North Korea is a problem, but China and Pakistan are just as harmful
Michael Mazza, opinion contributor
In recent weeks, all eyes have been on a looming showdown
between the United States and North Korea. But the Korean peninsula is
not Asia’s sole nuclear hotspot, nor is the Beijing-Pyongyang
relationship the region’s only malign axis. China’s relationship with
Pakistan has done, and continues to do, real harm to U.S. interests.
If South Asia is the world’s most unstable nuclear
flashpoint, China bears significant responsibility for making it so. Not
only did China’s first nuclear weapon test, in 1964, help set off a
chain reaction of proliferation across Asia, but China directly abetted
that proliferation.
According to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father
of Islamabad’s nuclear program, China sent a planeload of enriched
uranium — accompanied with blueprints for a nuclear device — to Pakistan
in 1982. Khan may have later passed design information to Libya, Iran,
and North Korea.
In 1998, the Chinese leadership took negligible action to
prevent Pakistan’s first test and may have even provided a tacit
go-ahead. Beijing, in fact, may have tested a Pakistani weapon on
Chinese soil as far back as 1990.
Pakistan now has an arsenal of at least 100 warheads.
Troublingly, it ranks No. 22 out of 24 countries rated by the Nuclear
Threat Initiative (NTI) on the security of their nuclear materials. NTI
reports that the low rating is due to “increasing quantities of nuclear
materials, political instability and corruption, and the presence of
groups interested in and capable of illicitly acquiring nuclear
materials.”
Such an acquisition would be a nightmare for American
security planners. Severe civil strife or regime instability could even
lead to direct American military intervention in Pakistan to secure
nuclear sites, a scenario fraught with danger. Beyond this lurid
history, the China-Pakistan axis today contributes to a balance of power
both in South Asia and across the Asia-Pacific that is unfavorable to
American interests.
Both George W. Bush and Barack ObamaBarack ObamaReport: Trump tweeted 470 times in first 99 days Biden schedule sets off 2020 speculation Obama makes 0K for speech at A&E event: report MORE
sought tighter economic and security ties with India, in the hopes that
a closer relationship would enhance conventional deterrence vis-à-vis
China. They likewise hoped to see Delhi make greater contributions to
security in East Asia.
There have been notable advances in this regard, but China
and Pakistan threaten to tie down India in South Asia. Close
China-Pakistan military ties ensure that Islamabad remains a threat on
India’s northwestern border. The relationship, moreover, forces Delhi to
fret about the possibility that its rivals might conspire regarding
their territorial disputes with India.
Beijing’s relationship with Islamabad has also facilitated
Chinese power projection into the Indian Ocean region. In May 2016, a
Chinese nuclear attack submarine was spotted pier-side in Karachi, and
Chinese warships now have apparent use of Gwadar port, which China has
developed over the last decade. Chinese naval vessels have reportedly
been escorting Chinese commercial ships in and out of Gwadar since
November 2016. With China’s ongoing counter-piracy mission in the Gulf
of Aden and the Chinese military’s construction of a base in Djibouti, a
more robust Chinese naval presence in the Arabian Sea is in the offing.
Ostensibly, China has pursued such a course in order to
defend far flung sea lines of communication. But its navy will also be
in position to threaten those same sea lines, thus posing a security
threat to Asia’s major trading economies — namely, Japan, Taiwan, and
South Korea. In the opening stages of any conflict with Delhi, moreover,
Chinese forces would be poised to present a threat to India from the
west, a novel prospect for an Indian military that has long prepared for
an air and land war with China to be fought in and over the Himalayas.
The China-Pakistan relationship raises human rights
concerns as well. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a string
of infrastructure projects inaugurated in 2014, may spur economic
development along the route, which stretches from Kashgar, in China’s
northwestern province of Xinjiang, through portions of Kashmir claimed
by India, to Gwadar, Pakistan. But as the World Uyghur Congress has
noted, the CPEC might lead to a greater influx of Han Chinese to
Xinjiang and, absent a relaxation of apartheid-like conditions for
Muslims there, greater ethnic tensions.
Indeed, given the Chinese Communist Party’s general
preference for the iron fist over the velvet glove in the so-called
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, more oppressive security measures are
likely. Pakistan is not unsympathetic to the plight of China’s Uyghurs,
but Beijing has effectively neutralized Islamabad as a potential
defender of Chinese Muslims’ rights. Indeed, Pakistan has, from time to
time in recent years, extradited Uyghurs — even children — to China,
where they face certain punishment.
Greater oppression in Xinjiang would be a tragedy in its
own right and contrary to America’s interest in advancing the cause of
freedom in Asia. Beyond the human tragedy, however, Chinese practices in
Xinjiang have now become a security concern for the United States.
Chinese repression of the Uyghur community is an important factor
leading to greater radicalization within that community, and there are
believed to be approximately 100 Uyghur militants fighting with ISIS in
the Middle East. What happens in Xinjiang doesn’t stay in Xinjiang.
The United States has long looked at Pakistan as an
important partner in the Afghanistan war and with good reason. But
Islamabad has also been a crucial partner in Beijing’s efforts to
complicate India’s security environment and to project Chinese power
into the Indian Ocean region. U.S. national interests suffer as a
result.
Michael Mazza is research fellow in foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
