Friendship without limits, defined
asia.nikkei.com
U.S. alarmed over Russia's support of China nuclear buildup
Moscow believed to have sold uranium for reactor that can make bomb material
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin speaks at a news conference on March 15. The Department of Defense predicts that China will have 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035. (Photo by Ryo Nakamura)
RYO NAKAMURA, Nikkei staff writerMarch 24, 2023 08:14 JST
WASHINGTON -- The Biden administration is increasingly alarmed over the possibility that Russia is supporting China's buildup of nuclear weapons by supplying it with highly enriched uranium.
"Their diplomatic support, their political support and to some extent material support for Russia certainly goes against our interests in bringing this war to an end," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a congressional hearing Wednesday.
Blinken stressed that China is not supplying Russia with deadly weapons, but he underscored that the two countries are partners.
"They talked about a partnership with no limits," he said.
The new area of concern expressed by the administration of President Joe Biden stems from the nuclear cooperation between Russia and China. Between September and December, Russia exported a large volume of highly enriched uranium to China, according to a late-February report by Bloomberg, citing data from a British think tank.
The uranium is meant to be fuel for a fast-breeder reactor in China's Fujian province that is expected to begin operation this year, according to Bloomberg.
"It's very troubling to see Russia and China cooperating on this," said John Plumb, the assistant secretary of defense who oversees space and nuclear policy, at a hearing in early March.
"They may have talking points around it, but there's no getting around the fact that breeder reactors are plutonium, and plutonium is for weapons," Plumb said. He warned of the risk that Russia's provision of enriched uranium could lead to China expanding its nuclear arsenal.
"Responsible nuclear states should not be feeding into [China's] nuclear programs with fissile material without understanding the escalatory potential, without understanding the destabilizing nature, without understanding the consequences of that transfer," a senior State Department official told Nikkei. Fissile material includes enriched uranium and plutonium.
The official said that the U.S. has made little to no progress in establishing a dialogue with China over nuclear capabilities, and called on Beijing to offer greater transparency on its nuclear programs.
In Congress, House Select Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Turner and two other senior Republicans sent an open letter to Jake Sullivan, the White House's national security adviser, warning him that "Russia and the PRC's [People's Republic of China's] nuclear cooperation goes much farther than just civilian projects."
"The administration should use all tools at its disposal to stop Rosatom and the PRC's dangerous cooperation," the letter recommended, referring to Russia's state-owned nuclear company.
The Biden administration has found that China is dramatically expanding its nuclear capabilities. In an annual report released last November, the Pentagon estimated that China will triple its stockpile to 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035.
"One historic constraint on Beijing's arsenal has been a lack of fissile material to make new weapons," said Jacob Stokes, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for a New American Security think tank. "Russian shipments provide China with uranium that, with additional processing, could go into new nuclear warheads, thereby alleviating that constraint."
China is closing the gap with the U.S. in terms of the number of warheads, and the Chinese military is building up capabilities to attack the American mainland. It appears that China looks to field an arsenal capable of striking the U.S. in a bid to project a deterrent effect that would keep American forces from getting involved in a crisis flaring up in the South China Sea or Taiwan.
The enriched-uranium transfer is "a pretty big deal," said Lyle Morris, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute and former country director for China in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, adding that it underscores how "close the two countries have become in the military and nuclear weapons spheres."
Chinese President Xi Jinping traveled to Moscow on Monday and met officially with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. The leaders released a joint statement on deepening their comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation, plus a joint statement on plans for economic cooperation until 2030.
Patrick M. Cronin, Asia-Pacific security chair of the Hudson Institute, stressed that "Putin uses his strategic resources to compel China to remain on his side, while Xi exploits Russia's desperation to keep Putin on a leash and pry loose cheap energy, nuclear fuel and other security benefits."
Ryan Hass, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that if cooperation between Russia and China ramps up, Moscow could conceivably support Chinese forays in the Arctic or let Beijing access military bases used by Russia elsewhere in the world. He also raised the possibility of cooperation on submarine development or the sharing of advanced and deeper intelligence.
"This reality makes it important to remember the stakes involved and for partners to work to preserve restraints on Sino-Russian partnership," Hass said. |
