China warns of nuclear arms race in Asia
Anxiety high after U.S. deploys missile defense system in South Korea, North runs rocket drill
HONG KONG — The United States said Tuesday that it had begun deploying an advanced and contentious missile defense system in South Korea, prompting China to warn of a new atomic arms race in a region increasingly on edge over North Korea’s drive to build a nuclear arsenal.
The U.S. announcement came a day after the simultaneous launch of four missiles by North Korea into waters off the Japanese coast, which Pyongyang said was a drill for striking U.S. bases in Japan.
Hours later, North Korea further unnerved the region by declaring it was blocking all Malaysians from leaving its soil, sharply escalating a dispute over last month’s assassination of Kim Jong Nam, the half brother of North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un.
The flurry of developments heightened anxiety in Asia over signs that Pyongyang is closing in on its goal of developing an intercontinental missile that can deliver a nuclear payload to the United States — and what the new Trump administration might do to prevent it. And they came as the U.S. and South Korea participated in large-scale military exercises that North Korea has condemned.
The New York Times reported Sunday that President Donald Trump’s national security deputies have discussed both the possibility of pre-emptive strikes that would almost certainly provoke an attack on South Korea and a reintroduction of nuclear weapons to the South. Intelligence officials say North Korea is already able to hit much of South Korea and Japan with a nucleartipped missile.
A spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Geng Shuang, denounced the United States’ decision to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, and vowed that Beijing would “take the necessary steps to safeguard our own security interests.”
“The consequences will be shouldered by the United States and South Korea,” Geng added, warning that the two countries should not “go further and further down the wrong road.”
The United States’ decision to deploy the missile technology brought new scrutiny to China’s policies toward North and South Korea and suggested that its attempts to please both countries in hopes of averting a crisis had fallen short.
Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said that policymakers in China had failed to grasp how Washington and its allies regarded North Korea’s nuclear program as getting closer to a dangerous threshold of being able to place a warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit U.S. cities. “That’s a game-changer,” said Haenle, who was director for China on the National Security Council under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Yang Xiyu, a former senior Chinese official who once oversaw talks with North Korea, said China was worried that the deployment of the system would open the door to a broader U.S. network of antimissile systems in the region to counter China’s growing military as much as North Korea. “China can see benefits only for a U.S. regional plan, not for South Korea’s national security interest,” he said.