20101022 Ex-US Navy chief calls for tougher stance on China

Ex-US Navy chief calls for tougher stance on China

CONCESSIONS:The former commander of the Pacific Fleet said the US must do more to counter Chinese tactics keeping the US from defending its own interests

By William Lowther / Staff Reporter in WASHINGTON

A top US military figure has declared that China’s continuing missile buildup opposite Taiwan — despite progress on economic and political relations — makes no sense unless Beijing “is preparing for war against the only Chinese democracy.”

Retired admiral James Lyons, former commander in chief of the US Pacific Fleet and senior US military representative to the UN, said: “After a year of dallying, the [US President Barack] Obama administration has started to stand up to China, but it is not doing enough.

“Its January arms-sales package to Taiwan was empty without F-16s and submarines,” he said.

Writing in the Washington Times, Lyons said it should be clear by now that the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army refuse to value building military-to-military relationships as does the US.

“The more we stress this goal, the more China is simply going to use it as a means to force US concessions. Two presidents have failed to approve the sale of new F-16 aircraft and new conventional submarines to Taiwan in hopes that China will moderate its aggressive actions,” he said.

“China deftly employs the same psychology to prevent the US from defending its interests in the useless six-party talks on North Korea while China’s increasing support for North Korea allows Pyongyang’s nuclear threat to grow,” Lyons said.

On the other hand, Lyons said China has no problem with advancing its priorities, which start with building the most powerful military in Asia as a direct challenge to the US.

“As China faces no ostensible threat, its accelerating military buildup cannot be allowed to go unchecked. The Chinese have begun testing an Anti-ship Ballistic Missile system at the same time suspicion grows that it is putting multiple warheads on its Inter- Continental Ballistic Missiles, which should raise concerns over the START treaty with Russia,” he wrote.

He called for the Obama administration to increase US military capabilities in the Western Pacific and to organize multinational political and economic pressure that could help accelerate China’s evolution from communism.

Lyons’ commentary comes as the Washington-based International Assessment and Strategy Center this week published a study by Richard Fisher, a leading expert on the Chinese military. It condemns the Obama administration for proposing to lift restrictions and allow the use of C-130 cargo aircraft for oil spill response operations in Chinese waters.

He said it represented a new turn in attempts to relax laws that imposed an embargo on arms sales to China following the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Fisher points out that there is no oil spill right now that requires the use of C-130s off the coast of China and that instead, Obama may be considering “rewarding” China for reviving stalled military-to-military dialogue with some relaxation in arms embargoes.

“China’s abhorrence of military transparency, its refusal to abide by Western proliferation norms and its continued support for both the North Korean and Iranian harbingers of an age of nuclear terrorism, are likely to remain unchanged by gestures such as relaxing Tiananmen sanctions,” he wrote.

“After 21 years the Tiananmen sanctions have not prevented China’s near arrival at the status of military superpower,” he wrote.

“Over this time, China has used its accumulating power to threaten democracy in Taiwan, to intimidate most of its neighbors and to challenge Washington’s strategic superiority in the Western Pacific,” he wrote.

“The real source of Western concerns about military or other high technology cooperation with China starts with the character of the Communist Party regime and its treatment of the Chinese people,” Fisher said.