Failing the Test

"Can't we all get along? Let's try to work it out."

That was Rodney King's plaintive plea in May 1992 after his highly controversial confrontation with the Los Angeles Police Department led to arson and anarchy. Now, 17 years later, the Obama administration has apparently made "just get along" their response to every national security test.

So far, it has been the wrong answer.

Since President Obama announced his deadline for pulling U.S. combat troops out of Iraq, there has been a spike in violence in the Land Between the Rivers. His decision to "open a direct dialogue" with the theocrats ruling in Tehran has thus far yielded an Iranian satellite launch — using North Korean ICBM technology — a check-ride on Iran's Russian-built Bushehr nuclear plant, and, just in case we didn't get the message, rejected visa applications for the U.S. women's badminton team.

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"Nice guy" diplomacy hasn't worked very well elsewhere either:

Pakistan replied to the administration's "let's get along" overture by allowing Dr. A.Q. Khan — the world's most notorious nuclear-weapons proliferator — to travel and "resume scientific research."

Hamas responded to the promise of $1 billion in U.S. "reconstruction funds" by showering Israeli civilians with Iranian-made, Syrian-delivered, Egyptian-facilitated rockets.

Syrian strongman Bashar Assad's answer to last week's White House proffer of "dialogue with Damascus" came this week when he told visiting Japanese journalists that such talks would "have to involve" the Iranian-controlled terror group Hezbollah. For those who may have forgotten, the only terror organization that has killed more Americans than Hezbollah is Al Qaeda.

The "O-Team" offer to "re-start" or "re-boot" the U.S.-Russia relationship was so moving that Moscow bribed Kyrgyzstan's government into booting U.S. troops from the Manas airbase, crucial to supporting allied operations in Afghanistan. The Kremlin followed up by forging ahead with plans to sell advanced S-300 (SA-10) surface-to-air missiles to Tehran, presumably to help protect Iranian nuclear facilities.

With this track record as preamble, it is not surprising that the People's Republic of China decided to conduct a little "O-Test" of their own. On February 22, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton concluded two days of "very promising" meetings in Beijing by emphasizing that, "the United States and China have a positive, cooperative relationship." Five days later, the U.S. and the PRC resumed direct military-to-military "consultations" — talks that had been suspended in 2008 when the Bush administration sold Patriot air-defense missiles to Taiwan. It went downhill from there.

On March 4, ships and aircraft of the PRC commenced harassing the USNS Impeccable and the USNS Victorious while they were operating in International Waters. The two unarmed, civilian-manned vessels (with U.S. Navy personnel aboard to operate specialized equipment) are designated as Ocean Surveillance Ships. Both are equipped with the newest generation of submarine tracking sonar, known as SURTASS LFA — Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System, Low Frequency Active.

The Victorious, operating in the Yellow Sea between the Korean Peninsula and mainland China, was approached at night by a PRC patrol vessel using a high-intensity spotlight or visual-spectrum laser to momentarily blind lookouts on the ship's bridge. The Impeccable, operating in the South China Sea, 75 miles off the coast of Hainan Island, a major PRC Naval and submarine base, was repeatedly "buzzed" by PRC Y-12 Maritime Patrol Aircraft and then surrounded by no less than five PRC vessels.

According to the official complaint filed with Beijing by U.S. commander-in-chief pacific (CINCPAC), the confrontation required the Impeccable to "maneuver to avoid" a collision with a PRC Navy frigate, that the Chinese ships "approached to within 25 feet of the U.S. vessel and that "high pressure water hoses were employed" to prevent being boarded. A Defense Department spokesman said that PRC sailors had made "an attempt to snag the Impeccable's towed acoustic array sonar" and described the incident as evidence of "increasingly aggressive conduct by Chinese vessels."

Provocations by the increasingly assertive People's Republic of China are nothing new. Nor are "tests" for new administrations by foreign rivals. George W. Bush was in office for less than 40 days when a PRC J-8 fighter, harassing a U.S. Navy EP-3 70 miles off Hainan Island collided with the slower, less maneuverable U.S. surveillance plane. The pilot of the Chinese fighter was killed, the EP-3 made an emergency landing on Hainan and the crew was detained for 11 days. After the crew and plane were released, the U.S. suspended military-to-military talks with the PRC.

Whether that was a sufficient response to a PRC-provoked near catastrophe is arguable. But it was certainly more forceful than the Obama administration's continued affirmation that they want to proceed with codifying the U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty — LOST. According to the PRC, LOST precludes intelligence collection within their claimed 200-mile offshore "Exclusive Economic Zone." Coupled with the warm welcome to Washington offered to PRC Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi this week, it's enough to make one wonder if the "O-Team" will ever pass the test.

Can't we just get along?

— Oliver North hosts War Stories on FOX News Channel and is the author of the new best-seller, "American Heroes: In The War Against Radical Islam." He has just returned from assignment in Afghanistan.