From: cdhart@laurie.net (Carolyn Hart)
Subject: SNET: [piml] America Helped Arm China. Now What?
Date: 25 May 1999 06:39:57 -0400
To: piml@egroups.com


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>From Free Republic--

America Helped Arm China. Now What?

Wall St. Journal
5-25-99 By Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy
Education
Center in Washington

Last June, when a special House committee chaired by Rep. Christopher
Cox (R.,
Calif.) first examined news of U.S. transfers of militarily sensitive
technology to China, it
posed three questions: What was transferred? Who was to blame? What
should be
done?

Ten months and some 700 pages later, most of the answers are in. The Cox
report,
being released today in a declassified version, details increased sales
of advanced U.S.
computers to Chinese research and design bureaus, expanded Chinese
access to U.S.
nuclear laboratories, ever more advanced transfers of U.S. satellite
launch know-how,
lax or nonexistent U.S. monitoring of militarily useful exports, and
outright Chinese
military espionage. All of this has helped the People's Liberation Army
acquire in less
than 10 years the military technology the U.S. needed nearly a half
century to develop.

This is heady stuff. So much so that even Energy Secretary Bill
Richardson concedes
that the Cox Report's findings are "scary" and that we must assume the
worst concerning
what China secured. Indeed, the worry in Washington is so great, there
may even be
potential for what's become all too rare--a genuine, bipartisan moment.
I say potential
because so far most congressional critics responding to the report have
limited
themselves to either assessing fault in order to fire someone (such as
Attorney General
Janet Reno or National Security Adviser Samuel Berger) or establishing
new security
procedures to prevent any further Chinese military technology thefts.
However
warranted these responses may be, both are sure to raise partisan
hackles.

Far more important, neither response even begins to address the threat
the U.S. and its
Asian allies will face if only half the Cox report's findings are true:
a China that in 10
years could wield sufficient strategic clout to marginalize U.S. forces
in Asia, intimidate
our allies there, and propel Japan, Taiwan and South Korea into an arms
rivalry with
Beijing that would be sure to go nuclear and ballistic.

Why is this likely? Right now China has no more than 20 nuclear warheads
that can
reach the U.S. and no more than 400 that can threaten Beijing's
neighbors. Those that
target the U.S. are on highly inaccurate intercontinental-range
missiles, missiles that are
so large and slow they make ideal ground targets and easy pickings for
planned U.S.
national missile defenses. A large portion of the remaining warheads can
only be
delivered by bombers, all of which are sitting targets on the ground and
in the air.
Because these forces have not grown much in the past decade, some have
insisted that
China has no interest in amassing an offensive force, only a retaliatory
one against
Russia, the U.S. and, lately, India.

                      What the Cox report makes clear is that it would
be a
                      mistake to bank on this in the next century. China
has
                      acquired from Russia the means to make much more
                      nuclear-weapons material with new gas centrifuge
enrichment technology. Combined with its new, smaller, more efficient
U.S.-inspired
warhead designs, China will now need far less material for each warhead
it makes. More
important, the smaller nuclear warheads it is working on are light
enough to mount on
hard-to-target mobile launchers, which Beijing is now testing, and
accurate and fast
enough, given U.S.-transferred missile know-how, to stress severely both
U.S.-planned
regional and national missile defense systems. The bottom line: By 2009
the Chinese
threat against the U.S. may no longer consist of a few slow-flying,
vulnerable missiles.
Instead we may have to face hundreds of accurate, fast-flying, and
hard-to-intercept
warheads and China's neighbors may face thousands.

This is not a threat that firing an attorney general or national
security adviser will avert.
Nor will tightening security at the national laboratories or monitoring
U.S. exports of
sensitive technology to China have any significant effect. As the Cox
report has made
clear, most of the technology China needs to deploy the forces noted
above it has
already acquired.

Our current situation, although far less dire than in the late 1940s and
early 1950s, is not
dissimilar to the Russian nuclear crisis symbolized by the arrest of
Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg. If we had only prosecuted some scapegoats (albeit guilty
ones) and
tightened our technology controls, but had failed to address the
consequences of a
nuclear-armed Soviet Union, America would have lost the Cold War. The
U.S. faces a
similar danger today. What's needed far more than political bloodletting
or security
efforts to close barn doors (after most of the barns have burned down)
is a
recommitment to securing Asia.

This is more difficult than securing laboratories or exports, but it is
doable, and it is the
only thing that will save us from the worst of what China might
otherwise do. After all,
China is not likely to build its military up if the only result is a
tightening of U.S.-Asian
alliances and a hardening of allied opinion against Beijing.

Some, of course, have already focused on this point by promoting
regional and national
missile defenses as the answer. Certainly, this makes sense. The only
problem is the U.S.
will not have much to offer for at least another five to 10 years, too
late by itself to keep
our Asian alliances stable. There are, however, several modest measures
Washington
can and should be considering now. First, stop helping specific Chinese
entities known
to be developing weapons targeted against the U.S. or its Asian allies.
This, to be sure,
would mean cutting off some U.S. exports of licensed militarily
sensitive goods. Such a
measure is now being considered by the Senate leadership.

Second, the U.S. must live up to its defense obligations under the
Taiwan Relations Act.
Taiwan currently has defense needs that aren't being met. The best
example comes from
the last time China buzzed Taiwan with missile firings in 1996. The U.S.
sent its aircraft
carriers to get China to back down. But the Taiwan military had no
direct or secure way
to communicate with our fleet. Why? Because for 20 years the U.S. has
avoided any
meaningful military-to-military contact with Taiwan. If we are serious
about deterring
Chinese adventurism, this must end. Sens. Jesse Helms (R., N.C.) and
Robert Torricelli
(D., N.J.) have introduced a bill to address these and related issues.
China, of course,
wants the bill defeated because it sees Taiwan as a renegade state.
Japan, now debating
how much it needs to arm itself, is watching to see if the U.S. caves in
to Chinese
pressure.

Finally, the U.S. is in desperate need of a sounder approach to the most
provocative
catalyst for war in Asia, North Korea, China's client state. Former
Secretary of Defense
William Perry is visiting Pyongyang this week with yet another package
of goodies in
exchange for yet more promises of North Korean restraint. This comes
after North
Korea fired a Chinese-designed satellite over Japan and after news
leaked out that
North Korea is violating its prior pledges not to develop nuclear-weapon
facilities. The
U.S. needs to insist that North Korea live up to its current agreements
before dropping
current trade and diplomatic restrictions or letting Pyongyang build any
U.S.-designed
reactors. Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R., N.Y.) has introduced legislation
that addresses this
point.

More, of course, needs to be done, but if these measures get their day
in Congress, the
rest will follow. Short of this, however, the real problem, Asia's
security, will continue to
go unaddressed.

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a374a6ed9264a.htm#5

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