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China: Pentagon Says Chinese May Be Reconsidering No-First-Use Policy By Joe Fiorill The Pentagon said the review may be taking place despite China’s standing promise not to be the first side in a conflict to use nuclear weapons. “As China improves its strategic forces, despite Beijing’s ‘no-first-use’ pledge, there are indications that some strategists are reconsidering the conditions under which Beijing would employ theater nuclear weapons against U.S. forces in the region,” the report reads. The sentence is a rare addition to the content of last year’s version of the report, much of which is reproduced identically this year. The Defense Department said China also continues to acquire more ballistic missiles and long-range strike aircraft as it seeks to prepare itself for a potential war over Taiwan, which Beijing considers a breakaway province and the United States has committed to supporting militarily (see GSN, Sept. 10, 2002). The report says China is modernizing its military to “diversify its options for use of force” against targets including Taiwan “and to complicate United States intervention in a Taiwan Strait conflict.” Besides the warning on China’s no-first-use policy, the report also includes new items that bear on Beijing’s missile capabilities. After putting the number of China’s short-range ballistic missiles at approximately 350 last year, the department said China now has approximately 450 of the missiles, and that the number is likely to increase by about 75 per year over the near term. “The accuracy and lethality of this force also are increasing,” the report reads. In a related development, China is said to be developing variants of its CSS-6 short-range ballistic missile that could reach Taiwan or U.S. installations in Okinawa, Japan, depending on where they were deployed. In addition, the report says, the Chinese navy has “fully integrated” its first two Russian-made Sovremennyy-class guided missile destroyers and has contracted with Russia for two more of the destroyers. Experts within and outside the Defense Department said China seems more interested in seeking tools with which to coerce Taiwan and possibly the United States than in preparing any military offensive. In other highlights, the report indicates that China views the United States as its chief potential adversary in the region; that Beijing’s military spending may be as much as $65 billion a year, despite China’s announced spending of $20 billion (see GSN, March 5); and that China continues to rely heavily on Russia for military acquisitions, spending approximately $2 billion yearly — or twice as much as during the 1990s — on advanced Russian weapons systems. Experts Blast, Praise Report Critics of the Bush administration’s China policy called the report an exaggeration of Beijing’s military capabilities, while supporters said the administration is correcting a longstanding aversion in Washington to contemplating the gravity of the Chinese threat. “This is part of the here-come-the-Chinese contingent that’s trying to do with the Chinese what we did with the Soviet Union for many years, and that’s sort of magnify the Chinese threat,” said Ralph Cossa, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Pacific Forum. Cossa said the Pentagon’s China reports are less convincing, though, than its past demonstrations of Soviet power, which contained many graphics comparing Soviet and U.S. capabilities. “When you [create] a chart that shows [the difference between] American strategic bombers and Chinese strategic bombers, it’s laughable,” he said, adding that China relies on “antiquated equipment.” “There are certainly people in the Pentagon who are looking to justify another major threat,” Cossa said. “My guess,” he said of the report’s claim that China is reconsidering conditions for the use of theater nuclear weapons, “is that this is a very self-serving comment on the part of the Pentagon, which is itself looking for enhanced ways in which to make nuclear weapons useful.” Larry Wortzel, the Heritage Foundation’s vice president for foreign policy and defense studies, took a different view. “The Department of Defense is being very realistic in assessing just where the Chinese military is improving and the critical places where the Chinese military [indicates] the United States as its target, not Taiwan,” said Wortzel, who participated in a U.S. Congress-directed commission that assessed CIA intelligence on China. “It is no longer politically incorrect to say realistic things about the Chinese military,” Wortzel said. Wortzel supported the report’s finding that China’s development of greater short-range ballistic missile capabilities is meant in part to disrupt potential U.S. involvement in a conflict over Taiwan. “We’re not looking for a fight,” he said of the United States, “but if we have to get in one because they attack Taiwan, it’s going to cause us to be a little bit more careful.”
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