Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States
Appendix III: Unclassified Working Papers


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Gerrit W. Gong 1 : "Assessing the Ballistic Missile Threat: China-Japan-Korea-Taiwan Issues" Introduction This paper introduces for Rumsfeld Commissioner discussion policy elements relating to the Commission's mandate with respect to current issues and developments regarding U.S. interests within the regional context of China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan issues. The term China-Japan-Korea-Taiwan issues itself suggests organic connections, particularly in Beijing's perspective, for how past, present, and future relations among Beijing-Tokyo-Seoul-Pyongyang-Taipei connect. Indeed, a delicate interplay continues among U.S. forward-deployed Asian regional presence and developments in Japan, on the Korean peninsula, and across the Taiwan Strait. As underscored by the political-military discussion of more clearly defined U.S.-Japan defense guidelines, the current U.S.-Japan security structure primarily focuses on Korean peninsula and cross-strait contingencies. At the same time, significant regional changes, particularly structural changes on the Korean peninsula or in cross-strait relations, will affect the perceived dependability and sustainability of U.S. military presence in the region. This is all especially true with respect to the continuing, most sensitive issue in Sino-U.S. relations, one which may most directly touch on core security commitments, definitions of sovereignty, principles of self-determination, and other issues of importance to Washington and Beijing: the issue of Taiwan in Northeast Asian regional context. In this context, this paper suggests that Beijing may at present deliberately choose a form of soft strategic deterrence with the U.S. through a modest, minimally threatening intercontinental ballistic missile posture, making no pretensions toward strategic parity now or in the future if such facilitates China's gradually realizing its current objective of regional superiority sufficient to prevail should local, high-intensify conflict or protracted tensions arise. Such a current calculus does not rule out Beijing's seeking a longer-term capability to put more U.S. assets at greater risk, especially if and as China develops capability to do so within an efficient cost-benefit framework (as defined by Beijing). This continues the need for thorough-going discussion of how and whether Beijing's historical experience and self-definition provides a natural limit to China's future ballistic missile aspirations. Similarly, the need continues for careful analysis and monitoring of whether and how China's standing on the cusp of a new emergence on the world stage will alter Chinese ambitions with respect to ballistic missile capabilities, as Beijing improves its relative position within East and Southeast Asia. It also opens a new set of issues: the extent to which the modern globalized international system may perhaps subtly alter Beijing's perceptions of itself, perhaps leading on the one hand toward a less zero-sum approach on China's part, or alternatively on the other hand toward more globalized security concerns such as the need for ballistic missile or other military balancing with the U.S., Russia, India, Japan, the Koreas, or others. Even if, for any foreseeable future, Beijing's most expansive ambitions remain regional, it is still worth querying the compatibility of PRC and U.S. Asian regional interests, as potentially influenced by ballistic missile developments. The U.S. and its NATO allies were forced to take seriously Soviet attempts to develop conventional and possible nuclear superiority over Western Europe, including through the deployment of SS-20 missile systems. To what extent should the Commission consider circumstances under which the PRC develops sufficiently compelling pressure on its neighbors, including through ballistic missile developments, so as to undermine vital U.S. interests in East and Southeast Asia? China-Japan-Korea-Taiwan Issues 1. In Beijing's perspective, there are two essential organic connections among Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. 2. First is that Taiwan's separation is a bitter symbolic reminder of Japan's military successes at China's expense in the modern period. * This includes Taiwan's cession to Japan as a dictated condition of defeat following Japan's unprecedented military defeat of China during the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese war. It includes Japan's occupation of much of Northeast and coastal China after 1931 and particularly between 1937-1945, when Tokyo's strategic was seen as trying to break up and thereby weaken China. It includes contemporary Japanese strategic writings about Taiwan's strategic importance to Japan's energy, trade, and communication life-lines; Japan's alleged encouragement of Taiwan separatists; the education of leading Taiwanese and their ease in speaking Japanese (such as Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui), and the subsequent concern that Kyoto University might invite President Lee to an alumni reunion, re-posing the challenges of his Cornell visit. And it includes Beijing's suspicions of continuing Japan-U.S. efforts to playing a "Taiwan card" by maintaining and encouraging a separate if not independent Taipei, including through revised defense guidelines and potential theater missile defense. * This historical connection is also worth underscoring because it goes to the core of Chinese communist party mission, legitimacy, and memory. No doubt history and ideology entrench Taiwan policy within the Chinese political and policy system more deeply than might have otherwise been the case. To the extent strict adherence to Chinese communist party Taiwan policy is an inviolable touchstone of systemic political loyalty, it may be more difficult to change, even if and as cross-strait circumstances change. Paradoxically, the more-reform oriented senior Chinese leadership may be, the less room for maneuver they may be granted within their system on Taiwan. This "Zhongnanhai effect" on Taiwan policy suggests the further one might wish to stretch current economic orthodoxies, the more strictly one must adhere to established political ones, such as those regarding Taiwan. This does not preclude some tactical flexibility on Taiwan approaches (such as Jiang Zemin may have authorized with Tang Shubei's tantalizing unofficial hint that "one China" might refer to a future confederation rather than the "one China" currently espoused by either Beijing or Taipei). But it suggests that Beijing's long-term approach toward Taiwan may be as consistent and determined as stated in the three communiqués. * The emotion with which senior Chinese military officials and others describe Chinese concerns regarding Japan is intended to underscore Chinese memory, key points of domestic political unity, as well as to employ a "containment by guilt" approach to Tokyo and Washington. 3. The second organic connection between Japan, Korea, and Taiwan is that it was the outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula in June 1950 which likely prevented Mao Zedong from ordering the military campaign aimed at finally defeating a faltering Chiang Kai-shek. Although perhaps intended primarily to focus military resources on the Korean conflict, Eisenhower's interposing the 7th fleet in the Taiwan strait effectively granted the Kuomintang an opportunity to establish itself in Taiwan. The Korean war also sped Japan's economic recovery and the continued embargo on China's economic development during the Korean war and its aftermath. * To sum, particularly in the Chinese experience, U.S.-Japan relations, Korean peninsula developments, and cross-strait issues involving Taiwan are organically connected because they decisively shape the strategic environment in Northeast Asia, and remain inseparable from Beijing's positioning with respect to the U.S., Japan, the Koreas, and Taiwan. 4. Following President Lee Teng-hui's Cornell visit and Beijing's military and missile exercises of 1995 and 1996, China appears to have focused greater resources and attention--military, diplomatic, economic--toward pressuring Taiwan. 5. Internationally, Beijing is aggressively trying to isolate Taipei, including by portraying Taiwan as a "problem" for Washington and the world community to "solve" according to "established principles," the earlier the better, like Hong Kong. Cross-straits, Beijing is employing "united front strategies" to discern and increase political fault lines in Taiwan. With the U.S., Japan, and others, Beijing appears to be shifting from pursuing not only traditional, predominately de jure concerns over international nomenclature, to include de facto focus on actual power alignments. o This is evidenced in: a. Jiang Zemin's targeting of the U.S. "centers of political gravity"--Congress, Executive, intellectuals, overseas Chinese, finance and business community, media, and general public during his visit; b. Beijing's use of the Asian financial crisis to increase its regional status and position; c. Beijing's increasing and integrating its military acquisitions to deter U.S. involvement in cross-strait confrontation and to pressure Taiwan in psychological and asymmetrical warfare, including press accounts of recent emphasis on combined arms military training based on Taiwan scenarios and concentration of PRC ballistic missile assets opposite Taiwan. 5. Overall, Beijing seems to be approaching security developments in Japan, on the Korean peninsula, and across the Taiwan strait as they relate to the central Sino-U.S. relationship within the context of three major factors. 6. First, the next few years represent a potential watershed as China negotiate its international role and place. This period and process especially important for setting comprehensive relationship in Asia-Pacific, including U.S. relations with mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. o Continuing developments in the interplay of strategy, technology, and conduct of "smart conflict" broaden continuum for cooperation and conflict: security is increasingly intermeshed with perception management in economics, politics, finance, and society-to-society relations. o The intersection of regional jockeying for position and changing nature of competition outlined above underscores competition and cooperation across Taiwan Strait becoming more intense, subtle, and complex. This increases the need for skillfully integrated political-military-economic policy to manage issues, perceptions, and capabilities. o Beijing may also see (within the substantial risks of modernizing its state-owned-enterprises, banking system and financial structure, and the social stability and equity concerns that increased regional competitiveness may heighten) opportunities in the Asian financial crisis to improve its overall competitive position. This may encompass increasing availability of ballistic missile technologies, components, or manufacturing capabilities at continued bargain prices, with potentially greater commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) availability and cost, including the ability competitively to leverage availability among countries determined to maintain market in a competitive period. o Beijing may also seek benefit in: a. regional anti-U.S. and anti-western sentiments arising from U.S. insistence on strict IMF conditionalities and from Beijing's own significant and skillfully timed financial offers to assist Thailand, Korea, and others; b. relative position due to a potential decrease in Asian regional resources available for conventional arms modernization to other countries in the region; 7. Second, Beijing currently sees its long-term interests best served by a "constructive strategic partnership" with the U.S., rather than an openly hostile or primarily competitive relationship. This does not mean Beijing will not seek leverage, both direct and collateral with Washington, but that it will seek to keep such effort below the threshold that would cause the U.S. to treat China as a hostile country. 8. Third, specifically in terms of Taiwan (a factor which can but not necessarily must shape the Sino-U.S. relationship), Beijing is seeking at minimum to maintain a dynamic status, at maximum to set a framework and timetable which will channel the cross-strait situation over time to an acceptable conclusion, and in-between to see that domestic developments in Taiwan do not through miscalculation or mistrust increase tensions to the point they potentially spiral out of control so as to result in any situation in which China might not prevail. o At a time when "smart conflict" means both "smart" weapons technologies and "smart" use of political-military perception management assets, Beijing will thus employ ballistic missile assets across the strait to pressure Taipei militarily and economically, trying to demonstrate that Taiwan's ongoing air, land, and sea up-grade acquisitions do not confer local superiority. Specifically, especially given Taipei's concerns about the political and economic costs of Patriot or other anti-missile systems, Beijing may be seeking through ballistic missile improvements and deployments means to put selected targets in Taiwan at risk while also increasing its ability to tip the political-military calculus in a way so as to deter U.S. forces from entering the region. o To date, the U.S. has straddled between the three Communiqués (1972, 1979, and 1982) and the Taiwan Relations Act by maintaining that the primary U.S. security commitment was to a peaceful process the scope, pace, and timing of which was to determined by the two sides themselves. In the current environment in which both Beijing and Taipei have sought to push Washington into encouraging cross-strait dialogue on its own terms, Washington has made clear its interest in such dialogue as a natural linkage in the U.S. recognition that the improvement of Sino-U.S. relations is at least indirectly tied to the concomitant improvement of cross-straits communication between Beijing and Taipei. o For this reason, on the eve of President Jiang Zemin's U.S. visit, the U.S. reiterated the six assurances originally stated in July 14, 1982 just prior to the promulgation of the August 17, 1982 communiqué on Taiwan arms sales and cross-strait peace and stability. These assurances included: o no date for ending arms sales to the Republic of China (ROC) o no prior consultations with PRC on arms sales to ROC o will not play any mediation role between Taipei and Beijing o has not agreed to revise Taiwan Relations Act o has not altered position regarding sovereignty over Taiwan o will not exert pressure on ROC to enter negotiations with PRC o On the eve of President Clinton's reciprocal visit to China, a number of former senior U.S. officials have recently visited Beijing and Taipei with an interest in jump-starting direct cross-strait dialogue. At a time when the fulcrums and equilibrium points in the Beijing-Taipei-Washington political equation are being determined, it is likely that the military side of the equation, including ongoing advances in Chinese ballistic missile capabilities will not likely be highlighted. Conclusions 9. In terms of the Rumsfeld Commission's immediate mandate, some of the following issues arise from the above regional context and analysis. o Beijing's analysis of the Soviet experience with " missile gap" competition, Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) rationale and outcomes, and INF issue in Europe may have lead to three significant conclusions. 10. First, having determined that a " constructive strategic partnership" is more in its long-term interest than a hostile or primarily competitive relationship with the U.S., Beijing will take a deliberately low-profile posture on strategic missile doctrine, deployment, command and control, and modernization. o Such is consistent with Beijing's current perception of a dramatically decreased Russian threat, a minimal direct U.S. threat, and only gradually developing Indian, Japanese, or other ballistic missile threats. o By avoiding a direct arms competition on the strategic level with the U.S., Beijing employs the lesson of the Soviet " missile gap" and Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) competitions with the U.S.--their destructive channeling of needed resources to wasteful, counterproductive, and ultimately de-legitimizing consequences. o At the same time, Beijing must (in its view) and will maintain a modern missile force which preserves and continues to fulfill three related requirements: a) survivability; b) retaliatory credibility; and c) strategic and regional deterrence and influence. And China will do so for the same reasons it acquired and maintains a limited nuclear weapons capability, reasons revolving about that third element: strategic and regional deterrence and influence. In terms of the U.S., this in turn means two things: a. China's ability to minimize, reduce, and perhaps eliminate the U.S. ability to pressure China because of U.S. nuclear missile capability; and, b. China's ability to influence, directly or indirectly, perhaps eventually to deter or eliminate U.S. willingness to be militarily involved in East and Southeast regional disputes, or at least to limit the U.S. perception of interest and willingness to commit involvement should tensions escalate over Taiwan, the South China sea, etc. o This implies a gradual, calibrated modernization of Beijing's ballistic missile capability which seeks to provide a military capability to continue the improvement of Beijing's overall position vis-a-vis the U.S. o One intent of such an approach is to decrease gradually U.S. involvement in regional or littoral issues while granting Beijing increasing flexibility and leverage to pursue regional superiority in local competition whether of a high intensity or protracted nature. 11. Second, noting the lesson of NATO's response to Soviet INF deployments in Europe, Beijing will seek to ensure that no Asian regional security mechanism or structure develops that could facilitate an institutional response to potentially growing Chinese regional power. At the same time, Beijing will continue its own ballistic missile developments and deployments when such can pressure its neighbors in ways which reduces their willingness to confront China with or without U.S. cooperation, and which also reduces potential U.S. interest to engage in a local theater where the risk of directly confronting China may outweigh the benefits of adamant pursuit of U.S. interests. o In this regard, the Commission may wish to consider whether its current more narrowly defined mandate to consider ballistic missile threats to the United States might also need to consider ballistic missile threats to U.S. regional interests, including in East and Southeast Asia, analogous to the position Washington took with respect to its long-term ability to maintain a useful European equilibrium in the face of possible Soviet local theater nuclear or missile superiority. 12. Third, Beijing understands that long-term political bargaining leverage with the U.S. requires an ability to resist U.S. military pressure, a capability to put the U.S. or U.S. regional assets at significant risk, and an approach which allows the channeling and calibration of competition and cooperation to serve the fundamental objective of providing maximum overall domestic stability and growth, reinforced by maximum international competitive position. o This naturally underpins Beijing's approach of developing the broadest possible " collateral leverage" vis-a-vis other countries, including the U.S. In terms of ballistic missile issues (as with other concerns), Beijing deploys " collateral leverage" by exchanging missile technologies and components, including the infrastructure of design, development, testing, manufacturing, and deployment with a range of payloads in a way which sufficiently impinges on U.S. interests so as give Beijing a way to bargain with the U.S. through others. o Such most notably includes Russia, North Korea, Iran, but others as well. This " collateral leverage" approach offers the additional advantage in that Beijing can potentially multiply its bargaining leverage by exploiting any gaps between the U.S. and the other country (e.g., Iran) by playing the two against each other with ballistic missile or related technologies or deliverables as one of the elements of exchange. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Dr. Gerrit Gong is the Freeman Chair in China Studies (1995 to present) and Director, Asian Studies Program (1989 to present) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Special Assistant to Ambassador James Lilley and Ambassador Winston Lord, U.S. Embassy to the People's Republic of China (June 1987 - July 1989). Has written extensively about China and the Korean peninsula.


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