BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
Beijing is taking steps to counter plans by Washington to
encircle China's southern flank with a network of satellite
radar and anti-missile weapons. The U.S. government moves are
putting Washington on a collision course with the Chinese
workers state.
This is unfolding as the White House has pressed a militarization drive under the guise of facing alleged threats from "rogue states" - with the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea (DPRK) topping the list -and "terrorists." The real aim is to maintain Washington's military superiority vis-a-vis its imperialist allies, who are also competitors, and to prepare U.S. forces for possible military interventions into countries where U.S. imperialism has been unable to reestablish the domination of capitalist social relations by other means - from the former Soviet Union, to north Korea, and China.
On January 21 U.S. defense secretary William Cohen announced that the White House projects spending nearly $7 billion for a national antiballistic missile system that would purportedly give it complete capability to destroy enemy missiles carrying nuclear warheads. This system would give the U.S. rulers first- strike nuclear capacity. Clinton administration officials have been publicly debating plans to include Seoul, Tokyo, and Taiwan under this nuclear shield.
Front-page articles in the big-business press on February 11 claimed that Beijing has deployed hundreds of missiles aimed at Taiwan in response to Washington's moves.
"Taiwan said Wednesday [February 10] that China had recently deployed more than 100 ballistic missiles in provinces facing this island nation of 21 million people," said an article in the Washington Post.
"Western diplomats, who corroborated the report, said the deployment more than tripled the number of missiles previously believed to be in that area," the Post continued. "The step constituted, they said, China's response to talk in Washington about placing parts of Asia, including Taiwan, under an American missile-defense umbrella.
"The U.S. proposals, which are so far only in the planning stages, are roiling the waters of American-Chinese relations and providing the most significant challenge to Washington's emerging security ties with the world's most populous nation since a face-off over Taiwan three years ago."
In 1996, Beijing staged military exercises off the coast of Taiwan, reaffirming its right to reunite with the island, a right acknowledged by Washington in 1972 following talks by then- U.S. president Richard Nixon and Chinese premier Chou En-lai. Taiwan is where the defeated forces of the reactionary Chang-Kai Chek regime fled after the victory of the Chinese revolution in 1949. Since then, the capitalist rulers of Taiwan have tried unsuccessfully to win international recognition of Taiwan as an independent nation. Three years ago, Taipei also staged military maneuvers in response to Beijing's moves and Washington sent a U.S. navy warship passing through the Taiwan Strait.
Last August the Clinton administration proposed bringing the militaries of Japan and south Korea into a scheme of land-, sea- , and air-based equipment designed to locate and destroy missiles based in China and north Korea. Tokyo has already agreed to join the so-called Theater Missile Defense (TMD) system.
Washington claims that the TMD is needed to protect its 45,000 troops stationed in Japan and the 37,000 GIs deployed in south Korea, as well as other regimes in Asia subservient to U.S. dictates.
U.S. government officials claim the system is specifically designed to counter military threats from "rogue" states such as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). Under the proposed system, however, Washington could deploy Patriot-3 missiles, radar, and other early warning equipment in Taiwan - a direct threat to the Chinese workers state.
Seeking to avoid a direct military confrontation with Beijing for now, White House officials have stated they want to maintain a "strategic dialogue" with China.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said at a news conference Washington's missile program would undermine regional security. It "will have a comprehensive and far reaching impact on the strategic balance and stability of the region and world at large in the 21st century." Sun said Clinton's planned national missile system violates the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty signed by Washington and Moscow in 1972. The treaty presumed that neither state would launch nuclear-armed missiles against the other if it lacked the means to block retaliation. Sun said the ABM treaty "should be strictly complied with."
Washington has pressed to renegotiate the terms of the treaty with Moscow to take into account its proposed national missile system. Cohen said either government could pull out of the ABM treaty after giving six months' notice "if a party concludes it's in its supreme national interest."
A the same time, the major media in the United States have given ample space to Washington's campaign of military threats against the DPRK. The February 3 New York Times described north Korea as one of the "rogue states that could hit the United States with ballistic missiles with little or no warning."
During a meeting in late January with the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. John Tilleli, commander of the U.S. military in south Korea, said he expects some sort of "emergency" in the Korean peninsula this spring, according to the February 3 Wall Street Journal. Tilleli spoke of "the prospect of an escalating military confrontation between Pyongyang and Washington" that would "bring the Korean peninsula to the brink of war," the Journal stated.
"I can hardly overstate my concern about north Korea," CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate Armed Services Committee February 2. "The situation there has become more volatile and unpredictable."
Tenet claimed Pyongyang's economic problems would push it toward "risky brinksmanship with the U.S."
The Clinton administration has scheduled a meeting in Seoul in mid-February to discuss "the growing military threat from North Korea," the New York Times reported February 7. The meeting will include talks with Tokyo and the south Korean government on military cooperation, an alleged underground nuclear weapons facility in north Korea, and the DPRK's launching of a rocket that flew over Japan last August.