Room 12A: Pottinger on Point

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Pottinger on Point

December 15, 2005 05:27 AM

Read this piece in today's Wall Street Journal, and you'll understand why I'm proud to count Matt Pottinger among my closest friends. I've known him since he arrived in Washington back in late 1995, shortly after his college gradution and shortly after I, too, arrived in the city. We started together as cub reporters at States News Service, a dynamic but unstable -- and unremunerative -- news organization that was (and perhaps still is) a rite of passage for journalists in the nation's capital. Matt already spoke Chinese so fluently that actual Chinese would look upon him with astonishment on those occasions when we'd slip into Chinatown for a late dinner. Few knew that Matt was also a highly accomplished jazz keyboardist -- he and a former band were once offered a recording contract -- who had an encyclopedic knowledge of jazz and jazz history. (He could, it seemed, name virtually any jazz tune and who was playing it from only a couple of notes.) Although he, like I, had very little experience in journalism at the time, it came as no surprise, given his in-born, almost manic curiosity and energy, that he seemed to master the craft almost immediately.

We stayed in touch as he moved on from States to graduate school at Stanford, then on to reporting assignments in China -- first for Reuters, and then for the Wall Street Journal. China, with its ancient customs, its dynamic cultural landscape and its tormented modern history, naturally appealed to Matt's passion for exploration. He would mesmerize others -- me in particular, I guess -- with his well-informed, erudite commentary on the country's oppressed Huigurs or the disastrous folly of the Iron Rice Bowl or the Three Gorges Dam. Yet I could detect an increasing sense of worry creeping into his reflections on China. The first signs appeared in 1998, after a U.S. missile inadvertently hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Matt was sent to cover the demonstrations at the American embassy in Beijing, where Chinese students were somewhat mindlessly chanting nationalist and revolutionary slogans. It was not long before Matt's pale complexion, coupled with his light blonde hair, led some students to infer that he was American. Despite his (false) avowals that he was in fact "Irish," Matt soon found himself surrounded by a clot of angry Chinese students, shouting slogans and epithets at him and beginning to punch and kick. Matt credited a lone student with yanking him from the scrum, allowing him to flee. Later, in describing the incident to me back in Washington, Matt appeared to be awed by the stridency and blind fanaticism he witnessed there. He was to see far more of the same in the years ahead.

The last time I saw Matt was at the beginning of the summer. He came to Washington to conduct some interviews and stayed with me at what was then my apartment. (I now live in Kiev.) He made no mention of the Marines, or his interest in joining. But it was clear from talking with him that he now registered the full measure of concern about China. I don't think I am sharing any confidences in saying that he was deeply alarmed about the situation with Taiwan, because cultural dynamics appeared to be drawing a confrontation ever-closer, and the matter seemed to resist traditional diplomatic pressures and persuasion. For a large segment of the Chinese population, Matt averred, Taiwan was a matter of racial destiny -- the rightful property of a superior race -- in much the same sense that the Sudetenland had been for Hitler's Germany. What's more, Matt perceived that sentiments such as these were actually stronger among the younger generation of Chinese than among the country's current ruling elite. This, of course, reflected the Chinese regime's "success" in its domestic propaganda efforts. It also left Matt with a worrying impression about the future there. In his WSJ piece today, Matt writes:

When you live abroad long enough, you come to understand that governments that behave [as China does] are not the exception, but the rule. They feel alien to us, but from the viewpoint of the world's population, we are the aliens, not them. That makes you think about protecting your country no matter who you are or what you're doing. What impresses you most, when you don't have them day to day, are the institutions that distinguish the U.S.: the separation of powers, a free press, the right to vote, and a culture that values civic duty and service, to name but a few.
I'm not an uncritical, rah-rah American. Living abroad has sharpened my view of what's wrong with my country, too. It's obvious that we need to reinvent ourselves in various ways, but we should also be allowed to do it from within, not according to someone else's dictates.

I have never in my life met anyone funnier than Matt, nor anyone who could be as serious-minded and circumspect when he has to be. It's a weird combination -- one which earned him the nickname "Dark Angel" back in our States News Service days. In my mind's eye (so to speak) I have a great deal of trouble imagining Matt commanding a Marine batallion, unless he's doing it in a pair of pink garters, and solely for the shock value. I also can't imagine Matt -- slim, but bookish -- being physically fit. But I also doubt there is anyone out there who would approach service to his country with a firmer sense of duty and moral commitment. God bless him.

Please read the whole thing.

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