It would be bad for the international business that Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown was trying to drum up. It was the beginning of a new arms race in Southwest Asia. The intelligence report created a furor within the Clinton administration over whether China had helped Pakistan make fuel for its nuclear-weapons arsenal, estimated at 10 to 15 unassembled nuclear devices. At the State Department, Robert Einhorn, deputy assistant secretary for political-military affairs, quickly recognized the problem. He had been assigned the task of looking into the application of complex laws enacted by Congress to put teeth into policies designed to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
China is the world leader in producing the components.
The sale triggered a provision of law on business loans requiring the secretary of state to notify the Export-Import Bank when any nation is caught helping another nation develop nuclear weapons. Mr. Einhorn called the bank and told officials the intelligence reports meant that, under the 1994 Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act, the bank could be required to hold up all new loan guarantees for projects sought by American businesses in China. But the Commerce Department, headed by Mr. Brown, former Democratic National Committee chairman, soon was leading the charge to block economic sanctions against Beijing and Islamabad. In 1995, the president named Mr. Armstrong to the influential Export Council, where he worked hard against trade controls designed to protect national security. The council produced a lengthy paper arguing against imposing sanctions on foreign trading partners that engaged in illicit weapons sales.