Chinese Arms Deals Export Nuclear Terror

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 17, 2000 | by Edward Timperlake, | William II Triplett

Vice President Al Gore has a lot riding on Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's recent emergency trip to China. The cover story for her flight to Beijing has something vaguely to do with North Korea and South Korea, but her real predicament is the recent publicity surrounding China's escalating arms sales to Pakistan and other dangerous locations. If she can't throw a blanket over Beijing's arms-smuggling between now and the election, Gore is in real trouble.

For some time the U.S. intelligence community has known that Chinese communist nuclear-missile and arms smuggling has been increasing dramatically. By whatever means, private information from the Clinton administration relating to Chinese nuclear weapons and missile sales to Pakistan has made its way to MSNBC, the Washington Times and the Far Eastern Economic Review.

What we now know:

* U.S. military and intelligence officials now estimate Pakistan's nuclear-strike capability is five times that of India. This represents a reassessment in the order of 500 percent.

* Right now, Communist China secretly is building a second M-class ballistic-missile plant in Pakistan. When this comes online, it will be able to increase Pakistan's nuclear-missile stockpile by an additional 100 percent.

What does this mean? Previously the United States had estimated that the balance of nuclear terror between Pakistan and India was roughly comparable, with India having something of a slight edge. Now we have realized the tilt is much more dramatically toward Pakistan, perhaps as much as 5-1. Pakistan is not an enemy of the United States; the problem is its running conflict with India. When India's parliament returns, we can anticipate a call by political figures in New Delhi to match Pakistan, warhead for warhead, missile for missile. In short, the most dangerous part of the world is about to get a whole lot worse.

Second, we know that Communist China's military companies have provided Pakistan with the complete strategic weapons cycle: fissile materials, weaponization and missile-delivery system. Whatever Pakistan has, it's stamped "Made in China" or, to a lesser extent, "Made in China by way of North Korea." If Pakistan has five times as much offensive nuclear-warfare capability as we thought it had, then Chinese proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is five times higher.

Third, if Chinese arms-smuggling to Pakistan is fivefold what we originally estimated, how good are our estimates of Chinese nuclear-arms sales to North Korea? Iran? Syria? Libya? Iraq? What about our estimates of Chinese germ-warfare sales to Iran and other places? All our current estimates of Chinese proliferation to terrorist nations and others have to be labeled "Suspect. To be reassessed."

Finally, Beijing's past smuggling activities and its brazen present missile-building program in Pakistan demonstrate the complete bankruptcy of the Clinton-Gore administration's antiproliferation efforts. Seven-and-a-half years of failure. Gore already is in trouble on proliferation. In 1992, he sponsored legislation, the "Gore-McCain Act," that would have penalized Chinese companies for selling cruise missiles to Iran. He has never explained why he has not enforced his own legislation even once.

Here is where life gets very interesting for the secretary of state. This week she has to convince Beijing to stop its arms-smuggling to terrorist nations and other hot spots, at least until Election Day. The M-class missile plant, now under construction, would be at the top of her "cease-and-desist" order. Because of all the Chinagate horrors associated with the administration, she has no credibility, no leverage, with the Chinese communists. Her only hope is to remind the Chinese that they want Gore to be elected president so their interests can be protected for another four years.

Lying in wait, ready to torpedo the entire affair, is Republican Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee. "Permanent normal trade relations," or PNTR, has passed the House and is pending in the Senate. Thompson has announced that when PNTR comes up for a vote, he will offer his "China Nonproliferation Act" as an amendment. The Thompson amendment would require the president to penalize Chinese entities for smuggling weapons of mass destruction, cruise missiles and other advanced conventional weapons.

Violation of the Thompson amendment by Chinese entities would result in denial of permission to sell stock on Wall Street, among a list of penalties. Former Reagan White House official Roger Robinson and his human-rights allies recommended the Wall Street prohibition to Thompson. If implemented, it would cost the Chinese arms merchants much more than they derive from missile sales to Pakistan. Under the circumstances, it is hard to see how the Clinton-Gore administration could claim it is okay for Communist China to continue selling "end of the world"-type weapons to terrorist nations or other enemies of the United States.

As more and more of Beijing's arms smuggling surfaces in the newspapers and the Thompson amendment becomes the pending business before the Senate, the Gore campaign has to hope Albright can pull off a miracle in Beijing.