" note however, that the Administration doesn't seem to have much of a problem with China modernizing [increasing the arsenal] their forces....."
US. to Tell China It Will Not Object to Missile Buildup
September 2, 2001
From The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER
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.
nytimes.com |
