Abstract
Johnson got it wrong
Chalmers Johnson (“In Search of a New Cold War,” September/October Bulletin) has resurrected Joseph McCarthy–not only by invoking his name, but by adopting the infamous senator's unethical tactics.
Johnson is entitled to his rebarbative opinion that America seeks “hegemony” over Asia; he is even entitled to join the world's crackpots and conspiracy theorists in rejecting the Clinton administration's assurances that the United States “accidentally” bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade (the skeptical quotation marks are Johnson's). But he crosses the line with several gross distortions about the contents of the unanimous, bipartisan report of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security [the “Cox report”] that examined technology transfers to China.
Johnson falsely writes that the Select Committee report “accused various American citizens of being spies for China.” In truth, no such accusations against any American citizens are to be found in the report. (Indeed, Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos scientist who has been the subject of so much media speculation, is not even mentioned in the report.) Rather, the only U.S. citizens mentioned in connection with spying are individuals who have been convicted in criminal trials in U.S. federal court, or who pled guilty, and who have exhausted all final appeals.
“You have a duel scheduled for noon.”
Similarly, Johnson converts a direct citation to aggregate statistical information from the Clinton administration's FBI–specifically, the number of China's state-controlled enterprises operating in the United States–into “charges against citizens who were given no chance to defend themselves.” This corruption of what is actually in the report is quintessential McCarthyism.
Johnson misquotes the report by substituting inflammatory words for the careful and accurate original text. When the Select Committee found that China has “design information” on two specific types of nuclear warheads that is “on a par with our own”–a fact confirmed by President Clinton's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board–Johnson substitutes the phrase “nuclear weapons capacity on a par with that of the United States.” The latter formulation is indeed scaremongering, since the United States possesses more than a thousand ICBMs compared to China's roughly 20–a point the report itself makes clear.
Johnson has attempted to discredit not only the Select Committee report, but also the good names of its nine unanimous Democratic and Republican authors, by irresponsibly spreading false information about it. In doing so, he has distorted the clear message of the report, which is not that China poses a new Soviet-style military threat, but rather that U.S. counterintelligence requires immediate improvement.
Indeed the real Chinese threat is not to America but to the Chinese people, as Liz Sly ably described in the very same issue in “A State of Paranoia.” “China,” she wrote, “remains a police state that ultimately relies on force to secure the loyalty of its citizens.” We should all work peacefully to change that.
Cong. Christopher Cox
Republican of California
Cong. Norm Dicks
Democrat of Washington
Chalmers Johnson responds:
If Congressmen Cox and Dicks would apologize to Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos scientist and American citizen of Chinese ancestry whom they have done so much to vilify and personally ruin, I might be inclined to pay attention to their defense. They say they never mentioned Lee's name in their report, and they characterize him as merely the “subject of so much media speculation.” But their report explicitly states that Chinese nuclear espionage has severely weakened American defenses. The only source they cite to establish these charges is Notra Tru-lock, the former Energy Department official who accused Lee of espionage. As the Los Angeles Times, the major newspaper in Congressman Cox's district, editorialized on September 24, “If nothing further can be discovered linking Wen Ho Lee to spying, then this prime suspect is due an apology and restitution.” The Cox committee, like the FBI and other members of the American establishment, knows that hundreds of people other than a computer scientist at Los Alamos had information about the W88 warhead but that none of them was investigated. The genuinely nonpartisan Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board established this point three months ago. Congressman Cox's lack of candor on these issues is what establishes the charge of McCarthyism.
Whether Cox acknowledges it or not, the source of instability in East Asia is not China but the monstrous American military machine and its current agenda to promote a destabilizing anti-ballistic missile technology directed against China. America's forward deployment of 100,000 troops in Okinawa and South Korea, as well as its insistent pressure on Japan and Taiwan to build up their military capabilities far in excess of anything North Korea or China possesses, disrupts the otherwise peaceful and commercial trends in the area. If Congressmen Cox and Dicks would expend the same energy investigating the interests and activities of the Pentagon-CIA complex that they have devoted to trying to demonize China, I might think that they had some complaint about how I treated their “good names.”
It was a pleasure to read the excellent coverage of today's China in the September/October Bulletin. I applaud the Bulletin and all the authors for their insightful comments and analysis. In particular, I want to comment on Ming Zhang's “What Threat?”
Kudos for a very useful review that puts the Cox report in perspective. With a total inventory of about 450 weapons, China is certainly a nuclear power, but one that over the years has elected not to participate in an all-out weapons production program and, as the author points out, has opted to seek a “limited nuclear deterrent” only.
In his concluding comments, Ming Zhang notes that “China is not an enemy. It can even be a partner.” Since early 1992, our Center for International Strategy at Georgia Tech has been working with Chinese–and Japanese, South Korean, Mongolian, Russian, and U.S.–experts to examine a method of working as partners with all the states of Northeast Asia (including North Korea) to create a “Limited Nuclear Weapons Free Zone.” An agreement would allow for the development of a truly cooperative security regime in the region.
This Track II initiative involving 50 senior specialists was scheduled to meet in Tokyo in October. In all of our meetings, the Chinese participants have made every effort to be working partners in the quest for a positive regional security system. The group has begun by addressing the need to control tactical or non-strategic systems in Asia in a pragmatic manner. It is time to bring China into the nuclear weapons nonproliferation community; it may indeed make a good partner.
John E. Endicott, Director
Center for International Strategy, Technology and Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology
Since 1996, when it succeeded in “miraculously” elaborating the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament (CD) has been unable to agree on what measure to take up next, and in fact, it has interrupted its negotiating activities. Its latest annual session ended again in deadlock.
The reasons for this critical situation are multiple. They can be found in an outdated membership setup, based on the geopolitical and military realities of the 1970s; the Conference's inability to negotiate more than one arms control measure at a time; and its inflexible rules of procedure.
Particularly damaging is the paralyzing requirement of consensus, understood as unanimity, which enables any participant to block any decision on any matter. This virtual right of veto has frequently been used to prevent the Conference from dealing with issues of paramount importance to a number of states. It has also been used to thwart the appointment of–or the extension of the mandate of–special coordinators, who elicit the views of delegations on issues under discussion and assist the president in conducting informal consultations. It is also used to hinder the establishment of working committees for certain items on the agenda and to block the appointment of chairmen of these committees. It was grossly abused when one delegation prevented the conference from informing the United Nations that consensus on the text of a treaty had not been reached. The enlargement of the conference has not improved the situation.
In its report issued in July, the Tokyo Forum for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament–an independent panel of experts–recommended that the CD update its work program and revise its proceedings. This, however, would not suffice. The entire negotiating machinery must be revamped. There is no reason why global arms control problems should be dealt with in only one international forum while global economic or environmental problems can be taken up in a wide range of fora. Nor is there any reason why only certain countries, those selected by the CD itself, should be “privileged” to negotiate global arms control agreements.
I therefore propose that the present, single, multilateral negotiating body be replaced by specialized, open-ended negotiating conferences to be convened by countries interested in, or directly affected by, specific arms control measures. The “Ottawa Process,” set in motion by Canada and a group of like-minded states to deal with the ban on landmines, demonstrated that such an approach can bear fruit.
These specialized conferences would have to be autonomous, not accountable to other international bodies. The U.N. General Assembly could, of course, continue to recommend signature and ratification of treaties, but it should not be given the authority to invalidate agreements reached by groups of states.
One of the major weaknesses of the CD could be avoided if the specialized arms control conferences adopted flexible rules of work. The rule of consensus should not be required for either procedural or organizational matters. It is even arguable whether it should apply to substantive matters. There is no risk in adopting veto-free procedures, because no conference or organization can impose treaty obligations on sovereign states through a voting procedure. Treaty texts, negotiated internationally, are not binding until they have been signed by individual governments and subsequently ratified by legislative bodies.
It is true that the present critical situation in the CD is a reflection of the deteriorating political relations among states, and that procedures for conducting negotiations are not of decisive importance. Nonetheless, without adequate institutional mechanisms, arms control cannot be effectively pursued.
Jozef Goldblat
Geneva, Switzerland