Gordon Thomas
America’s military planners have started to prepare for its ultimate showdown
– with the emerging super-power of China.
This follows a detailed briefing paper prepared by the CIA and five other US
intelligence agencies for President Bush. The 70-page document identifies China
as the world’s major nuclear threat facing the United States.
"China is expected to have between 75 and 100 long-range nuclear missiles
targeted on the United States by 2015", states the report.
Each missile would have a destructive force ten times more powerful than the
bombs which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The weapons would have a range
capable of hitting any target in the United States.
The report says that currently China has some 30 such missiles. Many of these
are sited close to China’s border with North Korea.
MI6 have already warned Tony Blair that China may have provided North Korea
with a sufficient quantity of plutonium to build a "dirty nuclear bomb" that
would be triggered by conventional explosives.
China has also provided some
of its own nuclear scientists to work at North Korea’s Yongbyon’s own
bomb-making plant.
But it is the threat that China itself poses which has now become a prime
preoccupation for Pentagon planners in the New Year.
A senior Pentagon official confirmed last week that there had been "a
paradigm shift in our future military strategy in terms of China".
"It is one in which US forces are preparing for war with China", added Dr
Richard Berry, a senior defence analyst at Washington’s Centre for
Defence.
The hawkish Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, has told senior aides that
he believes conflict with China will come before the end of the decade.
One of his aides said last week: "when President Bush identified his "axis of
evil" and named North Korea, he was firing a warning shot at Beijing. The
reality is that China is only giving lip-service to the war against
terrorism".
The threat China poses has been exacerbated by the deepening military
alliance between Moscow and Beijing. Last year, CIA analysts calculated that
Russia sold $3 billion of state-of-the-art arms to China. These include missiles
specially designed to sink US carriers now assembling in the Gulf.
But most disturbing of all for Washington is that its neighbour, Canada, has
already become the launch pad for a multi-billion assault by China against
America.
A report jointly prepared by Canada’s Secret Intelligence Service and the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police reveals that Chinese "front" companies are
increasing all the time in Canada.
"They are used to smuggle heroin into Canada – and then into America. Canada
is also key to the lucrative human smuggling trade. This runs out of the Far
East into Europe and then into Canada. From there women and children are shipped
across the border into the United States", said Brian McAdam.
He is an
internationally renowned expert on the Chinese Triads – networks of professional
criminals dating back to Imperial times.
"The Chinese government are working with the Triads to destabilise anywhere
they can", McAdam said from his home in Ottawa.
He said that Triad activities are on the increase in both Britain and
Ireland. In the past years there have been a number of Triad-related killings in
Dublin.
Michael Juneau, who was the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service chief in the
Pacific says that: "China is not going for a business monopoly. They are going
for world hegemony".
"It is a threat the West can no longer afford to
ignore", said McAdam.
7. januar 2003. godine
