Missile shield may
spark PRC nuclear weapons upgrade
Reuters, VIENNA
China may need to modernize its nuclear arsenal to respond to the destabilizing
effect of a planned US-backed missile defense system, a senior Chinese military
officer said on Wednesday.
¡§It undermines the strategic stability,¡¨ Major General Zhu Chenghu (¦¶¦¨ªê) of
China¡¦s National Defence University said about the US-led development of a
missile shield, which has also alarmed Russia.
¡§We have to maintain the credibility of deterrence,¡¨ he said on the sidelines of
a panel discussion on nuclear disarmament, referring to the military doctrine
that an enemy will be deterred from using nuclear arms as long as he can be
destroyed as a consequence.
The US is spending about US$10 billion a year to develop, test and deploy
missile defenses, which would include a European shield as part of a layered
system.
The defenses would also include ship-based interceptors that could be deployed
in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region ¡X for instance as a hedge against
North Korea ¡X plus ground-based missile interceptors in silos in Alaska and
California.
The US says the system in Europe ¡X which is to be deployed in four phases by
about 2020 ¡X is intended to counter a potential threat from Iran and poses no
risk to Russia.
However, Moscow says the interceptors that the US and NATO are deploying would
be able to destroy its own warheads in flight by about 2018, upsetting the
post-Cold War balance of power. The comments by Zhu ¡X who stirred controversy in
2005 by suggesting China could use nuclear weapons if the US intervened
militarily in a conflict over Taiwan ¡X indicated this is an argument that also
resonates in China.
China ¡§will have to modernize its nuclear arsenal¡¨ because the deployment of a
missile defense system ¡§may reduce the credibility of its nuclear deterrence,¡¨
Zhu told the seminar.
¡§Therefore Beijing will have to improve its capabilities of survival,
penetration ... otherwise it is very difficult for us to maintain the
credibility of nuclear deterrence,¡¨ he added.
Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a global security
foundation, said any US military planner in Zhu¡¦s position would say the same.
Planned anti-missile systems and other advanced weapons in the future could
¡§make it theoretically possible for the US to launch a first strike on China,
knock out most of its 40 or so long-range missiles and intercept any left that
were launched in response,¡¨ he said.
¡§Missile defenses, however benign they appear to the side building them, always
force other nations to improve and increase their offensive weapons,¡¨ Cirincione,
who also took part in Wednesday¡¦s discussion in Vienna, said in an e-mail.
The European system is to include interceptor missile installations in Poland
and Romania, a radar in Turkey, and interceptors and radars on ships based in
the Mediterranean.
The US and Russia hold the vast majority of the world¡¦s nuclear weapons. China,
France and Britain are the three other officially recognized nuclear-armed
countries, but their arsenals are much smaller.
China closely guards information about its nuclear weapons. However, the US
Department of Defense has said that China has about 130 to 195 deployed
nuclear-capable ballistic missiles.
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