After Action Report

The pandemic of the coronavirus (COVID-19) has exposed the shortcomings of numerous countries, but the profoundly communist Peoples Republic of China seems to have been caught up in its own political insecurity. As usual, the vastly over organized political structure of the PRC resulted in an initial effort to disclaim any role in the evolution of the new virus emanating from the city of Wuhan.

At the same time worldwide, similar confused political elements sought to avoid placing blame for the siting of the virus on China - or at least quickly condemning those who did. The fact that it had been recognized in the first week or two of January – or even before that by American and other intelligence services that a new and serious epidemic had hit the city of Wuhan was kept from the public for well over a month in many cases and more in others.

It appears that even Beijing's leadership were unaware of what their local security service had been reporting after they learned of the situation from the city's health departments. The two doctors who publicly discussed the disease were quickly “disappeared”. One has since died (or was executed) and the other, a woman, is no longer able to be located.  Finally, the reality of the situation was exposed and the reaction among the various commercial, academic and security services jumped into full operation. Now Beijing's regular apparat found itself in the embarrassing position of having to follow the lead of the local provincial instruments. Not only did denials spring forth from every quarter, but absurd stories were launched blaming a small contingent of American soldiers on a pre-arranged visit to be the source of the whole thing. This theatrical performance was not at all the usual carefully planned, organized and executed PRC operation. What had been exposed was a fault line in Beijing's command and control system. Centralized leadership had been fractured.

Considerable time passed before feverish calls between President Trump and Chairman Xi Jinping, while other world leaders tried equally hard to find out what was going on as their populations became gravely stricken. The Chinese apparat had placed itself in the position of political embarrassment and aggressive anti-U.S. drum beating. What has become clear is the total inadequacy of the PRC's structural inability to separate their traditional anti - Western (meaning primarily U.S.) propaganda line from the reality of what was a hyper-serious international event. This was particularly not understood in Washington where the “special relationship” between the two great countries' leadership was touted as the beginning of a new friendship based on mutually shared economic interests. Moscow couldn't have been more delighted.

What happened? The fact is that the monolithic political structure of the PRC had grown so large and complicated that it no longer had clear and responsible lines connecting local leadership through to provincial, then state, to central authoritarian decision makers - and finally the man-in-charge and his personal civilian/military intelligence staffs. To make matters worse, it was Moscow who correctly tracked this first. What a mess!

After a few periods of public name-calling, the secure phone lines between Beijing and Washington began to hum with lengthy confabs between the American and Chinese leaders and then their second rank security and intelligence elements chimed in. Apparently, London and Moscow played important support roles as did the Queen of Berlin, Angela Merkel. Soon large quantities of medical material and machinery flowed from China to the U.S. and the West, as well as other key parts of the world. The well-established extensive networks of Chinese intel operatives were pulled back into their traditional seemingly benign international cover arrangements. Co-opted non-governmental individuals were instructed to step back from their highly successful disinformation activities.

The question still exists as to how and where did this global pandemic start? Was it the innocent “wet markets” of Wuhan that sold exotic meats and other products to the ancient oriental palates or the even more dangerous breakdown in the Wuhan-based biomedical labs? Apparently, this issue has been put on the back burner for the present. What still must be considered is the future of existing political alignments and economic accords. The latter are most important in regard to relations with the United States. For the moment, the trade agreements seem to weigh most heavily on the minds of Beijing and Washington. That is a sign that Xi Jinping is once again driving things. The awareness that something other than a military conflict can have an effect worldwide has been made clear to all. It's an important lesson, but unfortunately the question remains as to whether it will be remembered?