US backs China for anti-nuke group -
a mistake? By Stephen Blank
China, backed strongly by the United States, is
about to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), an
elite club of 30 nuclear suppliers that seeks to control
the export of nuclear materials, technology and
equipment. Its remit includes both dual-use technologies
and equipment (those having both civilian and military
use) and those being specially designed and prepared for
military purposes.
China's forthcoming
membership in this group and US encouragement reflect
and combine two key elements of US foreign policy - and
highlight a major argument within foreign-policy circles
over policy toward China. Some want China included,
saying it will become a better citizien and buy US
technology, and some say China cannot be trusted to end
its long record of proliferation.
One aspect of
US policy is the belief that such bodies as the NSG and
the related Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI)
created by the administration of President George W Bush
can play an important role in countering the
proliferation of nuclear and other materials that can be
used for weapons of mass destruction. Therefore it is
important to make sure that all the nuclear powers are
members of the NSG, as well as all the other
organizations that register transfers of nuclear
technology, regulating them and, in some cases,
prohibiting them.
If all these transactions
involving nuclear materials are rendered transparent and
publicly regulated, then supposedly it will be much
harder for private actors like Abdul Qadeer Khan (the
"father" of Pakistan's nuclear program who sold its
secrets for money to rogue states) or other members of
his network and for pariah states to export and import
these materials. Ostensibly such organizations can
obstruct proliferation enough to prevent or at least
slow down proliferation initiatives and give the
international community time to prevent new states from
joining the nuclear club and prevent sellers from
helping them.
The second aspect of US policy
relates to its efforts to integrate China ever more
fully into international organizations so as to give
China a stake in the defense of the status quo and of
international security more broadly. Washington has
pursued this China incorporation strategy and has pushed
this approach ever since the administration of president
Bill Clinton because it believes that China's rising
power cannot be ignored and that it would be dangerous
to allow Beijing to remain outside these organizations,
in a lawless realm where it could act without any
restraint.
A supporting argument here is an
article of faith among many, though by no means all,
China watchers that as China's power grows it covets the
status of membership in such organizations and fears
exclusion. Supporters of this argument believe that
international memberships help socialize China into
being "a good citizen", or at least a better citizen, of
the international community. Such citizenship allegedly
requires China's acceptance of the norms of behavior
within international society and thus creates incentives
for upholding those norms and behaviors, while also
creating penalties for lapses.
China dreads
exclusion from international groups Since China
fears exclusion from such organizations and very much
wants to be seen as a member of the club, so to speak,
its gradual integration into such organizations will not
only lessen its propensity to engage in proliferation,
it will also help change China over time into a more
responsible member of the world community and make it
more of a status quo power than a revisionist one.
Thus a US State Department spokesman proclaimed
that his country supports Chinese membership in the
Nuclear Suppliers Group because China "is a significant
nuclear supplier, [has] a good enough non-proliferation
record, and [has] made significant improvements in
export controls on nuclear and dual-use items". This
argument is used to justify Beijing's membership.
China, of course, has its own calculations and
behaviors, and this argument - inclusion to induce good
behavior - is by no means universally accepted in US
policy circles.
In fact, the arguments within
Washington intersect with China's own interests and
behaviors. The axis on which China-policy discussions
turn is the debate between those encouraging further
large-scale business deals with China and those wishing
to restrain or at least constrain Beijing. The first
groups see China as a great opportunity and market for
all kinds of big deals, including nuclear reactors to
meet China's demand for energy of all sorts.
And
there is no doubt that China too wants to make big deals
for needed technologies and investment. So, during its
talks with Vice President Richard Cheney last month,
China urged the removal of sanctions and other
impediments to high-technology exports from the US.
Partisans of the other view, however, are
skeptical of China's peaceful ambitions, and even more
of its actual behavior. They say the emphasis on
business deals leads to a one-sided dependence on
business ties at the expense of pursuit of policies in
the United States' national interest, and are more
concerned about China's ambitions, which they regard
with concern if not alarm. Unlike those who think that
economic relationships will transform the nature of the
political relationship, they see the advantages accruing
to Washington as being merely short-term ones that
create an asymmetrical dependence on China, which in any
case goes unrewarded. And they point to proliferation as
being precisely one of those areas that justify their
case.
Beijing helps in North Korea nuclear
crisis Advocates of business deals and of
integration maintain that thanks to the North Korean
crisis, where all sides admit that China has behaved
relatively helpfully, Beijing is starting to think
differently about proliferation. Allegedly Beijing has
now begun to understand that the proliferation of
nuclear systems abroad, as witness the case of North
Korea, is not necessarily in its own best interest.
Second, China clearly does wish to be a member
of every organization that will accept it, apprehensive
that otherwise decisions affecting China might be made
and enforced without its participation. China, so the
inclusionists argue, also faces a major energy shortage
and is about to invest in 50-60 nuclear reactors for
domestic energy. US firms want to sell those reactors to
China but they will not be able to do so unless China
joins the NSG and accepts its standards. Moreover, it
was clear during Cheney's visit in April that China is
eager to engage the United States on further big trade
deals that include but also go beyond reactors.
Beijing seeks the lifting of restrictions
against US high-technology exports and wants recognition
as a full market economy so that trade barriers will
also be lifted. Supposedly such sales will reduce the
United States' huge trade deficit with China, which has
become a controversial issue in the US. This argument
is, of course, a classic Chinese gambit that is no less
of a gambit for reflecting real needs and interests. It
is an attempt to create the appearance of another
inducement to the US to sell China those reactors and
technologies because doing so will allegedly help
overcome the politically and economically troublesome
trade-deficit issue.
There also is little doubt
that a major deal is close to being agreed upon.
Certainly Washington wants to sell China the reactors,
as Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham signed a
"statement of intent" last September aiming to prevent
the transfer of nuclear technology sold by the US that
could be used for weapons development. The point of this
statement was to eliminate the concerns of those who
oppose such deals, on grounds that China might offer to
buy many reactors but then would only purchase one or
two, reverse-engineer them and sell them to other
buyers. That would both deprive the United States of
sales and promote further proliferation.
On the
other hand, while China clearly wants the reactors and
needs the energy, opponents of this deal argue that
China, despite formally exemplary regulations on
proliferation, remains a major proliferator.
Although the State Department claims that
China's record is improving, Republican Congressman Curt
Weldon of Pennsylvania told a congressional hearing in
March that in 1998 the Congressional Research Service
responded to his request for information with a report
stating that China was found to have proliferated 21
times between 1990 and 1998 to Iran, Libya, Syria, Iraq
and North Korea, and many times since then as well. And
sanctions were only imposed, once in full and twice in
part, upon the guilty parties. And the overwhelming
evidence by scholars such as Mohan Malik and Justin
Bernier confirms that there was a China-centered axis of
proliferation in those years and since that time.
Assistant secretary of state John Bolton, whose brief is
non-proliferation, subsequently told Congress that
Chinese instances of proliferation were even more
frequent in the years since 1998.
China close
to Pakistan's nuclear sales traitor Given China's
controls over nuclear technologies and materials and its
close ties to Abdul Qadeer Khan and the entire Pakistani
program, it would also be surprising if did not know
what Khan was up to - selling nuclear secrets - and was
possibly collaborating with him, since he delivered
Chinese models of nuclear equipment to Libya and
Pakistan. In February the Washington Post reported that
investigators had discovered that the nuclear-weapons
designs obtained by Libya through a Pakistani smuggling
network originated in China. Libya turned over papers
confirming China's long-suspected role in transferring
nuclear know-how to Pakistan in the early 1980s, which
were then sold by Khan's network to Libya. The documents
in Chinese contained detailed, step-by-step instructions
for assembling an implosion-type nuclear bomb that could
fit atop a large ballistic missile, and it contained
technical instructions for manufacturing components for
the device.
Once Khan's network was discovered,
China called for Pakistan to wind up the investigation
quickly and properly, suggesting that it did not want to
have its role in promoting the network and Pakistan's
overall proliferation examined too closely. North Korea
and Iran are also recipients of Chinese help and may
still be receiving Chinese assistance. Nor is it clear
that China has stopped proliferating. Beijing is
building new plutonium reactors for Pakistan that
contravene the NSG's rules, but since China is not yet a
member, it is not in violation of NSG standards.
Nevertheless, this action certainly suggests China's
less-than-wholehearted compliance with those standards.
There are other dangers as well from rewarding a
China that seems to be continuing to engage in
proliferation. As Bolton warned Congress in March,
allowing China to behave in this way merely encourages
other would-be proliferators to believe that they too
can get away with doing so, thus further shredding
existing regimes.
The NSG's guidelines regulate
in many ways the transfer of nuclear materials and
technologies; they require statements specifying how the
transferred items will be used, stating that they will
not be used for proscribed activities and stating that
suppliers' consent is a precondition of any subsequent
retransfer of the items in question. China's record to
date has undoubtedly been deficient with regard to all
three of these points and to others as well.
Nor
is it clear, given its continuing record of support for
Pakistan and support of North Korea's right to a
peaceful nuclear program, that it will conscientiously
uphold the standards of the NSG. Hitherto it has been
reluctant to join the PSI, related to the NSG, because
of concerns over state sovereignty.
China may be
integrating with the global economy, but it is not going
to abandon profitable policies that greatly advance its
vital national interests, only to be bound by
conventions that have not proved to be all that useful
in stopping proliferation to date. While the quest to
integrate China and induce it to become a genuine member
of the club and status quo player is a noble one,
looking the other way in an effort to promote big
business deals that will probably contain major
loopholes does not seem to be an ideal way of doing
business or of doing counter- and non-proliferation.
China may well join the NSG, but the burden of
proof that this will not be a dysfunctional membership
rests on Beijing's shoulders. Therefore it is not clear
that Washington's hopes will be realized by this
membership, even if in the short term some reactor
builders get the contracts they want. Should that
technology migrate elsewhere, the costs to Washington
will far outweigh those benefits, and the bill will not
be long in coming.
Stephen Blank is an
independent analyst of international affairs living in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
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