International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation

Provoking Military Buildup in China

U.S. to Tell China It Will Not Object to Missile Buildup

New York Times, September 2, 2001
(excerpts)

The Bush administration, seeking to overcome Chinese opposition to its missile defense program, intends to tell leaders in Beijing that it has no objections to the country's plans to build up its small fleet of nuclear missiles, according to senior administration officials.

One senior official said that in the future, the United States and China might also discuss resuming underground nuclear tests if they are needed to assure the safety and reliability of their arsenals. Such a move, however, might allow China to improve its nuclear warheads and lead to the end of a worldwide moratorium on nuclear testing.

Both messages appear to mark a significant change in American policy. For years the United States has discouraged China and all other nations from in creasing the size or quality of their nuclear arsenals, and from nuclear tests of any kind.

Other officials say that while there may not be an explicit agreement, both American and Chinese strategists know that China needs more weapons to ensure that it could overwhelm a missile defense system. [...]

But word of the new approach drew scathing criticism from Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democrat of Delaware who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "This is absolutely absurd," he said today. "It shows that these guys will go to any length to build a national missile defense, even one they can't define. Their headlong, headstrong, irrational and theological desire to build a missile defense sends the wrong message to the Chinese and to the whole world." This is especially true, he said, regarding India, which would try to balance against any Chinese buildup.

"This is taking 50 years of trying to control nuclear weapons and standing it on its head," he added.