During the 2000 US presidential election campaign, George W. Bush said he would reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the US arsenal, abandon the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty with Moscow, reduce the peacekeeping commitments overseas, position China as a "strategic competitor," adopt a policy of "strategic clarity" toward the Taiwan question and sell weapons to bolster Taiwan's security. Within just a 100 days of taking office, Bush had made good on nearly all of these promises.
In a speech given at the US National Defense University on May 1, Bush said that the early deployment of missile defenses was imperative and that he would dispense with the boundaries separating previous National Missile Defense (NMD) and Theater Missile Defense (TMD) systems. If Washington is not granted the alterations it has requested to the ABM treaty, then it must, according to the terms of the treaty, abandon the treaty. Bush also unilaterally pledged to reduce the US' nuclear warhead count, intending to show that the missile defense system and arms control are compatible, and will not necessarily create an arms race.
Before his speech, Bush called the leaders of Germany, France, Britain, Canada and Russia, then dispatched undersecretaries to visit European and Asian countries to consult directly with leaders on the issue of the US' missile defenses.
Internal reactions to Bush's statement were divided. The main misgivings about NMD are related to the technology, the expenditure and the possibility of a new arms race. A Los Angeles Times editorial titled "Wrong defense, wrong time" (May 2), argued that a missile defense system isn't the correct way to tackle the threat of terrorism.
China, Russia and North Korea, are strongly opposed to the system, and France, Germany and Sweden have expressed reservations. Britain, India and Australia are inclined toward support, while East and North Asian countries have refrained from taking a
position in order to avoid finding themselves sandwiched between the US and China.
The controversy surrounding the missile defense system has not only had an impact on decades-old arms control treaties, but may also trigger an arms race among a small number of powerful nations. Despite this, Russia and the majority of other countries look favorably upon the Bush government's decision to consult before taking action on the missile defense system -- as opposed to informing them after the fact. And Bush's policy vis-a-vis the development of missile defense is clearly different from that of Bill Clinton. "Conditional deployment," for example, has become "unconditional deployment;" "land-based" has been expanded to include land-, sea-, air- and space-based defenses; and the integration of NMD and TMD will also allow the US and its allies to collectively enter into an anti-missile defense system.
In February, 2001,while touring military command installations, Bush made a speech regarding the reorganization of US military strength. He said that he believes that:
1. The US needs to grasp the essence of the technological warfare revolution. Military strength comes from mobility and swiftness, and not from strength in numbers. The maintenance of security comes from concealment and long-range, precision attacks.
2. A wholesale appraisal, from the top down, is necessary to create priorities for a military build-up, make comprehensive investments, and allocate defense resources.
3. In the future, the US military should seek to modernize and improve existing weapons systems, but the most important thing is to go beyond minor improvements to existing systems and to begin to apply technology to weapons systems that support new strategies. The US army will have a smaller number of troops, but will be more lethal, easier to deploy and more able to fight for extended periods of time. The navy will combine information and weapons systems, and be better able to project its power. The air force will use fighter jets and un-manned platforms capable of launching precision attacks from all corners of the globe. In space, the US military will strive to protect satellite systems.
Bush further pointed out that the threat to the US posed by nuclear, biological and chemical weapons didn't disappear with the end of the Cold War. Rather, the former sole threat has since become numerous unpredictable threats including both states and terrorists. These threats come mainly from missiles. The highest priority is given to protecting US citizens from terrorist attack, but Bush's plan also includes dealing with accidental missile attacks by Russia and China. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has repeatedly said that one of the reasons it is necessary to deploy NMD is that China could launch a nuclear attack on Los Angeles in a bid to deter the US from intervening on the Taiwan question.
The US plans to conduct its fourth NMD interception experiment in June. The NMD project looks set to turn space into a major battlefield. In January, both Russia and China objected to the US' military space exercises. Russia has now decided to re-structure its air and space forces and increase its satellite launches. China is also strengthening its space warfare capabilities, in order to attack US satellites and space surveillance systems. With the US' deployment of NMD, China may increase the number of its long-range ballistic missiles from 20-plus to 200, or even 250.
The US missile defense plan will further intensify the Sino-Russian strategic relationship. China and Russia jointly opposed the US missile defense plan during the 55th UN General Assembly. The "Shanghai Five" (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) also formed a united front against the US plan and issued a joint statement against it. Bush's unilateral reduction of nuclear warheads down to 3,500 or lower as required in the 1993 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II), still does not effectively ease Russian opposition to NMD. And the US can only ease Chinese opposition by negotiating a compromise version based on the Moscow-proposed "Phases of European Missile Defense." The Bush administration has not called Beijing, saying that China is not a signatory to the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty. Bush also emphasized a new framework for US-Russian cooperation.
Beijing's understanding is that the US wants to use NMD to provoke China, start an arms race in space, divert the country's attention away from economic development and prompt it to compete with the US on all fronts, thereby eroding its economic prowess and causing it to suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union. President Jiang Zemin (
Almost no other country in the world has to face a missile threat every day as Taiwan does. Bush's integration of NMD and TMD will considerably ease the pressure on Taiwan over the TMD issue. But no matter how the US missile defense system develops, Taiwan will have to mull over both active and passive missile defense strategies. Taiwan will have to integrate different weapons systems and improve the explosion-resistance of command and intelligence facilities. Psychological and civil defense against military threats will be no less important than weapons acquisition.
Lin Cheng-yi is director of the Institute of European and American Studies at the Academia Sinica.
Translated by Scudder Smith and Francis Huang
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