State policies or
actions are deemed "unilateral" if they have
significant impacts on people in other states but
undertaken by a single state without the mandate
of bilateral or multilateral treaties or in
violation or defiance or rejection of such
treaties.
US unilateralism did not start
with the administration of President George W
Bush. Its moralistic roots lie in Christian Right
influence on US foreign policy after World War II,
especially over policy on China. It was the
ideological basis for the Cold War, with a
self-righteous superpower leading subservient
allies who did
not
have the wherewithal to resist it. It has
continued after the end of the Cold War even as
allies attempt to assert increasing independence
with the disappearance of perceived Soviet threat.
The huge power differential between the US as the
sole remaining superpower and its former
subservient allies gave the United States a
natural claim to, and de facto privilege of,
unilateralism.
President Bill Clinton's
decision to use military power to enforce moral
imperialism in the Balkans was based on the view
that "US citizens and interests are threatened in
many arenas and across a wide spectrum of issues",
in the words of then director of central
intelligence George Tenet. These perceived perils
as interpreted by US cultural preference range
from regional conflicts and insurgency to
terrorism and ethnic unrest and are viewed as
direct threats to US national interests raised to
the level of clear and present danger.
The
interest of the United States in maintaining
geopolitical stability is predicated on its being
a superpower with global economic interests. The
US aims to act unilaterally by maintaining a force
structure that can conduct simultaneous
expeditionary military operations in widely
separated theaters around the world against
multiple adversaries who may not even be natural
allies. This is done by revising its Cold War
alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) from defensive to offensive
regional military assets that the US can deploy at
will to achieve its global geopolitical
objectives.
The Clinton
Doctrine The Clinton Doctrine subscribes to
the proposition that the best way to maintain
stability in core regions of US interests such as
Western Europe and Japan is to combat instability
in periphery regions before it can intensify and
spread. It was expressed in Clinton's February 26,
1999, speech in San Francisco: "The true measure
of our interests lies not in how small or distant
these places are ... The question we must ask is:
What are the consequences to our security of
letting conflicts fester and spread? ... Where our
values and our interests are at stake, and where
we can make a difference, we must be prepared to
do so."
In response, neo-conservative
commentator Charles Krauthammer wrote on March 29,
1999: "The Clinton Doctrine aspires to morality
and universality. But foreign policy must be
calculating and particular ... The essence of
foreign policy is deciding which son of a bitch to
support and which to oppose. One has to choose. A
blanket anti-son-of-a-bitch policy, like a blanket
anti-ethnic-cleansing policy, is soothing,
satisfying and empty. It is not a policy at all
but righteous self-delusion."
China is the
key SOB nation that US neo-conservatives choose to
oppose preemptively before it gets too powerful.
Clash of civilizations There
were other views. Barely two decades after the
Cold War, Harvard historian Samuel P Huntington
wrote in an article titled "The lonely superpower"
in the March 1999 issue of Foreign Affairs: "The
unipolar moment has passed. Even old allies
stubbornly resist American demands, while many
other nations view US policy and ideals as openly
hostile to their own. Washington is blind to the
fact that it no longer enjoys the dominance it had
at the end of the Cold War. It must relearn the
game of international politics as a major power,
not a superpower, and make compromises. US
policymaking should reflect rational calculations
of power rather than a wish list of arrogant,
unilateralist demands."
Yet Huntington had
written in the Summer 1993 Foreign Affairs about
the "clash of civilizations" that "the next
pattern of conflict ... in this new world will not
be primarily ideological or primarily economic.
The great divisions among humankind and the
dominating source of conflict will be cultural.
Nation-states will remain the most powerful actors
in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of
global politics will occur between nations and
groups of different civilizations. The clash of
civilizations will dominate global politics. The
fault lines between civilizations will be the
battle lines of the future."
It is common
after September 11, 2001, to focus Huntington's
"clash of civilizations" theme on Islam-Christian
conflict. Yet Huntington had a lot to say about
Asia in general and China in particular. He quoted
Massachusetts Institute of Technology political
scientist Lucian Pye that China is "a civilization
pretending to be a state". He credited common
culture as "clearly facilitating the rapid
expansion of the economic relations between the
People's Republic of China and Hong Kong, Taiwan,
Singapore and the overseas Chinese communities in
other Asian countries. With the Cold War over,
cultural commonalities increasingly overcome
ideological differences, and mainland China and
Taiwan move closer together. If cultural
commonality is a prerequisite for economic
integration, the principal East Asian economic
bloc of the future is likely to be centered on
China. This bloc is, in fact, already coming into
existence."
Further on, Huntington wrote:
"With the Cold War over, the underlying
differences between China and the United States
have reasserted themselves in areas such as human
rights, trade and weapons proliferation. These
differences are unlikely to moderate. A 'new cold
war', Deng Xaioping reportedly asserted in 1991,
is under way between China and America." Thus the
recent speech by President Hu Jintao at Yale
University during his visit to the United States
on the peaceful attributes of Chinese civilization
fell on deaf ears in the US.
Huntington
pitted the West against a coalition of
"Confucian-Islamic states". He saw the conflict
between the West and the Confucian-Islamic states
focusing "largely, although not exclusively, on
nuclear, chemical and biological weapons,
ballistic missiles and other sophisticated means
for delivering them, and the guidance,
intelligence and other electronic capabilities for
achieving that goal". Contrary to evidence,
Huntington claimed that "the West promotes
non-proliferation as a universal norm and
non-proliferation treaties and inspections as
means of realizing that norm. It also threatens a
variety of sanctions against those who promote the
spread of sophisticated weapons and proposes some
benefits for those who do not." He added, however,
"The attention of the West focuses, naturally, on
nations that are actually or potentially hostile
to the West."
Huntington went on:
The non-Western nations, on the
other hand, assert their right to acquire and to
deploy whatever weapons they think necessary for
their security. They also have absorbed, to the
full, the truth of the response of the Indian
defense minister when asked what lesson he
learned from the Gulf War: "Don't fight the
United States unless you have nuclear weapons."
Nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and missiles
are viewed, probably erroneously, as the
potential equalizer of superior Western
conventional power. China, of course, already
has nuclear weapons; Pakistan and India have the
capability to deploy them. North Korea, Iran,
Iraq, Libya and Algeria appear to be attempting
to acquire them. A top Iranian official has
declared that all Muslim states should acquire
nuclear weapons, and in 1988 the president of
Iran reportedly issued a directive calling for
development of "offensive and defensive
chemical, biological and radiological
weapons."
Huntington identified the
sustained expansion of China's military power and
its means to create military power as centrally
important to the development of counter-West
military capabilities. According to Huntington, a
Confucian-Islamic military connection has thus
come into being, designed to promote acquisition
by its members of the weapons and weapons
technologies needed to counter the military power
of the West. The Huntington clash-of-civilizations
world view defines the West's enemies not by what
they do, but by who they are. Such a view does not
lead to world peace unless all non-Western
civilizations are wiped off the face of the Earth.
Bush unilateralism Critics have
cited the US decisions under the Bush
administration to withdraw from the ABM
(Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty, to violate
commitments to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),
to reject the Kyoto Protocol, to invade Iraq
without United Nations approval and to make other
hegemonic military-geopolitical-economic moves as
evidence of US unilateralism, ie, a general lack
of support for multilateral arms control and
global-warming agreements, and a blatant disregard
for the UN and other multilateral institutions or
international consensus.
The cool
reception Bush received during his September 2004
address to the 59th session of the UN General
Assembly was a reflection of how unpopular US
unilateralism had become among the international
community. The US military invasion of Iraq
without UN authorization was viewed by many as a
defiance of international law, and the unilateral
action solicited strong opposition from many
governments around the world, including
traditional US allies.
UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan called on the world to respect
UN authority during his address on the same day as
Bush's. Annan, in an interview with the British
Broadcasting Corp, unambiguously pointed out that
any decisions on military action in Iraq should
have been made by the UN Security Council and not
made unilaterally by a single country. He also
criticized Bush's unilateral policy on Iraq by
saying that the war violated the UN Charter and
was illegal.
The Kyoto Protocol, opened
for signature on December 11, 1997, was signed by
141 nations, including all European and all other
developed industrial nations except the US and
Australia. The pact went into effect on February
16, 2005, and will expire in 2012. US vice
president Al Gore was a main participant in
putting the Kyoto Protocol together in 1997.
President Clinton signed the agreement in 1997,
but the US Senate refused to ratify it, citing
potential damage to the US economy as required by
compliance, and because it excluded certain
developing countries, including India and China,
from having to comply with new emissions standards
immediately.
Bush made campaign promises
in 2000 to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
However, as one of the first acts of his
presidency, Bush pulled the US out of the Kyoto
accords, dismissing it as too costly, and
described it as "an unrealistic and
ever-tightening straitjacket". Lately, the White
House has even questioned the validity of the
science behind global warming, and claimed that
millions of jobs would be lost if the US joined in
this world pact, ignoring the larger economic loss
from pollution-related health costs and reduction
in life expectancy.
China, despite being
in the pollution-intensive phase of transitional
industrialization, signed the Kyoto pact on May
29, 1998. Then-premier Zhu Rongji announced on
September 3, 2002, at the World Summit on
Sustainable Development that China had approved
the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change. The Chinese
ambassador to the United Nations deposited the
instrument of approval of the Kyoto Protocol with
the UN secretary general on August 30.
US
policy officially acknowledges that
multilateralism is "a core principle in
negotiations in the area of disarmament and
non-proliferation with a view to maintaining and
strengthening universal norms and enlarging their
scope" - as stated in UN General Assembly
Resolution 56/24 T, which also underlined the fact
that "progress is urgently needed in the area of
disarmament and non-proliferation in order to help
maintain international peace and security and to
contribute to global efforts against terrorism".
Yet the US asserts that although maintaining
international peace and security is its primary
goal and overall purpose, in the final analysis
preserving national security is equally necessary
and essential. "Mutual advantage" is a key factor,
for any arms-control treaty must enhance the
security of all states. Richard Haass, president
of the Council on Foreign Relations since July
2003, and former US State Department policy
planning head under Colin Powell, described Bush
administration support of certain multilateral
regimes and organizations but not others as
"multilateralism a la carte".
The
five-year review conference for the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons held from May
2-27, 2005, at the UN in New York had a
contentious and unproductive outcome. Most
participant governments wanted the agenda to
mention the decisions made in the Year 2000 Review
Conference, including "the unequivocal undertaking
by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the
total elimination of their nuclear arsenals"
(Point 6 of the "Thirteen Steps"). However, the US
after September 11, 2001, unilaterally considers
the Year 2000 commitments as inoperative relics of
a foregone era and refuses to agree to any new
agenda mentioning total nuclear elimination.
Nuclear terrorism Nuclear
terrorism has until recently been a theme only for
sensational movies. The possible ways that
terrorists could obtain nuclear weapons through
manufacture, purchase or theft were difficult and
involved formidable challenges and risks, as well
as financial and technical resources beyond the
reach of typical terrorists, who were more likely
to employ simpler means. Nevertheless, preventing
terrorists from acquiring nuclear material or
other radioactive material from power plants,
research facilities, hospitals, industry, or
insecure nuclear-weapons facilities has become a
top priority for all governments.
Responding to this threat, the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of
governors in March 2002 approved an Action Plan to
Combat Nuclear Terrorism. A number of states
pledged specific sums of money, including
Australia (US$100,000), Britain ($350,000), Japan
($500,000), the Netherlands (250,000 euros),
Slovenia (14,000 euros), the US ($1 million), to a
fund set up to support a plan designed to upgrade
worldwide protection against acts of terrorism
involving nuclear and other radioactive materials.
This amount is a fraction of what is needed to
make a top-budget movie.
In approving the
plan, the IAEA board recognized that the first
line of defense against nuclear terrorism is the
strong physical protection of nuclear facilities
and materials. A number of other member states
announced in-kind support to the plan, including
Finland, France, Germany, India, Romania and
Turkey. Other countries expressed hope to finance
or provide support to the plan in the near future.
During the Preparatory Committee Sessions for the
2005 NPT Review Conference and at the Review
Conference, many states party and the
representatives from the IAEA emphasized the
importance of strengthening safeguards of nuclear
materials given the increase in the perceived
threat of nuclear terrorism. Such concerns are not
reflected in the meager funding.
Technological imperative ordains that
terrorists would eventually acquire highly
enriched uranium and use this fissile material to
make simple, portable nuclear explosive devices.
In this context, the IAEA highlighted the
importance of ensuring comprehensive and effective
physical protection of nuclear material. The
Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear
Material (CPPNM), opened for signature at Vienna
and at New York on March 3, 1980, covers physical
protection during international transport, and
other IAEA-issued standards provide countries with
guidelines on ways to voluntarily secure their
nuclear and radioactive materials. However,
mandatory and legally binding international
standards for the physical protection of nuclear
material within a state do not exist. In July
2005, parties to the convention agreed on major
changes to make it legally binding for states
party to protect nuclear facilities and material
for states' peaceful use, storage, and transport.
To bring the changes into effect, ratification by
two-thirds of the state parties is required.
The US ratified the convention on December
13, 1982. China acceded to the convention on
January 10, 1989. On July 12, 1994, China
formulated the "Regulations Governing the
Protection of Nuclear Materials in Kind During
International Transportation", pursuant to its
obligations under the convention. The regulations
came into effect on September 15, 1994. The
regulations include provisions on: requiring that
the competent state authorities approve all
international transportation of nuclear materials;
instituting a licensing system, under which
without state approval no one can possess,
transfer, or transport nuclear materials;
requiring that the competent state authorities
approve any passage and transportation of nuclear
materials in China; investigating any unauthorized
acceptance, possession, transfer, replacement, and
disposal of nuclear materials; and making illegal
the stealing or acquiring of nuclear materials
through fraud and extortion.
The
regulations also cover the responsibilities,
management, protection categories and measures,
and legal responsibilities of the relevant Chinese
bodies in charge of nuclear transportation. On
April 9, 1996, China ratified the Convention on
Nuclear Safety, and the US did so three years
later, on April 11, 1999.
Increasing
security concerns over nuclear terrorism demand
more international cooperation. The "G8 Global
Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons of Mass
Destruction" adopted at the Gleneagles Summit of
the Group of Eight in June 2005 renewed the
pledged $20 billion over a period of 10 years to
2012 to secure nuclear and radioactive materials
around the world, initially in Russia. State
parties to the NPT have generally supported this
initiative. Moreover, UN Security Council
Resolution 1540, adopted in April 2004, requires
state parties to criminalize proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction and their delivery
systems by non-state actors as an essential
undertaking to reduce the dangers of proliferation
of WMD to terrorist groups.
Since the NPT
was primarily designed to deal with states, it has
very little capacity to deal with the new threat
coming from non-state actors using nuclear
weapons, or material and technology to develop
improvised nuclear explosive devices. To prevent
and respond to this new threat more promptly,
states party to the NPT are advised to pursue
unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral
counter-terrorism measures to augment the NPT
regime.
Non-proliferation and
unilateral proliferation The United
States, as the mainstay of the non-proliferation
regime, nevertheless has unilaterally broadened
its own strategy for unilateral use of nuclear
weapons and is moving toward unilateral
development of new weapons. Together with
unilateral missile defense development and
unilateral moves toward weaponization of space,
the US message to the non-nuclear-weapon countries
is that it does not rely on the multilateral NPT
for security, but instead on its own new "Star
Wars" weapon systems and unilateral adoption of
preemptive offensive strategy, which then raises
questions on the need for and the effectiveness of
the multilateral NPT.
Multilateral
non-proliferation has since been sustained only by
inertia rather than forward movement. Global
non-proliferation has come to mean
non-proliferation only in the rest of the world
outside the US and only in states that the US
views with displeasure. At any rate, US security
is no longer directly tied to non-proliferation,
which has been transformed into a US geopolitical
pretext for aggression, much like the defense of
democracy.
Several states that the US
considers safe allies, such as Israel, South
Africa until the end of apartheid and possibly
Japan, have been granted stealth status on the
non-proliferation screen, with India now selected
as a preferred candidate for US geopolitical
exceptionalism. Selective proliferation is now a
device to enhance US security.
All
nuclear programs are secret Every country
that has successfully developed nuclear weapons
did so in secret, not only from other governments
but from other legitimate branches of their own
governments.
The US Manhattan Project was
carried out in secret without congressional
debate, nor was its use on Japan decided by broad
consensus. Nuclear arms and strategy are
extraterritorial to US democratic processes. Both
France and the United Kingdom launched their
nuclear programs with limited cabinet involvement
and no parliamentary debate. The Soviet and
Chinese programs were initiated under direct
secret orders from the highest levels in the
ruling party and government. India announced its
program with a nuclear test in 1974 that was a
surprise even to many in its own government;
Pakistan similarly in 1998; Israel still refuses
to confirm officially that its program exists;
South Africa dismantled its secret weapons program
only after the end of apartheid. Programs in
Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, South
Korea and Taiwan are conducted in great secrecy,
while the existence of such programs is treated as
open secrets to secure maximum geopolitical
effect.
Today Japan is known to have a
large stock of weapon-usable plutonium (45,000
kilograms and growing) as well as the most
advanced missile technology. This is the result of
deliberate policy established in the late 1960s.
Poised to be able to cross the technical threshold
of actual weapons production and missile assembly
on short notice, Japan has already become a de
facto nuclear-weapon state, with the capability of
producing deliverable atomic bombs within a matter
of months if not weeks.
Chinese caution on
pushing the United States militarily from East
Asia is predicated on the prospect of a
nuclear-armed Japan coming out from under the US
nuclear umbrella. Militarists in Japan would
welcome such a development as they argue that the
US nuclear umbrella in the final analysis is
designed to protect only US national interests,
which would be inevitably and increasingly
incongruent with Japanese national interests as
time moves on. Arms control for a non-nuclear
Japan is one of the key convergence points in
US-China national interests.
North
Korea and Iran North Korea and Iran, the
two remaining members of George W Bush's "axis of
evil" now that regime change has been accomplished
in evil Iraq with US occupation, have emerged as
key issues in the survival of the 38-year-old NPT
regime. For achieving US objectives on both
"rogue" nations, US-China cooperation is one of
the basic prerequisites for success.
The
North Korea situation is historically tied to
Taiwan. A quarter of a century after the US
normalized its relations with China on January 1,
1979, US-China relations are still plagued by
residual Cold War issues of war and peace that
were created five decades ago at the beginning of
the Korean War. Among these are the linked
problems of Taiwan and Korea - two unfinished
civil wars in Asia into which the US injected
itself at the beginning of the first large-scale
armed conflict in the Cold War and linked as key
elements in its policy of global containment of
communist expansion.
The Taiwan issue was
created by the US in response to an escalation of
the Korean civil war. It is not surprising,
therefore, that the recurring crisis over renewed
Chinese war warnings on escalating Taiwan
maneuvers toward independence is also linked to a
mounting crisis over the North Korean
nuclear-weapons program (see Cold War links Korea,
Taiwan, January 7, 2004).
Taipei Times Washington correspondent
Charles Snyder reported that the Pentagon has
developed a comprehensive operational plan to
defend Taiwan in case of an attack from mainland
China. The plan, officially designated "Oplan
5077-04", is run by the US Pacific Command
headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii. It includes
provisions for the possible use of nuclear
weapons, involving not only US Pacific forces but
also US troops and equipment worldwide, with
potentials for a global conflict that would likely
involve Russia, which sees US control over China
as a direct threat to its own security.
Non-proliferation challenges facing
China and US At its inception on July 1,
1968, the NPT reflected the international
consensus that the spread of nuclear weapons to
more states was contrary to the promotion of
international peace and security. The treaty,
taking force with the deposit of US ratification
on March 5, 1970, obligates the five
then-acknowledged nuclear-weapon states (the US,
Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China) not
to transfer nuclear weapons, other nuclear
explosive devices, or their technology to any
non-nuclear-weapon state. Non-nuclear-weapon
states party undertake not to acquire or produce
nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices.
In 1992, China acceded to the NPT on March
9 and France acceded on August 3. In 1996, Belarus
joined Ukraine and Kazakhstan in removing and
transferring to Russia the last of the remaining
former Soviet nuclear weapons located within their
territories, and each of these nations has become
a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the NPT. In
June 1997 Brazil became a state party to the NPT.
Today, the number of states known to
possess usable nuclear arsenals is only three more
than the original five of the NPT. Those three
additional nuclear-weapon states - India, Pakistan
and Israel - are now also the only states in the
world not to have joined the NPT. Cuba's recent
accession brought in the last non-nuclear-weapon
state; North Korea joined but withdrew from the
NPT on January 10, 2003, and now claims also to
possess nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, the
arsenals of the US and Russia have shrunk from
their combined Cold War peak of 65,000 warheads to
fewer than 20,000, with that number set to shrink
further under the Moscow Treaty on Strategic
Offensive Reductions entered into on May 24, 2002,
by Presidents Bush and Vladimir Putin, calling for
reduction of the combined strategic nuclear
warheads of the two nations to a level of
1,700-2,200 by December 31, 2012, a level nearly
two-thirds below current levels.
In its
December 2003 White Paper on Non-proliferation
Policy and Measures, China states that "China
stands for the attainment of the non-proliferation
goal through peaceful means, ie on the one hand,
the international non-proliferation mechanism must
be continually improved and export controls of
individual countries must be updated and
strengthened, and, on the other hand,
proliferation issues must be settled through
dialogue and international cooperation ...
Unilateralism and double standards must be
abandoned, and great importance should be attached
and full play given to the role of the United
Nations."
The document pointed out that
China "will constantly increase consultations and
exchanges with multinational non-proliferation
mechanisms, including the Nuclear Suppliers Group,
the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the
Australia Group, and the Wassenaar Arrangement [on
Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use
Goods and Technologies]", dropping previous
criticism of these export-control arrangements for
their exclusive and discriminatory nature. The
2003 document increased the level of transparency
of China's export-control system, detailing the
process and criteria for China's export-control
decisions, and specified the role and
responsibilities of key institutional participants
within the process.
Chinese arms-control
advocates have since become frustrated at the Bush
administration's reluctance publicly to
acknowledge improvements in China's
non-proliferation behavior, and the continuing use
of sanctions by the US as a method of coercing
Chinese entities to refrain from proliferation
transfers, particularly with regard to North Korea
and Iran. The 2003 white paper aimed to illustrate
the progress made in China's attitude and
behavior, notwithstanding the record of relentless
US anti-China policy on global dual-use technology
sanctions not only from itself but also from its
reluctant allies in the European Union, and its
blatant unilateral abuse of the multilateral
non-proliferation regime to further its own
national geopolitical advantage.
Focus
on missile defense Two years later, China's
State Council on September 1, 2005, issued a new
white paper titled "China's Endeavors for Arms
Control, Disarmament and Non-Proliferation", in
which opposition to US "unilateralism" was
deleted. In it place is a more positive statement:
"The international community is in favor of
maintaining multilateralism." The emphasis shifted
to a new focus:
China does not wish to see a
missile-defense system produce negative impact
on global strategic stability, bring new
unstable factors to international and regional
peace and security, erode trust among big
powers, or undermine legitimate security
interests of other countries. China is even more
reluctant to see some countries cooperate in the
missile-defense field to further proliferate
ballistic-missile technology. China believes
that relevant countries should increase
transparency in their missile-defense program
for the purpose of deepening trust and
dispelling misgivings. As the Taiwan question
involves its core interests, China opposes the
attempt by any country to provide help or
protection to the Taiwan region of China in the
field of missile defense by any
means.
This is a direct reference to
the US-proposed US-Japan-Taiwan theater missile
defense system.
Many reports by technical
and strategic experts on the waste and futility of
efforts to develop a missile-defense system have
appeared in print. Technologically, the system's
difficulty, to shoot a speeding bullet with
another bullet, or to shoot a shower of smart
bullets that can turn corners and release decoys
with a counter-shower of smarter bullets, appears
to be technically insurmountable and economically
inefficient even if the technological hurdles
could be overcome theoretically in controlled test
conditions.
The complexity ratio faced by
the defense in overcoming the continually
upgradable offense is exponential, so that the
offense will always have the advantage of
outmaneuvering the defense. And success in defense
depends on total effectiveness, while success in
offense requires only a statistical advantage. If
only one missile out of a thousand slips through,
the game is lost.
On a common-sense level,
the concept borders on pure stupidity. Any child
who watches Western movies knows that in a
gunfight, the aim is to shoot the shooter, not the
bullet from his gun. For the US, the missile
shooter in the Taiwan Strait theater is China.
When Bush proclaims that the US would defend
Taiwan "by any means necessary", it can only mean
an attack on the Chinese mainland over an issue
that China considers its own internal affair, a
view shared by the late US president Richard Nixon
and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, in
the Shanghai Communique of February 1972. For
China, Bush's hostile and belligerent posture over
Taiwan is not a good basis for peaceful bilateral
relations.
The whole missile-defense
issue, a component of the full
nuclear-non-proliferation issue, is shaping up to
be a game of non-existent weapon systems in the
hands of "rogue" states becoming real in the mind
of the US political leadership, with the
fantasized threat to be neutralized by a
non-operational defense system in the hands of
science-fiction superpower super-hawks. It is a
fear-mongering game of political shadow-boxing,
pitting fantasized threats against a fantasy
technology to conduct a ritual dance of
psychological chicken for geopolitical gain (see
Hollow US defense for an empty
threat, June 24).
The US aims
to make the world safe from nuclear weapons that
would take alleged rogue nations another decade to
produce with a defense system that would take the
US another decade to perfect. In the meantime, the
US will knock off a few unarmed "dictators" for
good measure in the name of freedom, along with a
few hundred thousand innocent civilians as
unavoidable but acceptable collateral damage. The
scale is fast tilting as to who will end up having
killed more Iraqi citizens, the Saddam Hussein
regime during its allegedly evil rule or the
open-ended US occupation in the name of freedom.
US backs both non-proliferation and
proliferation Yet the US has been and
continues to be a leading proponent of the
international non-proliferation regime that it
unilaterally is making irrelevant fast.
At
the domestic level, the US is misapplying for
geopolitical aim a system of export control and
licensing laws and regulations covering transfers
of nuclear technology or materials, including
dual-use technology that can contribute to
nuclear-weapons development. There is also a vast
maze of laws requiring sanctions for violations of
non-proliferation commitments, and sanctions
against non-nuclear-weapons states that obtain or
test nuclear weapons. Yet, like free trade, export
control is only selectively applied to keep
proliferation from "unsafe" states.
The
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was
negotiated and then signed by president Clinton in
September 1997 and submitted to the Senate, where
it was vigorously opposed and failed to be
ratified. Despite the uncertainty introduced by US
rejection of the CTBT, steps toward ending the
nuclear-arms race and nuclear disarmament
continued, as called for in Article VI of the NPT.
Then in January 2002, three months after
the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush
administration released the results of its
"Nuclear Posture Review", announcing that nuclear
planning would no longer address the "Russian
threat", as left over from the Cold War, but would
develop capabilities to meet a range of threats
from unspecified countries. China was on the top
of that list before September 11 and continues to
be on the list over the Taiwan situation. The
redirection would be accompanied by a large,
unilateral reduction in deployed nuclear weapons
to a level not affecting US nuclear superiority.
While the US has reduced its arsenal of
warheads from 150,000 to 10,300, the
TNT-equivalent tonnage of destructive power with
bigger warheads still commands the equivalent of
120,000-130,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs. The US
nuclear arsenal is designed not merely for massive
destruction to win a war, but total destruction of
all opponents to rid the world of evil.
However, the new policy also included
development of a controversial missile-defense
capability, and improving the nuclear-weapons
"infrastructure" to allow resumption of testing
and possible development of new weapons at
accelerated pace. The Fissile Material Cutoff
Treaty (FMCT) has been a subject of discussion at
the Geneva Conference on Disarmament for some
years, but little progress has been made. On July
29, 2004, the US declared the FMCT "ripe for
negotiations" and "reaffirmed" US commitment to
negotiate a legally binding treaty. However, a US
policy review concluded that "realistic, effective
verification" of such a treaty was not
"achievable".
Responding to Pakistani
nuclear expert Abdul Qadeer Kahn's revelation that
he had headed a network that spread
nuclear-weapons technology and equipment to Iran,
North Korea, and Libya, President Bush on February
11, 2004, urged more and stricter controls on
nuclear exports, demanding that
non-nuclear-weapons states renounce developing
capacity to enrich uranium and reprocess plutonium
as part of commercial nuclear-power programs,
while nuclear supplier nations ensure adequate
fuel for nuclear plants at reasonable prices. Bush
also argued that the IAEA's Additional Protocol
for inspection regimes should be required of all
NPT signatories, and urged the Senate to consent
to it on the part of the US. On March 31 the
Senate ratified the protocol (Treaty Doc 107-7,
Senate Executive Report 108-12).
As a
nuclear-weapons state, the US in agreeing to IAEA
inspections has the right to exclude any
activities or sites that it declares are of
"direct national-security significance". The same
exclusion by other nations, such as Iraq, Iran and
North Korea, has since been used by the US as
pretext for preemptive attack, invasion or threats
of such.
To engage in international trade
in nuclear technology or materials (such as
nuclear fuel), US companies must obtain export
licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(NRC). Before an export license can be applied
for, there must be in force a bilateral agreement
for peaceful nuclear cooperation between the US
government and the government of the importing
nation. The conditions necessary for drawing up
and approving an agreement for cooperation, laid
out in Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act,
include a 90-day review by Congress. In many
cases, congressional review of an agreement for
cooperation has been controversial, being based on
geopolitical rather than technical considerations.
Congress narrowly allowed an agreement with China
to take effect in 1997 only after extended debate
and extensive lobbying from the nuclear-energy
export sector.
In addition to the NRC's
licensing and regulation role, the US Department
of Energy (DOE) participates in export controls.
The DOE authorizes the transfer of nuclear
technology to countries having agreements for
nuclear cooperation with the US via "subsequent
arrangements", the details of which are spelled
out in Section 131 of the Atomic Energy Act of
1954. In general, the NRC deals largely with
licensing hardware, while the DOE licenses
information and knowledge.
Finally, the
Department of Commerce also is involved in
regulating exports of dual-use, nuclear-related
commodities under the provisions of the Export
Administration Act of 1979. That law expired on
August 21, 2001, and successive Congresses despite
several attempts have not passed new legislation.
In the absence of an Export Administration Act,
the US dual-use export-control system continues to
be dependent on the president's invocation of
emergency powers under the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act under which Commerce continues
to play a role in export regulation.
The
US Department of Commerce has agreed with the
Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of
China on procedures to strengthen end-use visit
cooperation and help ensure that US exports of
controlled dual-use items are being used by their
intended recipients for their intended purposes.
This understanding will enable increased US
exports to China of high-technology items. The US
Commerce Department said this new end-use visit
understanding provides an important example of the
US and China working together to solve practical
problems to the benefit of both their peoples.
US nuclear export policy US
nuclear export policy has undergone major
transformations since 1945. An initial emphasis on
secrecy and criminality, highlighted by the 1946
Atomic Energy Act, which while putting
atomic-weapons technology under civilian control
supervised by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)
imposed a criminal ban on the release of atomic
technology to other countries, even to allies that
had participated in US atomic research during the
war. This served to push countries such as the UK,
which had supplied scientific personnel and
information to the Manhattan Project team, into
constructing its own nuclear weapons and started
the first wave of nuclear proliferation.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed
for espionage under this act despite the fact that
bomb experts have since held that their peripheral
knowledge of nuclear technology did not allow them
to give Soviet scientists any information the USSR
did not already have from other sources, such as
Klaus Fuchs, a German-born British citizen who had
security clearance to work on the Manhattan
Project under hydrogen-bomb hawk Edward Teller;
and Donald Maclean, one of the Cambridge Five who
spied for the Soviet Union on ideological grounds,
and who served in the British Embassy in
Washington during World War II.
Soviet
documents declassified after the Cold War showed
that Julius Rosenberg was a lower-level asset of
no scientific value to Soviet intelligence and
Ethel Rosenberg was not involved in espionage in
any way except that her brother, a sergeant in the
US Army, was a machinist at the wartime nuclear
facility at Los Alamos, New Mexico, whose
knowledge of the bomb was not central. Yet the
Rosenbergs were the only two US civilians to be
executed for espionage-related activity during the
Cold War.
In imposing the death penalty at
the urging of Roy Cohn, the young Jewish
prosecutor and aide to senator Joseph McCarthy of
McCarthyism fame, Judge Irving Kaufman, the Jewish
judge hand-picked by McCarthy for the case, held
the Rosenbergs responsible not only for espionage
but also for all the war deaths of the Korean War.
Many have since suggested that the Rosenbergs,
communists and Jewish, were sacrificed by the
Jewish right to prove Jewish-American loyalty to a
nation in the midst of anti-communist hysteria to
protect Jewish Americans from wholesale
persecution for the predominance of the prewar
Jewish left before the McCarthy era.
The
United States' secretive approach on nuclear
technology gave way in 1954 to the active
promotion internationally of peaceful uses of
atomic energy, which only came to an end in 1974
when the much-criticized AEC was abolished after
the Indian detonation of a "peaceful nuclear
explosion". The US then adopted a nuclear-export
policy emphasizing technology control.
The
event led to a major revision in US policy on
nuclear exports, moving non-proliferation toward
center stage on the US foreign-policy agenda. The
Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was mobilized to set
strict multinational guidelines for the major
nuclear-exporting states covering the transfer of
nuclear fuel and sensitive technology. The NSG
obligated its 45 members to pursue two sets of
guidelines for nuclear and nuclear-related
dual-use exports. Central to the guidelines, which
like other aspects of NSG policy were adopted by
consensus, was the principle that only NPT parties
or other states with comprehensive (full-scope)
safeguards in place should benefit from
nuclear-technology transfers. The US worked hard
to persuade the NSG to adopt the principle of
comprehensive safeguards as a condition for
export.
Under the authority of amendments
to the Foreign Assistance Act, the US imposed
half-hearted sanctions on Pakistan, cutting off
economic and military aid as a result of its
pursuit of nuclear weapons in response to the
Indian bomb. The US suspended sanctions on
Pakistan when Soviet activities in Afghanistan and
the Soviet-Indian alliance made Pakistan a
strategically important "front-line state" and in
the Afghan phase of the current "war on
terrorism".
At the height of the
nuclear-deterrence phase of the Cold War when
technological parity was necessary to maintain
stability, US intelligence purposely provided
nuclear and missile secrets to the Soviets to
serve the dual purpose of maintaining nuclear
parity and to plant credible moles in the Soviet
intelligence system.
India-US Joint
Statement The July 18, 2005, India-US Joint
Statement (IUSJS) set a new direction for US
non-proliferation policy. The IUSJS required the
United States to abandon the crucial principle of
comprehensive safeguards as a condition for
export, since India is not a signatory to the NPT.
The nuclear deal is now working its way through
the US Congress.
The IUSJS necessitated a
fundamental change in US nuclear-export policy
with the promise by the US president that he would
seek to adjust US laws and policies, as well as
international regimes, to enable full US civil
nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India, a
non-NPT state. These adjustments are necessary
since India does not have full-scope safeguards in
place and is one of only four states (along with
Israel, Pakistan and North Korea) that remain
outside of the NPT.
By the Joint Statement
Bush in effect announced that technology control
was no longer the cornerstone of US nuclear export
and non-proliferation policy. Instead, it has
given way to a strategy in which geopolitics has
primacy and regional security strategy and
international economic objectives override those
of non-proliferation. Although this shift is not
the first time non-proliferation objectives have
been subordinated to other US foreign-policy
considerations, it represents the most radical
change in US nuclear-export policy. The unnamed
target of the India-US nuclear agreement is, of
course, China.
The IUSJS "expresses
satisfaction at the New Framework for the US-India
Defense Relationship ... to remove certain Indian
organizations from the Department of Commerce's
Entity List ... The [US] president told the
[Indian] prime minister that he will work to
achieve full civil nuclear energy cooperation with
India as it realizes its goals of promoting
nuclear power and achieving energy security. The
president would also seek agreement from Congress
to adjust US laws and policies, and the United
States will work with friends and allies to adjust
international regimes to enable full civil nuclear
energy cooperation and trade with India, including
but not limited to expeditious consideration of
fuel supplies for safeguarded nuclear reactors at
Tarapur." General Electric, the only US enterprise
still in the nuclear business, built the nuclear
plants at Tarapur, near Mumbai, but had been
forced to leave in 1974 when India conducted its
first nuclear test.
William Potter,
director of the Center for Nonproliferation
Studies at the Monterey (California) Institute of
International Studies, thought that the IUSJS
reversed more than a quarter-century of US
declaratory policy. The Joint Statement suggests
that the Bush national-security team regards
nuclear proliferation to be both inevitable and
possibly a useful balance-of-power device in
geopolitics. Potter wrote last August:
In light of the magnitude of this
policy shift and its potential to impact
negatively on the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT),
associated non-proliferation institutions, and
even elements of the president's own
non-proliferation initiatives, one would have
expected the policy announcement to follow a
careful and systematic review of the costs and
benefits of the proposed change. A rational
decision would have required input from all of
the major governmental players with
non-proliferation responsibilities, including
the senior officials in charge of
non-proliferation policy in the departments of
State and Energy. In fact, however, the new
policy appears to have been formulated without a
comprehensive high-level review of its potential
impact on non-proliferation, the significant
engagement of many of the government's most
senior non-proliferation experts, or a clear
plan for achieving its implementation. Indeed,
the policy shift bears all the signs of a
top-down administrative directive specifically
designed to circumvent the inter-agency review
process and to minimize input from any remnants
of the traditional "nonproliferation
lobby".
US selective proliferation
since 1964 Yet Potter should know that
selective proliferation has been a US policy
option since at least 1964. National Security
Archive Electronic Briefing Book No 1:
Document 7, "As Explosive as a Nuclear Weapon",
the Gilpatric Report on Nuclear Proliferation,
January 1965 (sourced through a Freedom of
Information Act request to the US State
Department, reads as follows:
Largely motivated by concern over
the first Chinese atomic test in October 1964,
president Lyndon B Johnson asked Wall Street
lawyer and former deputy secretary of defense
Roswell Gilpatric to lead a special task force
in investigating, and making policy
recommendations on, the spread of nuclear
weapons ...
Some senior officials
thought that nuclear proliferation was
inevitable and, among the right countries,
potentially desirable. Thus, during a November
1964 meeting, [secretary of state Dean] Rusk
stated that he was not convinced that "the US
should oppose other countries obtaining nuclear
weapons". Not only could he "conceive of
situations where the Japanese or the Indians
might desirably have their own nuclear weapons",
Rusk asked, "Should it always be the US which
would have to use nuclear weapons against Red
China?" [Defense secretary] Robert McNamara
thought otherwise: it was "unlikely that the
Indians or the Japanese would ever have a
suitable nuclear deterrent" ...
According to [AEC chairman] Glenn
Seaborg's account of a briefing for Johnson,
Rusk opined that the report was "as explosive as
a nuclear weapon" ...
Footnote 2:
Presumably Rusk thought it better that Asians
use nuclear weapons against each other rather
than Euro-Americans using them against Asians
... Thus the option of arming Japan and India
with a nuclear weapon against China took shape
immediately after China's first nuclear
test.
In the August 25, 2005, article
cited above, Potter wrote:
The convergence of US and Indian
national-security interests vis-a-vis China is
emphasized by Robert Blackwill, US ambassador to
India during President Bush's first term and
often cited as the most influential proponent of
the shift in US policy toward India ...
This argument is made even more
explicitly by Ashley Tellis in a report issued
by the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace four days before the Joint Statement by
President Bush and Prime Minister [Manmohan]
Singh. According to Tellis, who served as senior
policy adviser to Blackwill during his tenure in
India and is also credited to be one of the
principal intellectual architects of the new US
policy, it would be a mistake to attempt to
integrate India "into the non-proliferation
order at the cost of capping the size of its
eventual nuclear deterrent".
This
deterrent would be for potential use against a
rising China to protect US interests in Asia.
Potter continued, "Tellis openly acknowledges the
fundamental danger to the global non-proliferation
regime posed by the shift in US policy [but]
believes the risk of proliferation manageable and
is justified by US geopolitical interests" that
transcend the benefits of non-proliferation.
This approach is not surprising, for if
the defense of democracy could be compromised by
Cold War geopolitics with US support of dictators,
why is non-proliferation different? Potter
observed that "some elements of the new US policy
toward India have antecedents in which
non-proliferation considerations in South Asia
also took a back seat to other foreign-policy and
national-security objectives", as in the case of
Pakistan following the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan. "It also can be discerned after
[September 11, 2001] in the less than forceful
manner in which the United States has pressed
Pakistan to reveal the full scope of the A Q Khan
network. Prior to the July 18th Joint Statement,
however, the trade-offs between pursuing global
nonproliferation objectives and those of regional
security were never linked as directly or
publicly."
What made the difference was US
attitude toward China as a long-range threat
beyond the "war on terrorism" and the selection of
India as a counterbalance.
The India-US
nuclear agreement indicates more clearly than ever
before that Washington is not opposed to the
possession of nuclear weapons by some states,
including those outside of the NPT, only some
other states. This new policy of non-proliferation
exceptionalism is far more explicit and pronounced
than prior routine efforts by the US and its
allies to deflect criticism of Israel's nuclear
policies. Unlike the Clinton administration, which
"had an undifferentiated concern about
proliferation", in the words of Defense Science
Board chairman William Schneider, the Bush
administration, wrote Potter, "is not afraid to
distinguish between friends and foes".
Nuclear weapons, once given, cannot be
removed easily; thus such selective policy has a
tendency to lock the definition of friends and
foes into long time-frames, if not perpetuity.
More may be better Some 25 years
earlier, Kenneth Waltz developed the idea that
nuclear proliferation could be a positive
geopolitical strategy in his "The Spread of
Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better" (Adelphi
Paper 171; London: International Institute for
Strategic Studies, 1981). Waltz advanced the view
that the spread of nuclear weapons may promote
regional stability, reduce the likelihood of war,
and make wars harder to start. It was an expansion
of the superpower nuclear-deterrence doctrine to
regional geopolitics.
The main flaw in
Waltz's argument was that it was easy to predict
superpower rational behavior because each
superpower had much to lose by making the wrong
move, whereas some smaller powers may operate
irrationally from a desperate position of having
nothing or little to lose and start a nuclear
chain-reaction conflict that no one wants but none
can stop.
Non-nuclear-weapons states can
be expected to reconsider their non-proliferation
commitments in light of the new US proliferation
posture toward India. A similar reassessment of
the security value of the NPT may be undertaken by
states that have not actively pursued a nuclear
weapons option, but made explicit the
conditionality of their NPT membership on
assurances that the international community would
not tolerate any additional nuclear-weapons
states.
Japan is a critical state on the
non-proliferation issue. While Japan has been
vocally critical of all Asian nuclear-weapons
programs, militarism has been on the rise in
Japan. Revival of Japanese militarism skirts
postwar Japanese pacifism by arguing that war is
more likely to be forced on Japan unless Japan
rearms, including the nuclear option. The
assurances Japan received in joining the NPT have
been rendered empty by US proliferation policy
toward India. Decision-making about
non-proliferation has become a dynamic process
that does not end with accession to the NPT, but
will change over time and according to US policy
whims.
Iran and India On
February 11, 2004, President Bush gave a major
address at National Defense University in which he
outlined a new non-proliferation strategy with
reference to Iran. He called on the Nuclear
Suppliers Group to tighten its export-control
guidelines by prohibiting the export of enrichment
and reprocessing technology and equipment to
countries that do not already operate enrichment
and reprocessing plants, such as Iran.
The
new strategy also aimed to fend off attempts by
Russia in recent years to create a special
nuclear-export exception for India. After the Bush
speech, Russia reluctantly halted in late 2004
nuclear-fuel shipment for two reactors at Tarapur
because of new NSG constraints. The July 2005
India-US Joint Statement commits the US to do for
India what it prevented Russia from doing just a
year earlier.
France and a number of other
NSG states have long eyed nuclear market
opportunities in India. They can be expected to
support the creation of a special export regime
for India under the NSG even if it means
establishing the principle of exceptionalism.
Iranian nuclear negotiators have pointed out the
inconsistency of US efforts to deny enrichment
technology to Iran, a non-nuclear-weapons state
party to the NPT, while supporting nuclear trade
with India, a non-NPT state that has a dedicated
and demonstrated nuclear-weapons program. The
inconsistency of the new US position is not lost
on North Korea.
The India-US Joint
Statement, cast in terms of geopolitics with
regard to China, is a double-edged sword. A
Congressional Research Service Report observes
that US-India nuclear cooperation could prompt
other suppliers, such as China, to justify nuclear
exports to Pakistan, not to mention Iran and North
Korea.
North Korea and Taiwan
proliferation links On January 5, 1950,
three months after the founding of the People's
Republic of China (PRC), US president Harry Truman
announced that "the United States will not involve
in the dispute of Taiwan Strait", which meant the
United States would not intervene if the Chinese
communists were to attack Taiwan, where the
defeated Kuomintang (KMT) forces had retreated.
However, on June 25 that year, the Korean
War broke out, and two days later Truman reacted
by declaring the "neutralization of the Straits of
Formosa". The US 7th Fleet was sent into the
straits, now more usually referred to as the
Taiwan Strait, under orders to prevent any attack
on the island from the mainland, and also prevent
the KMT forces on Taiwan to attack the mainland,
as suggested by General Douglas MacArthur. From
that point on, Taiwan has been placed under
non-stop US military protection.
Shortly
after his inauguration on February 2, 1953,
president Dwight Eisenhower lifted the US Navy
blockade of Taiwan that had prevented the KMT
force, newly regrouped and resupplied by the US,
from counterattacking mainland China. During
August 1954, Chiang Kai-shek moved 58,000 troops
to the island of Quemoy (now called Kinmen by the
Taiwanese, transliterated Jinmen in the Pinyin
system preferred by Beijing) and 15,000 to Matsu
island. Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai declared on
August 11 that Taiwan must be liberated. On August
17, the US warned China against attacking Taiwan,
but on September 3, the People's Liberation Army
(PLA) began an artillery bombardment of Kinmen
and, in November, PLA planes bombed the Tachen
Islands.
On September 12, the US Joint
Chiefs of Staff stated the possibility of using
nuclear weapons against China. On November 23,
China sentenced 13 US airmen who had been shot
down over China in the Korean War to long jail
terms, prompting further consideration of nuclear
strikes against China. At the urging of senator
William Knowland, the US signed the Mutual Defense
Treaty with the KMT government on Taiwan on
December 2, 1954, joining one side of the Chinese
civil war by treaty.
On January 18, 1955,
PLA forces seized Yijiangshan (Ichiang) Island,
338 kilometers north of Taiwan, completely wiping
out KMT forces stationed there. The two sides
continued fighting on Kinmen, on Matsu, and along
the Chinese coast. The fighting even extended to
mainland coastal ports. The US-Nationalist Chinese
Mutual Security Pact, which did not apply to
islands along the Chinese mainland, was ratified
by the Senate on February 9. The Taiwan Resolution
passed both houses of Congress on January 29. The
resolution pledged the United States to the
defense of Taiwan, authorizing the president to
employ US forces to defend Taiwan and the
Pescadores against armed attack, including such
other territories as appropriate to defend them.
On March 10, 1955, US secretary of state
John Foster Dulles at a National Security Council
meeting stated that the American people had to be
prepared for possible nuclear strikes against
China. Five days later, Dulles publicly stated
that the US was seriously considering using atomic
weapons in the Kinmen-Matsu area. And the
following day president Eisenhower publicly stated
that "A-bombs can be used ... as you would use a
bullet".
These public statements sparked
an international uproar, as NATO foreign ministers
expressed opposition to nuclear attacks on China.
Nonetheless, on March 25, 1955, US chief of naval
operations Admiral Robert Carney stated that
Eisenhower was planning "to destroy Red China's
military potential", predicting war by mid-April.
On April 23, China stated at the Afro-Asian
Conference that it was ready to negotiate on
Taiwan, and on May 1, shelling of Kinmen-Matsu
ceased, ending the crisis. On August 1, China
released the 11 captured US airmen previously
sentenced to jail terms.
During this first
Taiwan Strait crisis of 1954-55 the USSR, the
other nuclear superpower, had been quite ambiguous
in its support for China's campaign to liberate
Taiwan, whereas the US had indicated that it was
willing to use tactical nuclear weapons in defense
of the island. During the crisis, it became
evident that the Soviet nuclear umbrella was
reserved exclusively for the defense of Soviet
national interests. The PRC called off its
military operations against Kinmen to avoid a US
nuclear attack. The crisis solidified Chinese
resolve to develop its own nuclear weapons.
An article carried by Huanqiu Shibao
(Global Times) on October 15, 2004, recapped a
detailed history of Taiwan's nuclear-weapons
programs since 1950, when the US and Taiwan had
planned a nuclear attack on Xiamen. In the 1970s
the US pressured Taiwan to end a nuclear-weapons
program started by Chiang Kai-shek in the late
1960s under the auspices of the Chung Shan
Institute of Science and Technology. The US again
pressured Taiwan to end a nuclear-weapons program
"secretly" restarted by Chiang Ching-kuo in the
1980s after a nuclear scientist, Chang Hsien-i, a
US spy, defected to the United States with
information on the project. Huanqiu Shibao claimed
that even during the Lee Teng-hui administration,
the words and actions of officials suggested that
his administration had resumed the nuclear-weapons
program. The Huanqiu Shibao article concluded that
although the current Taiwanese president, Chen
Shui-bian, has publicly committed to a
"nuclear-free home" and never developing nuclear
weapons, Taiwan media suspect Chen is playing word
games and may want to develop nuclear weapons to
prevent unification with the mainland.
In
1969, Taiwan purchased from Canada a 40-megawatt
research reactor and the Institute for Nuclear
Energy Research (INER) began work on a
fuel-reprocessing facility with equipment
purchased from France, Germany and the US under
NSG exceptionalism. With 100 tons of uranium
quietly purchased from South Africa, INER by 1973
had a full Plutonium Fuel Chemistry Laboratory
functioning. In 1974, the US Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) concluded that "Taipei conducts its
small nuclear program with a weapon option clearly
in mind, and it will be in a position to fabricate
a device after five years". Then-president Chiang
Ching-kuo responded cryptically to news reports of
missing weapon-grade plutonium: "We have the
ability and the facilities to manufacture nuclear
weapons [but] we will never manufacture them."
It has been standing Chinese policy that
China will deploy a preemptive military option if
Taiwan moves toward independence, faces foreign
occupation or takes steps to acquire nuclear
weapons. When US president Jimmy Carter broke
diplomatic relations with Taipei to recognize the
People's Republic of China in 1979, the United
States feared the termination of the US-Taiwan
defense treaty could lead Taiwan "to reconsider
its nuclear option". This concern was shared by
China and was a key reason for Chinese de facto
acceptance of the Taiwan Relations Act, a US law
that directly interferes with Chinese internal
affairs. The tradeoff was a freeze on Taiwan's
march toward nuclear armament.
In 1987,
CIA agent Chang Hsien-yi, deputy director of INER,
alerted his handler to a top-level secret order by
Taiwan to start up plutonium reprocessing. US
president Ronald Reagan sent a high-level envoy to
Taipei with an ultimatum to deactivate the weapons
program.
In July 1995, China launched
missiles into the Taiwan Strait, halting all
merchant shipping in one of the world's busiest
sea lanes for a week. While US propaganda
described the event as provocative, Washington
knew it was a direct response to pending Taiwan
nuclear moves. Then-president Lee Teng-hui
formally announced: "We should re-study the
question [of nuclear weapons development] from a
long-term point of view," while repeating that
Taiwan "has the ability" to build a bomb "but
definitely will not".
When a second
Chinese missile test closed the strait again in
March 1996, Clinton reassured Taipei of
Washington's commitment to defend Taiwan and
dispatched two aircraft-carrier battle groups with
nuclear capability to the region to get Taiwan to
halt its nuclear-weapons program.
The
Korea non-proliferation issue is tied up directly
with the Taiwan non-proliferation issue and, in a
less direct way, with non-proliferation with
regard to Japan.
Next: Geopolitical
dynamics of the crisis in North Korea
Henry C K Liu is chairman of a New
York-based private investment group. His website
is HenryCKLiu.com.
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