Mon, Dec 27, 1999 page4

• China expert warns of nuclear threat

  • By William Ide / STAFF REPORTER
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  William C. Triplett II, co-author of the Year of the Rat and Red Dragon Rising visited Taipei last week to attend a conference held by the institute for National Policy Research (INPR). Triplett previously served as the Chief Republican Counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and now works together with his partner, Edward Timperlake to produce gritty and sometimes controversial analyses of US-China relations. Triplett spoke to Taipei Times reporter William Ide about threats on the horizon in the Taiwan Strait. Anything but cheery news for those living here.

  Taipei Times: How do you see things falling together in January as far as the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act is concerned?

  Willam Triplett: Well, as a practical matter the US Congress really doesn't do anything significant until March. If you look at the historical record, I can't think of anything significant that has passed the Congress before March. There's a long break in February and things will pick up in March, right about the time of the elections [in Taiwan].

  

  William C. Triplett, II, a senior China-US relations expert, says Beijing's purchase of nuclear-capable warships could have serious and damaging consequences for Taiwan.

  PHOTO: FILE

  That assumes that Beijing doesn't do anything drastic. When I say drastic I mean an attack on the island.

  I am making an assumption here, but I would guess that the Congress would order staff to prepare drastic sanctions at the very least.

  Something along the order of any product, manufactured, grown, mined, in the People's Republic of China is hereby denied entry into the customs territory of the United States on midnight following the date of the enactment.

  Then the second line would be confiscating assets and then the third line would be throwing people out of the country.

  If you're talking about [an attack] and people getting killed, I think that Congress would respond to that. That's sort of my working hypothesis.

  TT: What's your worst case scenario about what would or could happen during the elections?

  WT: They try and invade the place and a whole bunch of people would get killed. I think [China] would make a decision about when the differential is highest, that is, when their offensive strength is highest compared to Taipei's defense. That's when it would be most dangerous.

  Again, if you look historically, you're going to be talking about a series of ultimatums with nothing happening.

  If you look at many of the things which have happened, Israel was attacked on the holiest day of the year, we were attacked in South Korea on Sunday.

  I imagine that if things happen, they would happen when Taipei is standing down and not expecting things. When the ships are tied up together in Kaohsiung and when a lot of people were on leave.

  TT: You suggested Chinese New Year at the recent INPR conference and that was met with some opposition; what is your rebuttal?

  WT: Well of course, some people have said that weather in the [Taiwan] Strait is bad. Since Timperlake and I are postulating a special-forces type operation, a limited number of folks, then you would take advantage of bad weather.

  Based on the current climate how great of a possibility would that be? Of course it's a possibility. They are buying this destroyer and its mate for US$800 to US$900 million a pop.

  In the 1970s the Soviets designed and began to produce a line of destroyers. They are called destroyers but actually they are about the size of a light cruiser in World War II vintage, around 8,000 tons approximately.

  The principle thing is these things were designed for one purpose -- to kill Americans on board aircraft carriers and Aegis destroyers.

  They are armed with something that is called the SS-N-22; we call it the Sunburn missile, the Russians call it the Mosquito.

  It is the most dangerous anti-shipping weapon in the world. It's supersonic. It comes in sea-skimming ... and when it gets in the area of the target it comes straight up and then comes straight down. Navy ships are designed to take a defense from the side, but not straight up, and it's simply too fast to be countered.

  It was originally nuclear, with a 200-kiloton nuclear warhead [roughly 20 times the Hiroshima bomb]. Each one of these ships has eight of these things.

  We tend to think that the chances are very high, that one way or the other, this thing will be nuclear. At the forum a British admiral said "Of course they will be nuclear."

  When you look at the possibilities, [the missile] was originally nuclear, Russia is in semi-chaos, lots of corruption, there are also lots of freelance Russian nuclear scientists running around, the Chinese now have access to the W-88. Somewhere or another in this package, the thing would become nuclear.

  The Chinese as I understand will be buying 22 missiles, so if each ship has eight, there would be no reason to ever reload. The theory is that the additional missiles will be used for backfitting existing Chinese ships.

  The question is whether in fact the Chinese declare this a strategic asset.

  "Strategic asset" is a magic bureaucratic word in arms control and it's a signal from one nuclear power to another, don't touch this thing, because this thing is part of our nuclear deterrent.

  We [the US] do this with our ballistic missile submarines, called SSBNs. We think that the Chinese at some point will do this.

  We don't think that [Chinese military leader] Liu Huaqing would spend US$800 million to US$1 billion to roll sea mines off the fantail. You can do that with a cargo ship.

  TT: You don't buy the argument that the purchase is just a symbol of the military's power, but that China would never use it?

  WT: Right, you're gonna tell me that somebody went to the Ministry of Finance and said give me a billion dollars, I don't have any real ideas you know, and the Finance Ministry will say okay; oh, would you like two.

  The fairly obvious purpose of this is that when things go bad [in Taiwan], put these [destroyers] out on the other side of Taiwan surrounded by other ships and have the Chinese Ambassador go into the State Department or the White House and say, we're having some problems in the family, stay home ... people will think about it.

  We sort of sandbagged Admiral [Joseph] Prueher [the new US ambassador to China] in his confirmation by asking him a question that was sort of along this line: "What are you going to do about these nuclear weapons?"

  And he came back and said in essence: "You kill the archer not the arrow," the missile.

  That is you sink the ship because you can't deal with the arrow.

  The problem with that is once it's declared a strategic asset, you can't sink the ship without it escalating right up to the edge of World War III.

  You could very easily have a Cuban missile type crisis out here, no problem at all.
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