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News :: Miscellaneous |
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U.S. to Tell China It Will Not Object to Missile Buildup |
Current rating: 0 |
by DAVID E. SANGER, NYT
(No verified email address) |
03 Sep 2001
Modified: 08:37:37 PM |
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The News-Gazette published a story recording the Bush Administration's denials about this article, but not the article itself. The idea that we would encourage anyone to build more nuclear weapons under ANY circumstances seems positively insane, except for the fact that Bush seemingly is exactly that attracted to the allure of nuclear superiority. His father armed Saddam Hussein and then went to war with him. It would be a grave mistake to follow the same game plan with nuclear weapons. This is a presidency and administration willing to endanger the nation to acheive its political goals. |
W ASHINGTON, Sept. 1 The Bush administration, seeking to overcome Chinese opposition to its missile defense program, intends to tell leaders in Beijing that it has no objections to the country's plans to build up its small fleet of nuclear missiles, according to senior administration officials.
One senior official said that in the future, the United States and China might also discuss resuming underground nuclear tests if they are needed to assure the safety and reliability of their arsenals. Such a move, however, might allow China to improve its nuclear warheads and lead to the end of a worldwide moratorium on nuclear testing.
Both messages appear to mark a significant change in American policy. For years the United States has discouraged China and all other nations from increasing the size or quality of their nuclear arsenals, and from nuclear tests of any kind.
The purpose of the new approach, some administration officials say, is to convince China that the administration's plans for a missile shield are not aimed at undercutting China's arsenal, but rather at countering threats from so-called rogue states.
Today Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, offering a more nuanced explanation of the administration's strategy, emphasized that the United States was not seeking a deal with China.
"The United States is not about to propose to the Chinese that in exchange for Chinese acceptance of missile defense, we will accept a nuclear buildup," she said. But she stopped well short of saying the administration would oppose the buildup.
"We have told the Chinese that the missile defense system is not aimed at them, and we intend to make that point more forcefully," she said. "We do not believe that there is any reason for the Chinese to build up their nuclear forces, but their modernization has been under way for some time."
Other officials say that while there may not be an explicit agreement, both American and Chinese strategists know that China needs more weapons to ensure that it could overwhelm a missile defense system.
But word of the new approach drew scathing criticism from Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democrat of Delaware who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "This is absolutely absurd," he said today. "It shows that these guys will go to any length to build a national missile defense, even one they can't define. Their headlong, headstrong, irrational and theological desire to build a missile defense sends the wrong message to the Chinese and to the whole world." This is especially true, he said, regarding India, which would try to balance against any Chinese buildup.
"This is taking 50 years of trying to control nuclear weapons and standing it on its head," he added.
The administration decided on the strategy during a review by officials preparing for Mr. Bush's trip to China next month. The president's top advisers concluded that China's nuclear modernization is inevitable and that they might as well gain advantage by acquiescing in it.
"We know the Chinese will enhance their nuclear capability anyway, and we are going to say to them, `We're not going to tell you not to do it,' " a senior administration official deeply involved in formulating the strategy said in an interview this week. "Why panic? They are modernizing anyway."
Though Beijing has long planned to build up its arsenal, outside experts and a review last year by the Central Intelligence Agency have warned that an American missile shield could prompt China to expand its deterrent even further, possibly setting off an arms race across Asia.
Beijing now has fewer than two dozen nuclear missiles able to reach the United States, as part of a minimal deterrent created by Mao in the 1950's and 1960's. To replace those aging missiles, China is now developing mobile, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles that would be far more likely to withstand a first nuclear strike.
A report to Congress last year noted that intelligence officials predicted in 1999 that by 2015 China was likely to have " `a few tens' of missiles with smaller nuclear warheads" that could hit the United States.
One of those new missiles, the DF- 31, may be able to reach northwestern edges of the United States, though it is designed primarily to hit Russia and Asia; the longer-range DF-41, still under development, could reach much of the continental United States.
Some in the Bush administration now believe that the Chinese buildup may be larger and that by acquiescing in it, Washington may defuse objections to its missile defense plans. If those plans are causing any change in Chinese nuclear strategy, administration officials insisted in interviews, it is only at the margins.
"At most, missile defense might speed up their program slightly, or prompt them to build a few more missiles," one official insisted. "But they are on that path anyway, and may add only modestly to it."
A number of China experts disagree. Robert A. Manning of the Council on Foreign Relations, who published a long study last year of China's nuclear ability, said on Friday: "It's hard for me to accept the idea that what we do is totally irrelevant. If you are a Chinese military planner, your architecture and force structure depend on what the United States is doing, first and foremost."
In an interview last month with the publisher, editors and reporters of The New York Times, China's president, Jiang Zemin, deflected a question about China's response to the missile defense plan and suggested that his visitors knew more about the size and quality of China's fleet than he did. "I hope he was joking," one of Mr. Bush's top aides said.
As for the ban on nuclear testing, both the United States and China have signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the Bush administration has made clear that it wants that accord to remain in indefinite limbo in the Senate, which rejected it two years ago.
A senior official said this week that in future years a resumption by China of underground tests of its nuclear weapons might be accepted by the United States, which might also someday want to resume testing.
"We don't see the need for any tests, by anyone, in the near future," the official said. "But there may, at some point, be a need by both countries to make sure that their warheads are safe and reliable."
Whether the administration's new approach to China is considered a change in American policy or simply, as the administration insists, a recognition of nuclear reality, the implications could be enormous.
At home, Mr. Bush risks angering the right wing of his own party, which has long protested any buildup in Chinese arms.
And Democratic critics of the missile defense plan, like Mr. Biden, have also argued that even before the technology for a missile shield is proven, Mr. Bush may set off an arms race that could include China as well as the world's newest nuclear nations, India and Pakistan.
"The question is, can you accept another 50 or 60 nuclear-tipped missiles aimed at the United States at a time that Americans believe that they are no longer being targeted?" asked Bates Gill, an expert in Chinese nuclear strategy at the Brookings Institution.
Mr. Gill, who says he believes that the administration is "right to acknowledge the practical inevitability" of the modernization of Chinese nuclear forces, also warns of a possible side effect should China incorporate new technologies to defeat the missile shield.
"We shouldn't be sanguine about the possibility of China proliferating antimissile defense technology in the future, if the U.S.-China relationship goes badly," he said. "That could include basic decoy and shrouding technology for Pakistan, and potentially Iran and North Korea."
The new American stance could also have a major impact on the nuclear politics of Taiwan and Japan. Every major nuclear advance on the mainland leads to renewed calls in Taiwan for an independent nuclear force a movement that the United States quashed during the cold war. American intelligence agencies keep a close eye on Taiwan to make sure that its program is not resuscitated.
As the only country ever to have suffered the devastation of nuclear attacks, Japan has long renounced nuclear weapons, and it is almost inconceivable that it would reverse that policy as long as it can depend on American nuclear protection.
But Japanese officials have said privately that while they endorse missile shield research, they worry that it would only encourage China to speed its positioning of both medium- and long-range nuclear missiles. They fear that any placement of theater missile defenses in Japan where 60,000 American forces are based could provoke China to increase the number of weapons targeted there.
In interviews, administration officials dismiss the argument that the missile defense would set off any kind of arms race in Asia.
"The Indians know what the Chinese are doing, and so does everyone else," a senior official said. "If we canceled the whole missile defense program tomorrow morning, China would still build more and better missiles, and other countries would figure out their response."
Ms. Rice said today, "We are hoping to have with the Chinese a relationship in which we can discuss missile defense issues openly."
But until now, there have been few discussions between China and the Bush administration about missile defenses.
In the late spring, James A. Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, was sent to Beijing to give a rough outline of the administration's plans to his Chinese counterparts.
Instead, the administration's focus has been on talking to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and winning his agreement to abandon the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which bars most of the tests for a missile shield that Mr. Bush hopes to begin in Alaska next year.
American officials have raised with Mr. Putin and his aides the possibility that Russia could contribute to the missile shield project and that some of its technology might be incorporated in it. No similar offer is contemplated with the Chinese now. |
See also:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/02/international/02CHIN.html?searchpv=day01
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A European View |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
03 Sep 2001
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US to let China increase nuclear arsenal
From Patrick Smyth, Washington Correspondent and Miriam Donohoe, Asia Correspondent, The Irish Times
Fears that the US may trigger a new nuclear arms race in Asia have emerged following reports that the US is willing to give tacit consent to a Chinese missile build-up and to a Chinese resumption of underground nuclear testing. The fears will confirm widespread concerns among US allies in Europe at the unilateralist drift of US foreign policy.
The report, in yesterday's New York Times, suggests the shift away from promoting the de-escalation of nuclear weapons is the price Washington is willing to pay for Chinese consent to the deployment of the controversial missile defence system central to new US strategic thinking, but deeply unpopular among allies. US strategists believe this is the way to prove to the Chinese that the US is really preoccupied with the threat of "rogue" states.
Critics of missile defence have warned that it was likely to encourage an arms build-up by China which would undermine the regional balance of power in eastern Asia. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Joe Biden, warned yesterday that the new US stance could push India to build up its stockpile and Pakistan could follow.
"This is taking 50 years of trying to control nuclear weapons and standing it on its head," Mr Biden said.
Responding to the report, National Security Adviser Dr Condoleeza Rice denied the US was prepared to offer a quid pro quo for Chinese consent to missile defence. She insisted the Chinese modernisation of its ICBMs was inevitable, whether or not missile or non-missile defence was implemented.
"We have told the Chinese that the missile defence system is not aimed at them and we intend to make that point more forcefully," Dr Rice said. "We do not believe that there is any reason for the Chinese to build up their nuclear arsenal, but their modernisation has been under way for some time.
Such half-hearted denials and the well-known US opposition to ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty - now languishing in the US Senate - will increase concerns among European allies that the Bush administration is determined to press ahead with missile defence.
There was no official response from China yesterday.
© 2001 ireland.com |
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