From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: China: Strategic Enemy for the U.S.?
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 08:00:14 GMT

From: nlns@igc.org (New Liberation News Service)

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NLNS  Packet 2.11  -  July/August, 1992
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China: Strategic Enemy for the U.S.?
Israel and Palestine Political Report

(NLNS)--The Pentagon and the National Security Council are said to
have become worried about China's nuclear and air force capability,
according to well-informed American sources.
	China is interested in buying, from the Russian Federation,
about 80 hyper-modern MiG-31s and about 60 less advanced MiG-
29s. The Russians are understandably enthusiastic, given the terrible
state of their economy and, in particular, of their military industry.
	The United States defense establishment, however, is
objecting strongly. Although it has not yet come to the stage in
which actual threats will be used agianst Russia, the Americans are
insisting that, in the undesirable case a MiG sale occurs, the planes
should be sold "naked", i.e., without their extraordinary
computerized and electronic capability. Particularly that of the more
advanced MiG-31.
	China is becoming a real worry for the US Defense boys. The
Pentagon, which seems to be a desperate search for real or
imaginary enemies, may have found a realistic target for its worries--
which would, of course, underpin renewed development of the
American industrial-military complex in a period of unemployment
and economic crisis.
	In fact, the Chinese republic, with its huge potential,
thousands of square kilometers and billion-plus population, is
nowadays the only power that cannot be subjugated through military
intervention: it is simply too large and populous.
	There is room for doubt, however, that the American military
establishment's reasoning should realistically move from
acknowledgements of China's potential military might to allegations
that China's desires for MiGs stems from a desire to advance their
nuclear program. But European observers do not put aside entirely
the Americans' darkest anti-Chinese hints.
	The Pentagon and NSC specialists also allege that China has
assembled a huge slush-fund with which it will be able to buy
Soviet, Ukrainian and Kazakh military and nuclear foods: such a
slush-fund would be a necessity for two reasons. First, the Russians
and other former Soviet components will only sell thair hardware
and expertise for hard cash, preferably Deutsch marks; and second,
that China has no declared military budget large enough for such a
project.
	To explain the supposed existence of such a slush-fund,
American sources have resurrected old charges that China sells
contraband drugs in the West. This charge was one of the main
disinformation items in anti-Chinese campaigns during the Cold War,
and in particular in the period prior to Richard Nixon's trip to China,
which put more or less an end to the anti-Chinese cold war.
	Not everybody in the Bush Administration is in agreement
with the anti-China theories of some Defense boys: many American
businessmen, and their backers in the Administration under Dan
Quayle, view China as a huge market for American products and
trade. They only deplore that Europe and Russia may also participate
in China's buying-sprees.
	In any case, one may expect, in upcoming years, a smaller
reduction of the American defense budget than the ones hoped for
now in the spirit of a "peace dividend". The US-Russian cold war is
over. The US-Chinese cold war might only be starting.

Israel and Palestine Political Report can be reached at: 1341 Boite
Postale 130, 75463 Paris CEDEX, France

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