Tunku Varadarajan in today’s Opinion Journal joins protein wisdom and Donald Rumsfeld (and yup, pw gets top billing on this here blog!) in the pleasing parade of pragmatism greeting the news that Chinese intelligence has discovered some of our spook gear:

We should take a few lessons from this episode. First, our espionage people are doing what they’re paid for. After Sept. 11, this is rather reassuring. If we only eavesdropped on our foes, as Sen. Levin suggests, we’d never anticipate any threat from unexpected quarters. Remember, every single hijacker on Sept. 11 came from a ‘friendly’ country.

Second, the Chinese are a grown-up lot. They’re not about to get on a rooftop and say that spying is terribly, utterly bad. Why, they do it themselves. So does everyone else, to everyone else.

Third, our economic strength and technological superiority are the greatest sources of our security. Do you think the Chinese would be buying presidential jets from us if they could make them in Shanghai? And do you think we’d have bugged this jet if we feared the Chinese might take their business elsewhere? (Remember, please, that Boeing appears to be blameless: The plane was delivered by them, unfurnished, to a company of plane-fitters in San Antonio.)

Finally, the Chinese must realize that this is what will happen if the U.S. is not permitted to undertake, unmolested, its open and lawful surveillance of China by EP-3Es and the like. A U.S. surveillance craft, flying in international airspace, was brought down by the Chinese in April last year. Can the U.S. be blamed, after that, for seeking to diversify its sources of information? The bottom line: You knock our planes out of the sky, buddy, and we’ll come right back at you with bugged bathrooms.

Hell, my wife informed me that even NPR is framing this whole deal as “business as usual.” No commentary by disaffected Chinese-American film critics to be found. Which would place Sen. Levin’s reaction so far to the left that it butts up against the paleo-right. That reminds me… what’s Pat Buchanan’s take on all this…?

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