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March/April 2004, Volume 60, No. 2, pp. 21-23
OPINION
China: Weighing the costs
When the United States abandons arms
control, the whole world loses opportunities for greater security and
economic growth.
When the former Soviet Union, seen as the greatest rival to
U.S. security, disintegrated at the end of the Cold War, the United States
suddenly possessed a great surplus of military power and potential. The
rational U.S. reaction to this change was to reap the dividend of peace by
furthering arms control efforts--taking the opportunity to solve security
problems more cheaply while simultaneously freezing the military capacities
of other countries at relatively inferior levels. Over three successive U.S.
administrations, that of the senior Bush and the first and second Clinton
terms--arms control was promoted.
A series of agreements were concluded during that 12-year
period: the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START), the Chemical Weapon
Convention (CWC), and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Some existing
treaties, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), whose duration
was extended indefinitely, were strengthened. Some unilateral arms control
initiatives, echoed and encouraged by others, were also launched--for
example, tactical nuclear weapon reductions were taken by both the United
States and Russia.
Other countries were also excited by opportunities to make
cooperative global security arrangements that allowed them to focus more on
economic and social development.
In China, significant positive changes in arms control
policy took place during the period: A substantial part of Chinese defense
facilities and industry were converted to civilian uses; Chinese military
personnel were reduced by 1.5 million; and China actively joined the CWC and
CTBT negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. It concluded a
number of confidence-building measures with its neighbors and began to join
international nonproliferation regimes or passed laws in keeping with those
regimes. More importantly, a number of arms control cadres favoring
cooperative security approaches were created.
China’s active involvement in arms control had
significant benefits. Its security was enhanced in a cost-efficient way.
China put more resources into economic and social development, which helped
raise living standards. And a friendly international environment encouraged
more progress in democracy development and human rights protection in China.
Similar benefits accrued in many other countries and regions
when arms control progressed quickly during the late 1980s and the first half
of the 1990s.
The whole world expected that arms control efforts
would move forward quickly so we could reap an even greater peace dividend
and build a safer world. More recently, though, global arms control has
encountered serious frustrations. This is partially because of complicated
and unstable security factors in some regions, but also because of the
emergence of a school of thought that is sometimes called “offensive
realism,” which developed in the United States after the end of the
Cold War.
Offensive realists believe that U.S. military superiority
allows it to take a more aggressive strategic posture, relieving it of the
need to rely on international cooperation to address security problems.
Offensive realists desire to preemptively destroy emerging security threats
rather than reduce such threats through arms control. They believe U.S.
military power is sufficiently strong that international cooperation and
institutions are unnecessary. They also believe that arms control efforts
have a negative effect on U.S. security: first, because they constrain U.S.
flexibility of response in unpredictable situations; and second, because arms
control agreements may shield cheating by other countries.
Offensive realists do not worry that U.S. military buildups
may initiate new arms races. Instead, they believe that other
countries’ attempts to compete will be deterred by U.S. technical and
economic advantages or defeated by continuous U.S. improvements in arms
development. Although the offensive realists do not feel that military
buildup is always necessary, they do not like institutionalized weapons
limits or reductions. They prefer to replace enduring arms control agreements
with flexible unilateral understandings that allow the United States to
reverse the process at any time. Anti-arms control is a main feature of
offensive realism, and by the late 1990s its practitioners’ influence
had expanded so significantly that U.S. policy had become hostile toward arms
control.
The first remarkable success of this school was the
abolition of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, a branch of the
executive government in charge of arms control. Next, the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty was rejected by the U.S. Senate. Offensive realists also pushed
for quick deployment of a nationwide missile defense, requiring the
abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM). These negative moves
in arms control disappointed both American arms controllers and the
international community, but efforts to curb the trend have not worked
effectively.
Once President George W. Bush entered the White
House, offensive realism became ascendant in U.S. foreign policy-making. The
U.S. government began undoing global arms control regimes at an unbelievably
high speed. It denied the verification protocol of the Biological Weapon
Convention, cut funding for CTBT inspection research, shortened the preparatory
time to resume nuclear testing, withdrew from the ABM Treaty, raised the U.S.
military budget to a historic high, showed an interest in nuclear
war-fighting in the Nuclear Posture Review, and invested in research on a
penetrating nuclear warhead and a tactical nuclear weapon suitable for
nuclear war-fighting.
The only symbolic achievement in arms control during this
period was the signing of the Moscow Treaty. The initial idea of the Bush
administration was not to have a formal agreement, but for both the United
States and Russia to issue voluntary statements on nuclear reductions.
Although the Bush administration finally accepted a treaty because of
Russia’s insistence, it intentionally extracted the main substance of
the treaty.
The idea of eliminating security threats through military
preemption instead of arms control is fully embodied in the guiding document
of the Bush administration, the new U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS).
This document formally announces that the United States will use military
preemption to defend U.S. security interests and those of its allies and
friends.
The word “preemption” in the document has a much
stronger meaning than in usual uses. Usually a preemptive action refers to an
action taken when a military confrontation has occurred. The NSS provides for
preemptive action to be taken when potential rivals’ advanced military
capabilities are only emerging. Since it is difficult to judge the
seriousness of intent or threat at this stage, a preemptive strike may later
be proved to have been unnecessary or irrelevant. For example, no evidence
has been found to support the Bush administration’s claims about Iraqi
programs of weapons of mass destruction. This shows, on the one hand, that
the use of a preemptive strategy can lead to an abuse of U.S. military power;
on the other hand, it also causes many around the world to question the real
intentions of the United States.
Some believe that the U.S. intention in Gulf War II was
irrelevant to Iraqi weapons capabilities and instead was more about Middle
Eastern oil and the attainment of other selfish goals. For example, before
the United States launched the war, there were intensive public debates in
China about whether China should support the U.S. position. However, sympathy
faded quickly as the public tired of the war and American searchers failed to
find evidence of the weapons the Bush team had claimed Iraq had before the
war. This first test of the strategy of preemption does not seem to have been
beneficial, even according to the views of the offensive realists. The war
did not, in fact, destroy any existing programs or bases for weapons of mass
destruction. But it drove the rest of the world to doubt U.S. intentions and
has weakened U.S. leadership around the world.
The strategy of military preemption and its practice
in Iraq severely hurt the United Nations and many other international
security institutions. These institutions, based on international
cooperation, have been playing important roles in encouraging multilateral
dialogue, making security arrangements, verifying arms control and
nonproliferation agreements, peacekeeping, and confidence building. In the
past, the United States made major efforts to build, support, and strengthen
these institutions; in turn, they served U.S. interests at a cost much lower
than fighting wars. Nevertheless, the preemptive strategy and the contempt
the United States demonstrated for the United Nations over the issue of Iraq
suggests that the United States no longer considers the United Nations and
other international institutions important.
As a result, other countries are losing confidence in
international institutions, including arms control regimes, and instead are
pursuing self-help in addressing their own security problems. India and
Israel have borrowed the concept of preemption, and other countries seem
likely to follow. U.S. preemptive actions may be used by others to justify
unilateral approaches in dealing with their own security threats as well.
Although the National Security Strategy does not promote the
use of preemption as a pretext for aggression, it may overlook the complexity
of regional security; for example, in areas with unstable or undefined
boundaries, defining what is or is not aggression could be difficult.
Sometimes, ethnic and religious conflicts coupled with disputes between
countries add to the complexity of regional security. If preemption becomes
the popular choice, military conflicts will become more frequent--and by the
time the United States realizes that the National Security Strategy has
opened Pandora’s Box, it may be too late to go back.
The strategy of military preemption is also strengthening
threat perceptions in other countries--in China, for example. The NSS
emphasizes the U.S. commitment to Taiwan’s defense and advocates of the
NSS always assert that threats from mainland China are growing. According to
the NSS, the United States could conceivably launch a preemptive strike
against China for the sake of Taiwan.
Other documents issued by the Bush government seem to
support this possibility: The leaked Nuclear Posture Review defines seven
target countries, including China, and three scenarios involving potential
nuclear weapon use, including a response to the Taiwan problem. These documents,
as well as the incautious initiation of the Iraq War, represent a vague but
disquieting nuclear threat to China. In addition, the revival of U.S.
interest in low-yield tactical nuclear weapons has sharpened threat
perceptions.
These signals could disturb economic, social, and political
development in China by drawing greater attention to military affairs and
reducing China’s willingness to cooperate with the United States in
curbing proliferation in some regions--for example, on the Korean Peninsula.
It is in neither Chinese nor American interests for a chain of negative
security interactions between the two countries to be initiated.
A wise solution to these and other security dilemmas is
greater cooperation. The preemptive strategy advocated by offensive realists
has proved to be invalid in the case of Iraq. Arms control is a much more
effective and enduring solution to security problems. It would be worthwhile
for the United States to review the strategy of preemption and come back to
arms control. That would help bring true and enduring security to the United
States and to the world.
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