The Wall Street Journal - 14.11.2019

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Thursday, November 14, 2019 |A

D

oubtless the president
would not be delighted
by the likening of his ad-
ministration to a giant
fat guy who has never
skied, pushing off from the top of a
double-black-diamond slope and on
his way down taking out flags,
trees, and people. And yet somehow
amid the chaos and ceaseless accel-
eration quite a few things have been
done right. One of them, invisible to
and above the horizons of the lac-
quered info-babes and mouth-
breathing morons who inhabit cable
news, is that unlike previous, negli-
gent administrations of both par-
ties, this one has addressed the
need to bring China into a nuclear
arms-control regime.

It was unnecessary when China
was a neophyte and the U.S. and the
U.S.S.R. were nuked up with scores
of thousands of warheads and deliv-
ery vehicles, making nuclear stabil-
ity a question for the two superpow-
ers alone. Nuclear strategy must
account for analogies to the three-
body problem in physics—i.e., there
is neither predictability nor stability
when more than two bodies act on
each other. Unless one (like a space-
craft too small to perturb the orbital

If Beijing really has only a

tiny number of warheads,

why are they housed in a

3,000-mile tunnel system?

Treat China as the Nuclear Superpower It Is

relationship between two planets, or

the early Chinese nuclear capacity,

dwarfed by that of the U.S. and the

Soviets) is de minimis.

A perilously neglected problem of

the past 20 years or so is that China

is no longer so bereft of nuclear

weapons as to be dismissible. If the

relationship among the now three

dominant nuclear powers is not

clarified and disciplined, China’s

maturing nuclear warfare capabili-

ties will remain both a direct threat

to the U.S. and a potent destabilizer

of the balance of terror. We know of

its rapidly growing families of silo-

based, mobile, sea-based, and

bomber-deliverable short-, interme-

diate-, and intercontinental-range

delivery systems. We also know that

China’s nuclear infrastructure—in-

cluding production and certain

modes of deployment—is housed in

an astounding 3,000 miles of elabo-

rate tunnels.

This means we have little

knowledge of what China actually

possesses, and because we cannot

do without such intelligence,

bringing China into a control re-

gime is critical. To paraphrase Rep.

Ilhan Omar (Philo-Semite, Minn.),

it’s all about the verification, baby.

And finally an American adminis-

tration realizes it.

That this has struck a nerve in

China was perhaps inadvertently re-

vealed by Zhou Bo, a senior colonel

of the Chinese People’s Liberation

Army. In a recent article on these

pages, he states that China’s Minis-

try of National Defense laughed at

Chinese inclusion, because “either

the U.S. and Russia would need to

bring their nuclear arsenals down to

China’s level, or China would need

to increase the size of its arsenal

drastically.” Why would China pos-

sibly object? Unless of course more

warheads and delivery vehicles than

it admits to were to be secreted in

the immense tunnel network known

as the Great Underground Wall. And

were China as innocuous and lightly

armed as he claims, what would be

the harm of inspections?

The administration should vigor-

ously pursue this initiative and re-

fuse to let it drop or to treat it as a

sacrificial chip in the trade war (it

is far more important than that).

Success is guaranteed one way or

another. Either China will be

brought into a system of nuclear

stabilization, or it will reveal to the

world that it is hiding something

very dangerous. No reason exists for

anyone other than China—if it is de-

termined upon deception—to op-

pose such an exercise, but inevita-

bly, in the West, some will.

Contrary to longstanding posi-

tions in regard to American nuclear

weapons and arms control in gen-

eral, they will say that numbers

don’t matter. So what if China

amasses an overwhelming nuclear

force in its tunnels? As long as the

U.S. has the minimum required to

inflict unacceptable damage on

China (or Russia) there is no need

to worry about bean counting.

But we don’t define acceptable

damage, they do. Especially be-

cause China has (as do Russia and

North Korea but not the U.S.) in-

vulnerable mobile missiles, num-

bers are important not merely psy-

chologically but, in the horrific

nuclear calculus, in making a first

strike conceivable by assuring the

capacity for second, third, or even

fourth strikes.

In simple terms, if I can strike

and reduce your nuclear deterrent

without hitting your cities, you will

have only enough to retaliate

against my cities. But if in exchange

for that I can reduce your entire

country to glass, you will not retali-

ate. Mere recognition of this puts

me in a commanding position with-

out actually resorting to nuclear

war. This is only one reason why

numbers matter, and the calculus is

further complicated by missile de-

fense and the counters to it.

Suffice it to say that China

learned in facing the massively

greater American nuclear deterrent

that its options were severely lim-

ited. Now its ambitions are such

that it wants to turn the tables.

Once, the West crippled China with

the opium trade. Now China sup-

plies American addicts with fenta-

nyl. Once, the West sold China man-

ufactured goods in exchange for

commodities. Now China sells us

manufactured goods in exchange for

commodities. Once, Western mili-

tary bases ringed the world. Now, as

the West retreats, China is install-

ing networks of bases in almost ex-

act imitation.

What are the odds—contrary to

common sense and to China’s per-

ceived interests, goals, ambitions,

plans, declarations, and recent ac-

tions—that, taking into account the

almost unimaginable 3,000 miles of

tunnels, it has only the relatively

small numbers of weapons that Col.

Zhou affirms? China should be ea-

ger to join the two other leading

powers in attempting to control the

ever-present nuclear danger, and

liberals and arms-control enthusi-

asts should support and commend

any attempt to accomplish this, re-

gardless of which U.S. administra-

tion makes the effort.

Matters such as these may not be

shiny and sparkling enough to com-

mand much airtime, but keep in

mind that ultimately what this is all

about—the detonation of masses of

nuclear weapons—is brighter than a

thousand suns.

Mr. Helprin, a senior fellow of

the Claremont Institute, is author

most recently of “Paris in the Pres-

ent Tense.”

By Mark Helprin

VISUAL CHINA GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Nuclear-capable DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles in Beijing, Oct. 1.

OPINION

PUBLISHED SINCE 1889 BY DOW JONES & COMPANY

Rupert Murdoch

Executive Chairman, News Corp

Matt Murray

Editor in Chief

Robert Thomson

Chief Executive Officer, News Corp

William Lewis

Chief Executive Officer and Publisher

EDITORIAL AND CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS:
1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y., 10036
Telephone 1-800-DOWJONES

DOW JONES MANAGEMENT:

Ramin Beheshti, Chief Technology Officer;

Natalie Cerny, Chief Communications Officer;

Kamilah Mitchell-Thomas, Chief People Officer;

Edward Roussel, Chief Innovation Officer;

Christina Van Tassell, Chief Financial Officer

OPERATING EXECUTIVES:

Kenneth Breen, Commercial;

Jason P. Conti, General Counsel;

Tracy Corrigan, Chief Strategy Officer;

Frank Filippo, Print Products & Services;

Kristin Heitmann, Chief Commercial Officer;

Nancy McNeill, Corporate Sales;

Thomas San Filippo, Customer Service;

Josh Stinchcomb, Advertising Sales;

Suzi Watford, Chief Marketing Officer;

Jonathan Wright, International

Barron’s Group: Almar Latour, Publisher

Professional Information Business:

Christopher Lloyd, Head;

Ingrid Verschuren, Deputy Head

Neal Lipschutz Karen Miller Pensiero
Deputy Editor in Chief Managing Editor
Jason Anders, Chief News Editor;
Thorold Barker, Europe; Elena Cherney, Coverage
Planning; Andrew Dowell, Asia; Alex Martin, Print
& Writing; Michael W. Miller, Features & Weekend;
Emma Moody, Standards; Shazna Nessa, Visuals;
Matthew Rose, Enterprise; Michael Siconolfi,
Investigations; Louise Story, Strategy and Interim
Product & Technology; Nikki Waller, Live
Journalism; Stephen Wisnefski, Professional News

Gerard Baker, Editor at Large

Paul A. Gigot, Editor of the Editorial Page;
Daniel Henninger, Deputy Editor, Editorial Page

WALL STREET JOURNAL MANAGEMENT:
Joseph B. Vincent, Operations;
Larry L. Hoffman, Production

Three Tales of a City: Bloomberg, de Blasio and Trump

B

ill de Blasio, New York’s left-
wing mayor, has suspended
his presidential campaign. Mi-
chael Bloomberg, the billionaire ex-
mayor, is thinking of plunging into
the presidential race, on the calcula-
tion that none of the present Demo-
cratic candidates seem sufficiently
“well positioned” to defeat Presi-
dent Trump. And Mr. Trump—a New
Yorker if ever there was one—has
filed paperwork to change his legal
residence from the Trump Tower on
Fifth Avenue to Mar-a-Lago, his
Xanadu in Palm Beach, Fla.

New York has a multiple person-
ality. Messrs. Bloomberg, de Blasio
and Trump represent three faces of
the city, each of them distinct and
vivid and typical. Each stands for a
certain framework of ideas and am-
bitions and methods; each is differ-
ently tuned to the American themes
of success and failure—which are,
after all, New York’s themes, the raw
binary possibilities that greet the
newcomer.
It’s up to you, New York, New
York!
Mr. de Blasio was born Warren
Wilhelm Jr. at Doctors Hospital on
the Upper East Side of Manhattan,
across the street from the mayor’s
residence, Gracie Mansion. The
story of his passage from Warren
Wilhelm Jr. to Bill de Blasio had
crosscurrents of failure. There’s a
broken heart for every light on
Broadway.
His father, an economist named
Warren Wilhelm Sr., fought on Oki-
nawa and lost a leg below the knee
to a Japanese grenade. He came
home and married Maria de Blasio
and they had three sons. The cou-
ple’s political views were far to the
left (a Loyalty Board in the McCar-
thy era regretted their “sympa-
thetic interest in Communism”).
Eventually Warren Wilhelm Sr.
withdrew into a fatal alcoholism. He
and Maria were divorced. After he

contracted inoperable lung cancer,

Wilhelm Sr. committed suicide. His

son Bill legally changed his sur-

name to his mother’s and vowed

not to imitate his father in any way.

Except, perhaps, in politics. Mr.

de Blasio—who supported Nicara-

gua’s Sandinistas, honeymooned in

Cuba during the U.S. embargo, and

calls himself a social democrat—en-

tered city hall in 2014 and has been,

almost everyone agrees, a fairly left-

ist—and fairly lousy—mayor.

His predecessor, Boston native

Mr. Bloomberg, was a success—thor-

ough, thoughtful, imaginative,

though with a troubling tendency to

overcontrol. Messrs. Bloomberg and

de Blasio share a coercive-activist

streak—Mr. de Blasio as a left-wing

leveler (opponent of charter schools

and other avenues of merit and ex-

cellence) and Mr. Bloomberg as a

nanny-state enforcer (who sought to

outlaw large cups of soda). Each

man’s micromanaging tendency has

a different flair. Stop-and-frisk is the

Bloomberg style. Mr. de Blasio has a

dogmatic instinct to subvert what-

ever in the city is distinguished.

With the self-confidence of his

$57 billion, Mr. Bloomberg sets

himself up as a supercompetent if

overbearing manager of mores and

behavior. He falls in with the pro-

gressive orthodoxy on abortion,

gun control, climate change, same-

sex marriage and immigration. He

has been a Democrat, a Republican,

an independent and now a Demo-

crat again—which makes him, if

anything, nonpartisan and there-

fore, theoretically, well-positioned

to begin uniting the divided coun-

try.

Except that I doubt it would

work that way. You may discern the

reason in studying the difference

between Mr. de Blasio and Mr.

Bloomberg, on the one hand, and

Mr. Trump on the other. Messrs. de

Blasio and Bloomberg both repre-

sent principles of minute govern-

ment control—Mr. de Blasio along

somewhat socialist lines, Mr.

Bloomberg along corporatist lines,

but with strong authoritarian social

instincts.

Mr. Trump favors forms of anar-

chy over government coercion. He

may admire certain dictators abroad

and advocate a border wall, but at

bottom he is a natural subversive—

which makes him a pretty strange

president. He even routinely sub-

verts himself, as if to validate the

principle. He’d rather lie than accept

the confinement of an unwelcome

truth. He is reminiscent of the sort

of New York operator whose as-

sumption, going in, is that the law

and the mob are coequal branches.

That’s not always wrong.

Mr. Trump’s ego-driven, warlord

presidency—for all its disorder,

faults, bad manners and stupidi-

ties—comes out on the side of Huck-

leberry Finn’s kind of freedom: free-

dom from political correctness and

its horrors, anyway, and from the

essentially totalitarian mind that

lurks behind it. Mr. Trump’s rebel-

lion against such coercion is the se-

cret of his appeal.

Can Mr. Bloomberg get the Demo-

cratic nomination? We’ll see. It is

surpassingly weird that the Ameri-

can voter might be offered a choice

between two septuagenarian billion-

aire New Yorkers—one a nanny and

the other a juvenile delinquent.

Mr. Morrow is a senior fellow at

the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

By Lance Morrow

Each New York politician

in his own way represents

a facet of the Big Apple’s

multiple personalities.