|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Chinese General’s Nuke Threat Reverberates in U.S.
U.S. concern over China’s nuclear arsenal is growing in light of the recent warning by Gen. Zhu Chenghu of a potential nuclear attack on the United States if Washington interferes militarily in China’s dispute with Taiwan, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday (see GSN, July 29). Zhu made “a serious point which needs to be taken seriously by planners on both sides,” said Chas Freeman, a former senior U.S. Defense Department official who helped revive defense dialogue with Beijing. “I don’t think it was a threat of any kind or represents policy. I think it represented an analytical point,” Freeman said. “What it shows is that there has not been enough thinking on both sides about the implications of an escalation in a Taiwan crisis,” he said. China has deployed a new fixed and a new mobile nuclear ICBM system, and is preparing to deploy a longer-range mobile ICBM and a new long-range submarine-launched ballistic missile within five years, said Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center. Three of these may contain multiple warheads, he added. Beijing is also preparing to acquire 50 to 60 attack submarines, some of them nuclear, Fisher said. “There is little doubt that China’s military leadership wants the U.S. to believe that it will use nuclear weapons against the U.S. should it rise to defend democratic Taiwan from Chinese attack,” Fisher said. Despite Beijing’s comments to the contrary, China could launch a nuclear weapon before it is attacked, said Eric McVadon, a former defense attach‚ at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. “It is not a simple straightforward question as to whether, under all circumstances, China would never under any situation use nuclear weapons first,” he told AFP. “So, we probably shouldn’t completely ignore General Zhu’s words and remember in that context,” said McVadon, a part-time director of Asia-Pacific studies at the U.S. Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Aug. 3).
| ||||||||||
Back to top
