One of the top foreign policy experts in the US Congress has warned that Taiwan might be forced to restart its nuclear weapons development program if US President George W. Bush proceeds with his plans for a massive national missile defense shield for the US.
Delaware Senator Joseph Bi-den, the top Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said if Bush went ahead with the missile shield, it could spark an arms race among China, India, Pakistan and others in Asia, as China and other nations try to respond to the system.
"Asian arms races could spark a nuclear war, breaching the firebreak against nuclear war that we have maintained for 56 years [since the end of World War II]," he said in a speech to the World Affairs Council of Washington, DC.
"China's reaction [to a missile defense system] could lead to an arms race -- not with the United States, but with China's neighbors," he said.
"US intelligence experts reportedly expect a tenfold increase in China's ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] warheads if we deploy a defense.
"That could prompt India to respond and an increase in India's nuclear-tipped missiles would lead Pakistan to join the race," he said.
In addition, Taiwan, Japan as well as North and South Korea might decide that they need nuclear weapons also, Biden said.
"This would end nuclear non-proliferation worldwide, and leave us much less secure than we are today," the senator said.
Bush has committed his administration to begin work on a missile defense shield to protect the US against nuclear-tipped ballistic missile attacks from so-called "rogue nations" such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq later in this decade, but has not specified what such a defense would involve.
China, Russia and many of America's European allies have expressed opposition to the plan, saying it may spark a global arms race that would be costly and would negate the purpose of the missile defense system in the first place.
A key part of the plan would be to scrap the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty the US and the Soviet Union signed in 1972, which was the centerpiece of a Cold War strategy to prevent nuclear war by assuring that everybody would suffer greatly in any such war -- the so-called "mutually assured destruction" theory.
At present, the US maintains an inventory of more than 6,000 strategic nuclear weapons, compared to about 20 for China.
Beijing's current strategy is that those warheads assure that it could wreak havoc on at least some major US targets, should Washington launch a nuclear war against China. The planned missile defense would negate that ability, Beijing feels. That might cause it to boost its missile forces, causing the arms race, Biden fears.
Biden called the missile defense plan "a massive shift in policy. For better or for worse, it will overturn a strategic doctrine that has kept the peace for over 40 years," and which "could increase the risk of a nuclear war."
He said that the US would be better served by pursuing policies that diffused the possibility of attacks by rogue states, notably the threat of massive military responses to any rogue state actions, and negotiations with such states as North Korea to reduce their threats.
"When we speak directly, and back up our words with military forces, even rogue states understand," Biden said.
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