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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 11:08am Apr 4, 2001 EST (#1972 of 1972)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

" China's basic position was laid out in Jiang Zemin's speech of January 30, 1995. He endorsed Deng Xiaoping's formula for unification of "one country, two systems," and said that both sides should seek direct sea, air, mail, and trade links, since the role of Hong Kong as intermediary would come to an end in 1997. He also officially sought to end "the state of hostility between the two sides." Significantly, the Communist government fully and publicly endorsed the formula of "one China, two governments," a position that it had explicitly rejected in the Shanghai Communiqué of February 28, 1972.

" In effect, Jiang said to Taiwan, let us sit down and talk about ending hostilities between the two regions of China; reunification can wait until the time is right. China's objective is to forestall the nightmare of not only an independent Taiwan, but one that is brought into being through U.S. and Japanese manipulation. Its new priorities are to prevent Taiwanese independence, and only then to promote reunification.

" Unfortunately for both peace and realism, the Taiwanese have had some success in encouraging the idea of American military intervention. It is extremely unlikely that the American people would ever support a war with China to protect Taiwan. But even though no American interests are involved, and even though intervention would engulf Americans in a quagmire as passionate and long-lasting as the Anglo-Irish civil war, U.S. bungling of China policy has made this outcome possible.

" Taiwan's chosen instruments in this campaign have been its refurbished and wealthy China Lobby, and its ability to exploit American sentimentality about China after Tiananmen. As Henry Kissinger put it in a speech on March 25, 1996, to the National Committee on U.S.­China Relations: "Those in both parties so eager to launch America on a collision course with the most populous and potentially most powerful country in Asia should reflect on the consequences. . . . Using its economic leverage to lobby extensively, it [Taiwan] has tried to move America from support for a peaceful solution to near-participation in a Chinese civil war that has lasted more than a half-century."

And now it has gotten worse.

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