[NYT]
SEP 02, 2001
White House to Let China Build Up Its Nuclear Fleet
By DAVID E. SANGER
[W] ASHINGTON, Sept. 1 — The Bush administration, seeking to overcome
Chinese objections to its missile defense program, intends to tell
Chinese officials that it has no objections to the country's plans to
build up its relatively small fleet of nuclear missiles capable of
striking the United States, according to senior administration
officials.
One senior official said that, in the future, the United States and
China may discuss resuming underground nuclear tests if they are needed
to assure the safety and reliability of their arsenals.
Such a move, however, might also allow China to improve the quality of
its nuclear warheads and lead to the end of a worldwide moratorium on
nuclear testing.
Both messages mark a significant reversal from previous American
policy. For years the United States has discouraged China and all other
nations from increasing the size or capability of their nuclear
arsenals, and from nuclear tests of any kind.
The purpose of the new approach, administration officials say, is to
convince China that the administration's plans for a missile shield are
not aimed at undercutting China's relatively small nuclear arsenal, but
rather intended to counter threats from so-called rogue states.
The administration decided on the reversals during a review this summer
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 in any case 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,' " one senior administration official deeply involved in
formulating the strategy said in an interview last week. "Why panic?
They are modernizing anyway."
Currently, Beijing has a fleet of fewer than two dozen nuclear missiles
capable of reaching the United States, as part of a minimal deterrent
that Mao created in the 1950's and 1960's. China is now developing
mobile, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles that would be
far more likely to withstand a first nuclear strike to replace those
aging missiles.
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.
And 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 to it, Washington may defuse
objections to its missile defense plans. If the missile defense plan is
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 lengthy 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 abilities 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 Nuclear 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.
One senior official said this week that China may, in future years, be
given the go-ahead by the United States to resume underground tests of
its nuclear weapons, and suggested that the United States might also
someday want to resume such 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 Senator Joseph
R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, 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 states, 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 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
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 administration 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."
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.
So far, though, that has not resulted in any significant progress in
the talks. American officials speculate that serious negotiations will
not begin until Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld comes up with a
plan for deep, mutual reductions in American and Russian forces.
But there have been no equivalent conversations with China. That will
have to change now that Mr. Bush's trip is only six weeks away. Mr.
Bush has made it clear he plans to spend a considerable amount of time
on that trip trying to allay Chinese fears about his plans, much as he
has tried, with mixed success, in Europe.
But because China has such a minimal deterrent, he cannot make the kind
of offer that he has made to Russia for a joint reduction of nuclear
forces. The offer to allow China to improve its nuclear fleet — and
perhaps test it — amounts to what one senior defense official calls
"the incentive package" for the Chinese leadership and its military.
