The China Syndrome

All eyes were on Russia yesterday as President Bush announced that the United States is withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to pursue its missile-defense program unfettered. How would the Kremlin react? Withhold support in the war against terrorism? Withdraw from other arms-control treaties, as it once threatened? Nope. Vladimir Putin accepted the fait accompli with only mild protest. The administration called his reaction "very encouraging." Another American foreign policy triumph!

Unfortunately, Russia was never the country to worry about anyway. As Putin pointed out, Russia's missiles could swamp the missile-defense system now planned, so Russia needn't fear America's using the shield in conjunction with an offensive strike. China is another story. With only a handful of ICBMs, it has theoretical cause for concern. It also has two other things the Russian government doesn't have right now: ample suspicion of the United States and enough money to salve that suspicion by building lots of nuclear missiles.

The administration has long known this. In fact, a few months ago, the New York Times reported that Bush had decided to drop all resistance to China's nuclear modernization program in exchange for China's accepting his missile-defense plans. (Subsequent administration "clarifications" failed to refute the thrust of the Times reporting.)

At the time, this decision didn't seem glaringly, spectacularly stupid, because "at the time" was before Sept. 11. Since 9/11, one would think, there might have been a re-evaluation. After all, preventing terrorists from getting a hold of weapons-grade nuclear materials has shot to the upper regions of our priority list. And there clearly is some correlation between the amount of nuclear-weapons development in the world and the chances of terrorists doing this.

But can't we trust China's Communist Party to keep its weapons program under tight control? Isn't control the one thing authoritarian governments are good at? You might have said the same thing about the Soviet Union 20 years ago. Then—poof!—things fell apart. And God knows China is entering a period of stress. Membership in the World Trade Organization will impel economic liberalization that is long-run auspicious but short-run dicey. Meanwhile, those Muslims in China's west won't get any less restive as the evolution of information technology continues its ongoing empowerment of subnational groups.

Leaving aside what happens in China, there is the much-discussed scenario in which a Chinese nuclear buildup leads to an Indian buildup, hence a Pakistani buildup, and so on. And, since 9/11, the prospect of more weapons-grade materials floating around in the Pakistani vicinity hasn't grown more appealing.

The other big post-9/11 problem with missile defense is the sheer diversion of resources. In the end, this system is going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. And 9/11 has given us lots of good rival candidates for money and energy, ranging from top-flight airport security to radically boosted global spying capacities to the sort of "nation building" that might change places like Somalia from terrorist hideouts to policeable states.

Given all the above, how does the Bush administration persist in its quest for missile defense in the wake of 9/11? Simple—just assert that 9/11 actually underscored the need for missile defense. "As the events of September the 11th made all too clear," Bush said yesterday, the greatest threats to America come "from terrorists who strike without warning, or rogue states who seek weapons of mass destruction."

Um, could you run the "rogue states" part by me again? I agree that their seeking weapons of mass destruction is a big problem. But the problem is their giving the weapons to terrorists, not their sending the weapons over on a missile, with a return address. Indeed, if there was ever any doubt in Saddam Hussein's mind about how launching a nuclear strike would affect his life expectancy, the war in Afghanistan has presumably dispelled it. And as for that keystone of missile-defense logic—that some offbeat national leader like Hussein might actually welcome dying in a retaliatory strike—9/11 and its aftermath have only confirmed the principle that martyrdom is something political leaders encourage but don't indulge in; pawns like Mohammed Atta immolate themselves, while alpha males like Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar head for the hills. (Bin Laden could yet choose spectacular suicide if the alternative is getting killed ingloriously by an Afghan soldier, but the fact that he bothered to assassinate Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud before downing the twin towers indicates that he planned on surviving the blowback.)

I've argued in another context that the alleged conversion of George Bush from "unilateralist" to "multilateralist" has been greatly exaggerated. Yesterday's ABM announcement casts the conversion story into further doubt, a point made by Charles Krauthammer in this morning's Washington Post (though Bush's continued unilateralism, of course, puts Krauthammer in a rather more festive mood than it puts me in).

But, wait! The Bush administration said yesterday that it would engage Chinese leaders in high-level talks to soothe their fears about American intentions. Maybe this last-minute burst of multilateralism can head off an Asian arms race! Maybe so—but there was a simpler, cheaper, and better way to do that.

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Sunday, December 16, 2001; Page B01

It was a wonderful week for national missile defense. George W. Bush triumphantly announced he was taking a powder from the ABM Treaty that inhibits his progress to Star Wars. It was a terrible week for non-proliferation legislation, which had, in the Senate, another of its near-death experiences.

The goal in both enterprises, of course, is to protect us from attack, either nuclear or biological. They couldn't be more different in concept -- and cost. The president's beloved NMD, with all the bells and whistles, could bring in a bill in the neighborhood of $130 billion to $150 billion. Full funding of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program would come to $40 billion, according to former senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), who with Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) created the program calculated to bring Russian nuclear storage out of the used-car lot class.

Bush gave lip service to Nunn-Lugar in the campaign, but in the White House has not put his money where his mouth is. The president cut $40 million and later $73 million for bright ideas such as relocating unemployed and hungry Russian scientists to commercial ventures. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) points out that the Russians need our help to manage their enriched uranium supply. "These are materials which could be made into bombs in terrorist hands."

Nunn, who still enjoys an enormous reputation among his erstwhile colleagues, complains that we have never taken seriously enough the warning of a special task force created late in the Clinton administration. It was headed by two impeccably conventional figures, former Senate majority leader Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) and former Clinton White House counsel Lloyd Cutler. Their conclusion: Unsecured Russian weapons, materials and know-how comprise "the most urgent unmet national security threat to the U.S."

The Bush administration seems to regard the unglamorous Nunn-Lugar effort the way it regards conservation -- as something sissy. Real men drill -- they drill for oil in Alaska; they drill holes in Alaska to accommodate the hardware required for the Star Wars system.

Recently Biden mesmerized a Democratic caucus lunch with an account of a Russian biological weapons stockpile that was inspected by Nunn and Lugar. It looked like a chicken coop. Its only security was a padlock, Biden said.

But two days later, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to cut $46 million in Nunn-Lugar funds. Lugar hastily rounded up a high-level protest, recruiting Chairman Biden, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) to importune the members to remember we are in a war against terrorism, and a cut in funds could send a wrong signal. It worked.

Bush's announcement came at a particularly hectic moment. The movie of the week was a home video of bin Laden gloating over Sept. 11. The president didn't claim that NMD would have stopped our worst domestic tragedy. He only says that if these fiends get hold of missiles, we can handle them. We can, that is, if the contraption works. That's a big if, and an expensive one, but nobody seems to want to contradict George Bush these days.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Bush's new best friend, for instance, seemed extremely subdued. He said the decision to withdraw was "a mistake," but indicated it was one he could live with. Other Russian notables grumbled some, but not too convincingly, rumbling on about Putin's naivete in thinking that George Bush would make his life easier. Even the Chinese were quite polite in the end. After all, Uncle Sam is a good customer.

Nunn was ever the good soldier, sober and correct and presenting the positive view. The ABM Treaty allows a six-month grace period between notice of withdrawal and an actual departure. He expressed the hope that the interlude might be used by both sides to negotiate an agreement whereby Bush could press on without actually violating the treaty. Fat chance.

The reality check came from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, an unabashed, career-long Star Warrior. "I personally think," he said at his Thursday matinee, "that people ought to be relieved that this is behind us. It has been kind of a sticking point."

Over the past three months, we've had lots of time to think about what might have stopped the tragedy of Sept. 11. Air marshals on flights would have been a deterrent. The only thing we know for certain that could have stopped the carnage were locked cockpits. What we may need more than all the sensors and lasers and other high-tech paraphernalia is a tough and reasonable approach to Russia's starving scientists. We should be fashioning blood-curdling warnings that if they so much as look at terrorists who want to buy their talents, we'll stop at nothing to stop them.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

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