By Wade Huntley and Robert Brown, Nautilus Institute (Editor's Note: A new FPIF policy brief by Wade Huntley and Robert Brown of the Nautilus Institute points to two foreign policy issues that will quickly spark major foreign policy debates inside the new administration, namely its promise to develop a missile defense system and its China policy. While most of the focus of current discussion about missile defense is on national missile defense--a variation of the Star Wars system proposed by the Reagan team--Huntley and Brown make the case that the pursuit of an aggressive theater missile defense system in East Asia could lead to new U.S.-China military tensions and preempt important proposals for the establishment of new common security regimes in the Asia-Pacific region. Their policy analysis is excerpted here and posted in its entirety at: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol6/v6n03taiwan.html) Longstanding cold war fears that missile defenses would destabilize nuclear deterrence led the United States and the Soviet Union to conclude the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in 1972. Nevertheless, in the U.S., the attractions of missile defense endure, fueled most recently by the apparent Gulf War successes of the Patriot missiles and by perceived threats of long-range missile launches by so-called rogue states. There are several levels of missile defenses. Lower-tier theater missile defense (TMD) weapons, such as the Patriot, attempt to intercept shorter-range missiles as they descend toward their targets. Upper-tier TMD weapons (now under development) aim to intercept missiles while they are still above the atmosphere, thus protecting wider areas of territory. Current leading upper-tier proposals include the land-based Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and the Navy Theater Wide (NTW) system, which would be deployed on Aegis destroyers. National Missile Defense (NMD) focuses on defending North America from intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Unlike the more ambitious SDI (Star Wars) program promoted by the Reagan administration, the recently postponed Clinton administration NMD proposal would have deployed interceptors on North American soil to protect against a small number of ICBMs. TMD and NMD proposals are more intricately linked than is often recognized. Although a key locus of these linkages in the Asia-Pacific region is China, the impact of proposed missile defenses on China is not sufficiently recognized. With a coalescing mandate to protect U.S. troops and fleets abroad, TMD development has proceeded without much scrutiny by U.S. citizens. The more rigorous NMD debate has focused mostly on the degrees of missile threats posed by states such as the DPRK (North Korea), NMDs potential impact on U.S.-Russia relations,and the merits of the ABM treaty. Chinas concerns over both NMD and TMD, while differentiated and nuanced, fall generally into three categories. A major Chinese concern is TMDs potential application to Taiwan. Many in Beijing believe that only Chinas threat to use force deters an overt declaration of independence by Taiwan. Though many analysts doubt that China could successfully invade Taiwan to suppress independence, Taiwan is clearly vulnerable to Chinas short-range missile force. Deployment of TMD in or near Taiwan would reduce Chinas ability to use missile threats to politically intimidate Taiwans leaders. Moreover, any U.S. role in such deployment would signal (to both Taipei and Beijing) a greater likelihood of U.S. military support of Taiwan in the event of overt conflict. Thus, China worries that TMD deployment would bolster Taiwanese independence sentiments. A second Chinese concern is the impact of TMD in East Asia. Currently, the U.S. and Japan are collaborating to develop TMD to protect Japanese targets against regional missile attacks, most specifically from the DPRK. Chinese analysts are not persuaded that the DPRK threat is so grave, and so U.S.-Japan TMD collaboration exacerbates Chinese fears that both countries seek less constraint to act against China. The strengthening of the U.S.-Japan Defense Guidelines, which conspicuously fail to define the geographic boundaries within which events could lead to joint U.S.-Japan military operations, underscores this Chinese perception. These two concerns are directly linked. U.S.-Japan TMD planning now favors the NTW system, which would be deployed on Aegis cruisers that could be moved near Taiwan in the event of a conflict there. Hence, for China, NTW deployment in Japan would provide implicit TMD protection to Taiwan. Chinese leaders additionally worry that such deployment, combined with the open-ended regional scope of the U.S.-Japan defense guidelines, would open the door to direct Japanese involvement in a China-Taiwan conflict. Chinas third concern focuses on U.S. NMD plans. China is undertaking long-term modernization and expansion of its strategic nuclear forces, which U.S. strategic analysts perceive as a latent threat. Still, Chinas nuclear force will remain relatively small, and the U.S. will retain a massive retaliation deterrent. Hence, even in the event of direct U.S.-China military conflict, the prospects of China launching nuclear missiles against the U.S. will remain slim. Nevertheless, Chinas nuclear capabilities are a meaningful coercive instrument politicallyhowever remote the prospect, Pentagon war planners must still reckon with Chinas possible use of nuclear weapons directly against the United States. U.S. NMD deployment would act to mitigate the political utility of this threat. This concern is linked to the first two. NMD would moderate Pentagon defense planners concerns over escalation in the event of U.S. intervention in Taiwan or other U.S.-China regional conflicts. NMD capability would also add enormously to these planners perceptions of policy flexibility on many issues, including Taiwan. China would, they reason, perceive its coercive influence over the United States to have diminished, and the United States would thus have an expanded freedom to maneuver. (Wade Huntley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> and Robert Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> are program director and program assistant for the Global Peace and Security Program at the Nautilus Institute.) Sources for More Information Websites and Organizations The Acronym Institute http://www.acronym.org.uk/ ACT Online Edition http://www.armscontrol.org/ACT/act.html Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies http://www.apcss.org/pub.html Asia Today http://www.asiasource.org/news/at_mp_01.cfm Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVL-AsianStudies.html BASIC http://www.basicint.org/ Bellona Foundation http://www.bellona.no/imaker/ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists http://www.bullatomsci.org/ Carnegie Non-Proliferation Project: Whats New http://www.ceip.org/programs/npp/nppnew.htm Center for Defense Information http://www.cdi.org/ The Center for Strategic & International Studies http://www.csis.org/ DefenseLINKOfficial Website of the U.S. Department of Defense http://www.defenselink.mil/ East Asian Regional Security Futures: Theater Missile Defense Implications Conference Report and Papers http://www.nautilus.org/nukepolicy/tmd-conference/index.html Federation of American Scientists http://www.fas.org/ Global Beat http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/ Global Peace & Security Program The Nautilus Institute http://www.nautilus.org/security/ Janes Information Group Home Page http://www.janes.com/ Mainland Affairs Council http://www.mac.gov.tw/english/ National Bureau of Asian Research http://www.nbr.org/ Peoples Daily http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/home.html Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council http://www.ransac.org/ Security in the Asia-Pacific Region A List of Sources http://russia.shaps.hawaii.edu/security/ Taiwan Communique http://www.taiwandc.org/twcom/ United States Institute of Peace Highlights http://www.usip.org/usip.html _______________________________________________ Crashlist website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
