US and Chinese Nuclear and Missile Development: the Risk of Accidental Nuclear War

Extract

[Japan Focus introduction: Among the various explanations for the collapse of the Soviet Union, a popular argument has been that the US escalated the arms race with Moscow to the point that it broke the bank in Russia, finally leading to the collapse of the Soviet empire. China has been determined to avoid that trap. Overwhelmingly out-gunned by the United States in every conceivable aspect of military hardware, the PRC from its earliest years to the present has struggled with vital security problems of how to defend itself from the American superpower. One important answer has been to build a minimum second-strike nuclear capability to confront American strategists with the fact of mutual vulnerability to nuclear attack. However, the Bush administration's strategy of preventive war, in its relentless search for absolute security, has created a new and more dangerous situation for China. US plans to revitalize its nuclear weapons program, to build missile defenses, and to press on toward weaponizing outer space, threaten to undermine the viability of China's nuclear deterrent. The modernization of China's strategic defenses can best be understood as a comprehensive, asymmetrical response to the American challenge. But will that response set off a further arms race in an Asia Pacific region fraught with tensions and nuclear aspirations? The following report is reprinted from Defense News, a major organ of the US Defense establishment and its arms manufacturers. Characteristic of this genre, it makes no mention of expansive US missile development. Peter Van Ness]