Growing Economic Ties Better Deterrence

The Center's Kingston Reif had an excellent letter to the editor published last week in the Washington Times. Check it out below.

James T. Hackett's column on India's strategic posture suffers from two major problems ("India's missile power lifts off," Commentary, May 22).

First, emphasizing the threat to India posed by China obscures the fact that China is set to overtake the United States as India's largest bilateral trade partner. Moreover, China and India recently announced that New Delhi plans to host a second round of joint military exercises with Beijing this year.

Though India understandably is taking the necessary precautions to prepare itself for any contingency, growing economic and military ties will do more than ballistic missiles to reduce the likelihood of war between India and China.

Second, while effective Indian missile defenses could in theory limit the damage caused by a missile attack against India, they would not bolster deterrence because India already has the ability to target China and Pakistan with its ballistic missiles.

Though the benefits of Indian missile defenses would be minimal at best, the costs could be grave. Indian missile defenses could cause China and Pakistan to reassess the viability of their credible minimum deterrents, thereby exacerbating an already existing arms race in the region.

KINGSTON REIF

Scoville Fellow

Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation

Washington, DC

Earthquake May Affect Chinese Nuclear Weapons Complex

The 7.9 magnitude earthquake that rocked southwest China on Tuesday may have implications for China’s nuclear weapons complex, as recently highlighted by Jocelyn Ford on NPR’s Science Friday blog.

The quake’s destruction reached the nearby city of Mianyang where the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP), which includes the country’s nuclear weapons research, development and testing labs, is located. Dan Stillman, a former Los Alamos National Laboratory official, referred to CAEP in 2001 as “China's equivalent to our Los Alamos, Sandia, and Lawrence Livermore nuclear laboratories.”

An interesting aside, Stillman travelled to China multiple times during the 1990s, including numerous visits to nuclear weapons facilities, where he had extensive discussions with scientists, government officials, and nuclear weapons designers. He eventually produced a 500-page manuscript entitled “Inside China’s Nuclear Weapons Program,” but the book was later blocked by the CIA on the grounds that it contained classified information.

The distance between the epicenter of earthquake (as identified by the U.S. Geological Survey) and CAEP is approximately 90 miles (or 143 km). Provided below is an image using Google Earth to demonstrate the close proximity between the two. Click to enlarge.

A subsidiary of CAEP, the Institute of Nuclear Physics and Chemistry (INPC) includes a high-temperature and high-density plasma physics laboratory, a thermal-neutron experimental reactor, a pulsed fast neutron reactor, a high-power laser installation, and various accelerators.

The Xinhua News Agency reported earlier this week that, in addition to thousands killed and tens of thousands more under rubble, the quake had “caused serious damage to buildings, roads and telecommunications facilities in Mianyang.” It is fair to assume that some of this damage extended to CAEP facilities, especially considering that the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection dispatched a 21-member team, including a number of nuclear safety experts, to assess the contamination risks.