[927] in peace2
Bush OKs China Buildup, Proposes Lifting Test Ban Curb
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Felix F AuYeung)
Mon Sep 3 23:59:33 2001
To: peace-list@mit.edu
Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2001 23:39:54 -0400
Message-ID: <20010904.000136.-243623.1.FelixAuYeung@juno.com>
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From: Felix F AuYeung <felixauyeung@juno.com>
Bush is going to single-handed reverse every step of progress achieved in
the peace movement, from non-proliferation to nuclear test ban. After
years of continuing growth, a developing China is smarter and has better
things to spend their money on than the military. But Bush will
nonetheless make everyone edgy, especially in Asian region, and will
likely *create* the rogue element flinging nuclear missiles that he so
needs to justify the NMD. In the words of Joseph R. Biden Jr., chairman
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "This is absolutely absurd.
It shows that these guys will go to any length to build a national
missile defense."
U.S. to Tell China It Will Not Object to Missile Buildup
Lifting test-ban curb also an option in selling missile shield proposal
by David E. Sanger
New York Times
September 2, 2001.
WASHINGTON, 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.
____
"More than 500 million small arms and light weapons are in circulation
around the world --- one for about every 12 people. They were the
weapons of choice in 46 out of 49 major conflicts since 1990, causing
four million deaths --- about 90% of them civilians, and 80% women and
children."
- United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light
Weapons in All Its Aspects
