BY EVA CHENG
Existing arrangements for nuclear arms control were placed in jeopardy on May 2 when US President George W Bush announced his plan to go ahead with the long-mooted "Son of Star Wars" National Missile Defence scheme.
In choosing to give the go-ahead, Bush has ignored the open objections of nuclear powers including Russia, China and France who say the missile shield will upset the world's existing delicate military balance, which is based on mutual deterrence.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union left the United States as the world's only superpower, nuclear deterrence has rested on some states' ability to at least launch a defensive nuclear strike-back if they were to come under attack.
The NMD, which will allow the US to shoot missiles out of the sky, will make even this defensive deterrent obsolete, giving the US even greater military dominance than it already has.
The result will undoubtedly be a new arms race across the globe, and a lengthening of the shadow of nuclear holocaust.
Unilateral
Bush's May 2 decision amounts to a unilateral withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which the US and the Soviet Union signed in 1972 and which has been the central plank of the international arms control framework ever since. Russia, which succeeded the Soviet Union as signatory after the latter's dissolution, has reaffirmed its commitment to the ABM Treaty.
The decision will also likely undermine the Missile Technology Control Regime, the 32-country body which seeks to restrict the export of ballistic missiles and related technologies. China, for example, although not a member, has been observing some MTCR requirements since 1994, but will now almost certainly distance itself from the body, as NMD places its own security seriously under threat.
Despite US claims that the NMD mainly targets "rogue" states, citing North Korea and Iraq as prime examples, the shield system seems to be designed to target China most of all. The People's Republic is estimated to have 20 or so long-range missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads — precisely the scale of assault that the NMD is designed to neutralise.
Alarmed by the NMD's blow to its security, China has raised strong objections since the US first floated the idea but, like Russia, it has been ignored.
Beijing's concerns that the missile scheme is aimed squarely at it have been deepened since Bush's January inauguration; since then, the new US president has not ceased provoking China.
Bush's public designation of it as a "regional competitor" was a major diplomatic departure from Bill Clinton's "strategic partner" label and put the relationship between the two giants on a bad footing from the beginning.
That relationship then deteriorated rapidly after the April 1 collision between a US EP-3E spy plane and a Chinese interceptor jet off China's Hainan Island.
Despite Beijing's release of the 24-member spy crew on April 14, a significant concession on its part, Bush attempted to bully China, claiming that the US had a "right" to reclaim the stranded spy plane and promising even more spy flights in future.
Bush's April 24 announcement to sell more new high-tech arms to Taiwan, said to be the biggest sale to Taiwan since 1992 and a significant boost to the island's military capacity, was also meant to be a snub to Beijing, as was his May 3 announcement of downgraded military contacts with China.
Hostility
Washington's hostility towards China didn't start under Bush. His predecessor, Bill Clinton, carried out a policy which had similar intent, albeit far more covered in dovish and diplomatic words.
US hostility to China is rooted in its 50-year campaign against China's socialist system and withdrawal from the world capitalist market. While China's ruling bureaucracy may since have begun to embrace capitalism, US hostility has not been dented, and has even grown as Washington has come to fear that Beijing may represent a medium-term threat to US dominance in the Pacific region.
Washington's anti-Beijing policy has long been based on using Taiwan as a dagger pointed against its rival. Its threatening moves against China have been traditionally justified by the need to "protect" Taiwan and its overt and strident aid to the island has been a constant and deliberate provocation.
Only with full US support was the corrupt Kuomintang regime of Chiang Kai-shek able to take over Taiwan in the first place, in 1947 just as it was losing its last strongholds on the mainland. During and after the 1950-53 Korean War, Washington even threatened to drop the bomb on China.
In response, China tested its first fission weapon in 1964 and its first two-stage thermonuclear weapon two years later, gradually achieving a limited strike-back ability.
US president Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China led to a softening of US tactics, including a late recognition that the People's Republic, rather than the puppet state of Taiwan, held sovereignty over Chinese territory. The US normalised diplomatic relations with China in 1979.
But this shift did not amount to any departure from Washington's fundamental hostility towards China.
The US refused to give up its Taiwanese pawn and, in the same year it normalised relations, sought to justify future military interventions by passing the Taiwan Relations Act, which legally "obliges" the US military to come to Taiwan's "rescue".
US Congress added to this justification for military intervention last year, when it passed the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act.
Despite a 1982 US commitment not to increase the military support to Taiwan qualitatively or quantitatively, the Pentagon's arms delivery to Taiwan in the 1990s amounted to US$15.3 billion, far more than the $4.4 billion allocated in the previous four decades.
According to a US Congressional Research Service report issued in August 2000, Taiwan was able to import US$20.6 billion worth of arms in the eight years from 1992, compared to only US$5.9 billion arms imports by China during the same period.
A 1999 Pentagon assessment even concluded that, until at least 2005, Taipei will continue to hold a "qualitative edge over Beijing in terms of significant weapons and equipment".
Despite these acknowledgements of Taiwan's military strength, Bush and his Republican hardliners are still seeking to whip up enough fear of the "China threat", and the need to protect Taiwan, to justify the NMD system.
But, while Bush has done much to ensure the political conditions are right for NMD, at least within the United States, the technical conditions are far from ready — the US military hasn't quite got the technology to get the NMD system off the ground. It is not too late to scuttle NMD and its threat to unleash a new arms race.