China and Russia Align Against U.S.

China's President Jiang Zemin went to Moscow in mid-July as if to receive a Russian bride. In the bride's trousseau were some of the best military and nuclear technology money can buy. Also included: an extended family of alliances, guaranteed by three generations of Communist godfathers. In exchange, Jiang handed Vladimir Putin, the former KGB officer who now is president of the Russian Federation, new contracts potentially worth tens of billions of dollars to Russian enterprises.

In Washington, Bush-administration officials reacted to the news of the Sino-Russian Friendship Treaty inked in Moscow on July 16 with quiet equanimity. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher dismissed the pact at his daily briefing, calling it "a treaty of friendship, not an alliance." At the White House, presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer noted that diplomacy was "not a zero-sum game." Echoing Boucher, he added: "Just because Russia and China have entered into an agreement does not necessarily mean it's something that would be adverse to the interests of the United States."

Official Washington was downplaying what outside observers and some top Bush-administration national-security officials say privately was a sweeping shift in the strategic balance of power that only can mean bad news for the United States. These critics say the Sino-Russian pact not only will expand Russian arms sales to China, which already had shifted the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait, but commits the two giants to a broad international agenda squarely opposed to core U.S. interests, making common cause in economic, diplomatic and military arenas.

"This treaty formalizes and makes visible a new coalition led by Beijing and Moscow to counter the United States and its allies around the world," says Constantine Menges, a former Reagan-administration National Security Council (NSC) strategic analyst now at the Hudson Institute. For Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the treaty showed that "the Sino-Soviet split which marked so much of the Cold War period is definitely over."

The treaty calls for expanded cooperation in aviation, space, nuclear, military and information technology, as well as policy coordination at the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO). It legitimizes both parties' right to smash dissident or separatist movements and spells out Russia's support for China's claims on Taiwan. Although Putin subsequently denied any such intent, the treaty also calls for defeating U.S. plans to deploy a national missile defense. Instead, China and Russia join to advocate a "fair and rational new international order" - code words, say experts, for challenging U.S. interests.

But potentially most disturbing is Article 9, which contains language outlining a mutual-defense pact whenever one of the parties "believes there is a threat of aggression."

"With this treaty it would appear, for example, that any military move by China against Taiwan would now be backed up by the enormous nuclear arsenal of the former Soviet Union," Inhofe tells Insight. "Such an arrangement has profound strategic implications for the future." Russia war-gamed how its forces could support a Chinese military takeover of Taiwan during exercises conducted Feb. 12-16. As first reported by Bill Gertz of the Washington Times, Russian commanders escalated the conflict by threatening nuclear-missile strikes on U.S. forces in South Korea and Japan. This is the first time Russia is known to have carried out a simulation involving joint war-planning with China or to have practiced fighting the United States in the Pacific.

China repays the favor on the Taiwan issue by agreeing in the treaty to support Russian dominance of Chechnya, which sits astride strategic transportation routes that command access to the vast oil resources of Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. While NATO is not mentioned by name in the 25 articles of the treaty, in an interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera that appeared just as he was signing the pact with Jiang, Putin suggested that "NATO could be disbanded as was the Warsaw Pact."

"This is a strategic relationship," a top national-security official told this reporter six months ago, before being tapped to join the Bush administration. "That is the phrase the Chinese and the Russians use themselves. It has concrete manifestations - Russian arms sales - and it is specifically aimed against the United States." That official could not be reached for comment.

In a speech at the National Defense University on May 1, President George W. Bush suggested that the United States and Russia should cooperate on joint defense projects. Indeed, the president's father and Russia's then-president, Boris Yeltsin, agreed in December 1992 to set aside lingering Cold War hostilities and pool resources to build a common missile-defense system - plans shelved by the Clinton administration without further discussion.

But for Menges, such views amount to "wishful assumptions." China and Russia "have come to share the same two-track policy toward the U.S.," he tells Insight. "This involves maintaining a sense of normalcy and dialogue so that the U.S. and other democracies will continue providing China and Russia with vitally needed economic benefits while at the same time using mostly political and covert means to oppose the U.S. in the domain of security issues and to divide the U.S. from its allies. This was the preferred KGB approach during Putin's years [1975-1991] and this has been China's approach during the Jiang Zemin years [1993 to the present]."

When the Sino-Russian pact was first announced during a Yeltsin-Jiang summit in Beijing in December 1999, the mainstream U.S. press covered it as a kind of Twilight of the Titans. "Russia, a faltering world power, and China, an aspiring one, are united in fear of American domination," wrote New York Times correspondent Erik Eckholm. The pact merely was an expression of their relative weakness, and the United States' relative strength. "Much ado about nothing," as one Bush-administration NSC official calls it.

But during the last year, Putin and Jiang have met no fewer than eight times to nail down various aspects of their newfound alliance, including the details of a vast array of new Russian arms sales.

For Arthur Waldron, a China scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, the Sino-Russian pact may be a marriage of convenience, as the administration contends, but if so, it is reminiscent of the Axis alliance between Germany and Italy during World War II. "Hitler despised Mussolini, there was no coordination and there were deep conflicts simmering just beneath the surface. Ultimately, the Axis did fall apart and we did defeat them, but they caused us a lot of trouble before they were through."

Waldron believes, as do some analysts within the Bush administration, that it is in the interests of the United States to split Russia and China apart. "We should do this not by making concessions," Waldron says, "but by showing them we will penalize them for this sort of cooperation." Waldron believes that Bush's clear statement in April that the United States would do "whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself" in the event of a Chinese attack actually helped improve the U.S.-Chinese relationship because it drew a clear red line. "As long as the United States is maintaining a robust position with respect to its allies, this will have a beneficial effect on the Chinese leadership, who will look for ways to improve the relationship with the U.S.," Waldron tells Insight.

This latest Sino-Russian agreement has been a decade in the works, say intelligence specialists. Military and intelligence officials traveled back and forth between Moscow and Beijing with increasing frequency starting in 1994 with a draft agreement outlined by outgoing Russian President Yeltsin and Jiang in December 1999.

According to Russian researcher Alexander V. Nemets, who has been tracking the Russia-China relationship, the two leaders signed documents at that time committing Russia to sell $15 billion to $20 billion in new weaponry and military technology to China during the next five years and to work with China to construct a common missile- and air-defense barrier, a move clearly aimed at deterring any retaliatory U.S. or NATO attack. "China and Russia are both deeply anti-Western, and this is what has sparked their cooperation," Nemets tells Insight.

The Russian arsenal transferred to China during the last decade has helped the People's Liberation Army (PLA) leapfrog a generation in its military capabilities. From a Third World army, whose fighter jets ran out of gas before they hit the end of the runway, China now commands several hundred modern attack aircraft and interceptors such as the Su-27 and Su-30 MK, which today are being assembled in China under Russian supervision (see "Russia's Air-Show Blues," July 23). Equipping these aircraft and several hundred MiG-29 fighters sold earlier, say intelligence sources, are the latest in Russian stand-off missiles, including R-73 and R-77 air-combat missiles that respond to the pilot's helmet commands, and air-to-ground cruise missiles such as the Kh-31.

At sea, the Chinese have purchased a small but robust blue-water navy from Russia, including nuclear-tipped cruise missiles fitted on Sovremenny-class destroyers (two already delivered, six more on order), originally designed to kill U.S. aircraft carriers. They also have received eight upgraded (Project 636) Kilo-class submarines, in addition to four earlier models. The new Kilo is an advanced diesel-electric sub that runs so silently that it reportedly slipped through U.S. electro-acoustic sonar arrays while on patrol in the Strait of Taiwan last year.

Insight has learned that the Chinese now are seeking long-range cruise missiles, Tu-22 MZ ("Backfire") strategic bombers and MiG-31M interceptors, the first of which already have been photographed by U.S. reconnaissance aircraft in PLA air-force markings. "The MiG-31 is a high-altitude, high-speed aircraft, capable of flying at 70,000 feet at speeds approaching Mach 3," says Rick Fisher, an expert on Chinese military affairs with the Jamestown Foundation. "It was designed to go after high-value support, command and intelligence assets, such as the AWACS, JSTARS and EP-3 surveillance aircraft" downed by the Chinese earlier this year in international airspace.

China is eyeing a direct purchase of nuclear submarines and possibly nuclear missiles, say intelligence sources. PLA Commander in Chief Col.-Gen. Zhang Wannian toured the Russian strategic rocket base in Novosibirsk two years ago to view the world's only road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile, the SS-25. He went on to visit the Komsomolsk shipyard, where two Akula-class nuclear attack submarines reportedly were being assembled for China, according to intelligence reports. The Chinese also have expressed an interest in purchasing an Oscar-class nuclear cruise-missile submarine similar to the Kursk, which went down off the Russian coast two years ago.

Next on the agenda, analysts agree, is joint development of future-generation weaponry, including advanced lasers, particle beams, intelligence-gathering satellites and military space technologies - in effect throwing open Russia's vast network of military-research facilities to Chinese weapons designers. "The Chinese are obsessed with finding a secret weapon - they call it, the `assassin's mace,'" says Fisher. "In Jiang Zemin's New Year's address to the Central Military Commission, he pounded the table demanding the military provide him with a surprise weapon - the assassin's mace - that would allow him to `trump' Taiwan."

Secret weapon aside, say strategic specialists, the Chinese and the Russians have a far more mundane goal in more closely coordinating their two militaries: joint weapons development and shared military standards. "The goal is for Russia and China to be able to resupply each other in time of war," says Nemets. After all, that's what a strategic alliance is all about. c

In a side agreement announced in Moscow on July 17, Russia and China agreed to build a 1,500-mile pipeline to bring oil from Siberia to China. The deal will bring in much-needed hard currency to Russia's inefficient and polluting oil industry, while helping China surmount one of its greatest needs: more oil.

China has become, along with India, the fastest-growing new market for oil products. According to a study by the East-West Center, a U.S. government-financed think tank in Honolulu, Asia accounted for 92 percent of the global net growth in oil consumption last year and will race ahead in the years to come. Meanwhile, China's own oil fields are aging. The only major new potential sources in the region are offshore deposits controlled by Vietnam, which beat China in a short but bloody border war in 1979, and in the Spratly Islands, a cluster of rocks in the Philippine archipelago that China has attempted to claim by force.

The Chinese appear to have become "paranoid" about their dependence on oil imports, East-West Center analyst Freidoun Fesharaki told Forbes magazine recently.

In the quest for oil, China is roaming far and wide - way beyond the Spratlys and even Russia. During the last two years, the Chinese National Petroleum Corp. has begun pumping 200,000 barrels per day from southern Sudan along with a few Western partners. The Sudanese oil comes at a price: Thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands, of Chinese paramilitary troops have been dispatched to Sudan during the last two years to sweep Christian and animist villagers from the oil fields. Critics say they are part of a plan by the Islamist government in Khartoum to exterminate Sudan's Christian population (see "Will Bush Stop Sudan Genocide?" July 16).

The Chinese also are moving into Canada, where Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing has bought a controlling interest in Husky Oil, Canada's second-largest oil company, and now is investing heavily in drilling off Canada's Atlantic coast. Li, who is widely reported to enjoy a close personal relationship with Chinese President Jiang Zemin and to act in tandem with China's communist government, has been awarded a government oil concession in Saskatchewan and now is said to be looking for new assets in Venezuela.

Thought you might find the following piece by Brig. Gen. Partin of interest.

DEADLY FAILURES IN INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS AND DEFENSE UNPREPAREDNESS
Benton K. Partin
Brig/Gen U.S.A.F. (Ret)
(9-15-96)

The Sino-Soviet Conflict Hoax
In 1957, as the Special Assistant for Advance Weapons Concepts in the Air Force Systems Command Headquarters, I started the Focused Energy Weapons Program. In 1958, I participated in a series of budget briefings in the Pentagon, in which I was defending the Focused Energy Weapons Program budget. In that series of briefings, I was shocked to see certain force structure assumptions based on the high risk hypothesis that there was a genuine and irreversible Sino-Soviet conflict.

What shocked me was the long term national risk. Two hypothesis could readily be made. One, the Sino-Soviet split was genuine and irreversible, or two, the Sino-Soviet split was either a hoax or was reversible. Force requirements would vary greatly between these two hypothesis, depending on the threat. At that time, I considered three levels of threat :

Case I: Dual Threat - - Communist China and Russia would team up if either were directly involved with the U.S. and its allies in a major conflict

Case II: Either Threat - - Either China or the Soviet Union would remain neutral if the other was involved in a major conflict with the U.S. and its allies.

Case III: Either Allied Threat - - Either Soviet or Chinese forces would join the U.S. and its allies in a major conflict with the other.

Our Risk
The risks involved here can easily be seen. If the assumption is made that the Sino-Soviet split is real and irreversible, and years ahead there is a confrontation by a Dual Threat, then the U. S. would be placed at extreme - - if not fatal - - risk. It would be like passing at the crest of a hill on a busy single lane highway. Much would be placed at risk for little possible gain. Neither the legitimacy of the Sino-Soviet split nor its irreversibility could be assured with sufficient confidence to not consider it a potential hoax. We are now those years ahead and we are confronted by a Case I Dual Threat plus an expanded communist controlled world. The naive liberal and leftist solution is to surrender by "convergence" into their global scheme.

Their Gain
I continued collecting information on the Sino-Soviet split for another decade. While attending the Air War College in 1967, I had the opportunity to review the 1928 Program of the Communist International. I concluded that the Sino-Soviet conflict, as a hoax, was one of the highest payoff strategies of the entire communist world movement in its then 200 plus year history. I then wrote a thoroughly documented 155 page report on the Sino-Soviet split hoax entitled: Sino-Soviet Conflict, Competition and Cooperation: Risks in Force Structure Planning. The proposed wide distribution of the report was turned down by the approving group because one member was a propagandist for the legitimacy of the split Several hundred copies were unofficially distributed to key senior leaders.

In that report, written 29 years ago, I listed 50 advantages to the implementation of the 1928 program if the West could be convinced of the legitimacy and irreversibility of the Sino-Soviet split. The first ten of those advantages to implementing the World Communist Program were as follows:

"1. It justified a major reduction in Free World forces and, at the same time, justifies a high level of defense preparedness for both Russia and China." [It resulted in an inversion of the balance of power in the world.]
"2. It induced a complacent, do nothing, if not indifferent attitude toward the critical military balance of power." [It became politically incorrect to even question the Sino-Soviet conflict's legitimacy.]
"3. It Justified a more aggressive Soviet program in 'competition' with China in Asia, Africa and South America." [They were both involved in the generation and support of communist "Wars of National Liberation".]
"4. The 'peaceful coexistence' role of the U.S.S.R. and the supposedly more aggressive role of China complement each other in reducing the Free World For example: one approach worked better in Syria and the other approach worked better in Tibet." [That performance has been repeated many times.]
"5. The Sino-Soviet split helped get the U.S. committed in a big way, but not too big for Russia and China, in a land war in Southeast Asia - - supported by both Russia and China." [While we were dissipating Forces in Vietnam they were consolidating power in the Middle East and North Africa.]
"6. The alleged breakup of the world communist monolith into supposedly 'loose and pluralistic grouping(s) of communist states,' justifies for many the disintegration of the Free World Alliances buildup over many years, for containing communism. 'Polycentrism in the East breeds polycentrism in the West.'" [29 years later, we have a new rendition in Perestroika and a communist world push for a "comprehensive" UN controlled security system under a communist dominated UN. Effort to move NATO into East Europe is part of the dialectic.]
"7. The split justifies a repolarization of the world struggle along specious and phoney lines, i.e , 'The basic conflict is not between the U.S. and Russia, nor ever between the U.S. and China. It is between Soviet Communism and Chinese Communism." [Disinformation.]
"8. The Sino-Soviet split has been used to justify a weakening of NATO, i e., "it may have outlived its usefulness." [The central push is now for former Soviet Union countries to come into new groupings in the move toward a "comprehensive" security system.]
"9. The Sino-Soviet split hoax, along with the war in Vietnam, has been used to force the isolation of America on the international scene." [Today, the U.S.A. almost stands alone in opposing a second five-year term for Boutros-Ghali as Secretary General of the United Nations.]
" 10. The Sino-Soviet split and the resulting reapproachment between East and West European countries has contributed to the rise of nationalism in East Europe and a weakening of the West European coalition." [Orchestrated for convergence.]

Report Conclusions - - (written 29 years ago!)
"1. For military force structure planning purposes, the Sino-Soviet conflict must be considered a hoax so as to reduce, if not minimize, long-term national risk."
"2. There is sufficient documented evidence available to severely challenge the popularly held view that the Sino-Soviet split is genuine, deep and irreversible."
"3. From all the arguments and evidence supporting the hypothesis of a genuine split, there are at least as good arguments, and perhaps more consistently reliable information which supports the idea that the popular view of the Sino-Soviet split is specious, misleading and a masterful deception."
"4. The Sino-Soviet split payoff to the communist world, even as a highly advertised genuine conflict, is so great that both Russia and China would be foolish not to exacerbate it for the eyes and ears of the Free World."
"5. The Sino-Soviet split, as a hoax, is one the highest payoff operations of the entire world communist movement since its very beginning."
"6. The Sino-Soviet split payoff to the Communist World, as a hoax, is sufficiently great to make the deception a major foundation - - if not cornerstone of Sino-Soviet foreign policy. Almost no expense or inconvenience would be too great to assure the continued Western faith that the split is genuine."
"7. In the Free World, the Sino-Soviet split thesis offers something to everyone. Almost everyone wishes to believe it. Disbelief creates too many problems in required actions. Therefore, there is a natural propensity to reject any idea that the Sino-Soviet split is not genuine. Moreover, with all the affirming publicity, much stemming from within the Sino-Soviet Camp, we are well conditioned to believe it in much the same way Pavlov's dogs responded to the bells."
"8. The 1928 Program of The Communist International tempered by personality factors, historical necessity, and opportunism, provides a consistent, coherent, reasonably predictably model of understanding of the world socialist movement and Sino-Soviet relations. The popularly held model of Sino-Soviet conflict understanding is inconsistent, incoherent, and unreliable as a basis for prediction and expectation."
"9. Part of the foundation on which the Sino-Soviet split thesis is built, is in fact specified as part of the 1928 COMINTERN Program."
"10. The Future of a free and independent United States and Free World depends to a considerable extent on an accurate understanding of the alleged Sino-Soviet conflict and taking appropriate courses of action."
"11. Assuming as true the model of understanding of the Sino-Soviet split and the world revolutionary processes, hypothesized, developed, and tested in this paper, we should expect the following:"
Predictions - - (made in 1967 - - 29 years ago)
"a. Secret Sino-Soviet cooperation in the democratic penetration, subversion, economic warfare and - - in the more backward countries - - externally supported flagrant aggression and orchestration of wars of national liberation." [Proven by time.]
"b. Continued efforts of communist forces to expand the war in Southeast Asia to increase U.S. commitments." [Proven by time.]
"c. That India will either move peacefully and reliably into the Marxist camp or the liberation struggle will soon move into the violent phase." [Moved toward the Marxist camp.]
"d. The Marxist world will soon exercise hegemony over the Moslem Middle East." [Mostly done.]
"e. A gradual increase in the numbers of Wars of National Liberation in the more advanced 'semi-colonial' countries." [Done. In Canada the conflict thesis is French Separatist, in the U.S.A. it is racial, in Ireland it is Protestant vs. Catholic, in Rwanda it is tribal, Tutsi (mostly Christian) versus Hutu (mostly Animist).]
"f. A continued, but reduced, public exacerbation of the Sino-Soviet split thesis by both Russia and China until they are ready for a major showdown with the U.S. " [Proven by time.]
"g. An increased level of urban guerilla warfare and arson in the U S in concert with increased violence in South Vietnam and increase pressure against mobilization." [Watts, D.C., TET, Tricontinental Congress, etc.]
"h. A globally coordinated attempt by the Marxist world to over saturate U S. commitments, to force a U.S. back down in Southeast Asia, with tactical nuclear weapons if necessary." [Dunkirk type evacuation, Tricontinental Congress success.]
"i. The above sequence fulfillment would be regarded as the completion of another step - - in the struggle for world domination - - that was basically programmed in the 1920's."
Report Conclusions Continued
"12. The strategy of deterrence and massive retaliation tended to ignore the gradual revolutionary processes of wars of national liberation, as they were originally planned and are still being conducted - - with some refinements."
" 13. The strategy of flexible response reacts to wars of national liberation after they have reached the violent phase, and after they have undergone many years of previolent preparation. A more applicable strategy is needed."
" 14. Although there are many causes on which the pre-violent phase of wars of national liberation feed - - and if causes do not exist they are created - - however, under the 1928 Program hypothesis, it is orthodox, doctrinary and practical that the liberation forces require and are provided, external assistance from the Marxist world."
" 15. The World Socialist Movement has progressed to the point where the advantages accruing from the Sino-Soviet split thesis will start to diminish. Under the 1928 Program hypothesis, world socialist solidarity will then become more popularly acclaimed. [Proven by time - - the chiefs of state have already hugged and kissed in public in the treachery of the Leninist/Gramscian Perestroika deception.]
Sino-Soviet Split - - A Disinformation Program!
When KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn published his book New Lies For Old in 1984, I could ascribe considerable confidence to it because the chapter on the Sino-Soviet split was in total agreement with my research and analysis of the same subject at the Air War College 17 years before. Golitsyn called the Sino-Soviet split a DISINFORMATION PROGRAM -- I called it a HOAX.

We both identified it as a high payoff Sino-Soviet strategy. What is so amazing is - - that to my knowledge - - our own senior intelligence people have never deduced the Sino-Soviet split as a disinformation program or a hoax - - at least not for publication. With the new intelligence monopoly being set up under challengeable leadership, it will become even more politically incorrect to call it what it really is. He who controls the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) controls future capabilities.

In Golitsyn's 1995 book, The Perestroika Deception, he concludes that the Sino-Soviet split is the main Soviet disinformation program on which all other disinformation programs depend.

Complex as it may seem, the Sino-Soviet split dialectic is rather simple and straightforward when compared to the dialectics involved in the U.S. "winning the Cold War," the "disappearance of the Soviet threat," the "disintegration of the Soviet empire," and the "democratization of the former Soviet Union" (now ruled by former communists, ex-communists, non-communists and communists).

If at the end of World War II, all of the Chiefs of State in Eastern and Western Europe were former Nazis, ex-Nazis, and Nazis, would anyone believe that we had won World War II?

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