Asia News Digest
China Protests U.S. 'Dr. Strangelove' Nuclear Targetting
As reported in the China Daily of March 11, China is awaiting an official and clear-cut explanation from the United States on possible use of nuclear weapons against China and six other nations, said Sun Yuxi, spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry. The names of the countries were leaked in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, March 10. Sun also said that while China is aware that U.S. officials have commented some on the issue, Washington still must make explanations.
Sun also said that China wants to continue cooperation with other countries, including the U.S., in the fight against terrorism. This is a long-term and complicated task for the international community which requires effective international collaboration, he said, and the fight against terrorism must have clear targets and convincing evidence.
China is not alone in questioning the Nuclear Posture Review policy. Protests from inside the United States, Russia, Europe, and the Middle East are hitting the White House (see article "U.S. Nuclear Doctrine is Madder than MAD," in this week's Indepth section).
War Cabalist Wolfowitz Plays with Provoking China over Taiwan Defense
During the week of March 11, Taiwan Defense Minister Tang Yiau-ming was in Florida, speaking at a closed-door arms sale conference with U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Frank Carlucci, and the entire U.S. defense industry. The "private" meeting is sponsored by the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council (headed by former Defense Secretary and Carlyle Group director Frank Carlucci), and includes Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, United Technologies, Textron, Honeywell, United Defense and more.
While it is a "private" organization, the official nature of the event is clear from the keynote speakers: Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz; his Assistant Secretary, Peter Brooks; and Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly. The visa granted to Tang is the first visa (other than so-called "transit visas") given to a Cabinet minister of Taiwan since the end of official relations in 1979, and has been strongly protested by the Chinese government as an "open violation" of agreements which will "damage both Sino-U.S. relations and relations across the Taiwan Strait." State Department spokesman Richard Boucher hid behind the supposedly "private" nature of the conference to claim that the visit was purely private and thus within the policy guidelines. Meetings between Tang and the government officials will take place within the conference, where no press are allowed.
The meeting precedes the annual April meeting on arms sales between Taiwan and the U.S., which this year is being called "military affairs talks" rather than arms talks. Deputy Chief of the Taiwan General Staff Admiral Fei Hung-po will lead the Taiwan delegation to that meeting. The controversial meetings come in the context of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's curtailing of all new military-to-military arrangements with the People's Republic of China, and while U.S. military bases and military operations are springing up along numerous Chinese borders, under the auspices of the war on terrorism.
China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi expressed strong dissatisfaction about the meeting, according to China Daily of March 11, saying: "What the U.S. has done is an open violation of the one-China policy and the three Sino-U.S. joint communiques, and it will encourage the Taiwan independence force. It will harm ties between China and the U.S., as well as relations across the Taiwan Straits."
Thai Senator Warns U.S. Against Unilateralism and War
The head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of Thailand, Senator Kraisak Choonhavan, warned the U.S. against unilateralism and war.
Kraisak, from one of the leading families of Thailand, told a forum in Washington on March 14 that he had met with members of the U.S. Congress and the Administration, and that all had nothing but the war on terrorism on their minds. "The war on terrorism is fine," Kraisak said, "but I warn the U.S. against unilateralism. Talk to other nations. You will lose your allies. As to the 'axis of evil'--these are some of Thailand's leading trading partners--Iran, Iraq."
Secret Files: Australian Nobel Prize Winner Had Plan for Bio Warfare Against Dark-Skinned Races
The Australian government has released a 1947-51 secret file of plans for the development of biological and chemical weapons to be used against "tropical populations only," to deal with overpopulation. The plan, drawn up by "Australia's greatest scientist," Nobel Prize winner microbiologist Sir Macfarlane Burnet, was declassified by the National Archives of Australia, despite resistance from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The files include a comprehensive memo Sir Macfarlane wrote for the Australian Defence Department in 1947.
"Specifically to the Australian situation," Sir Macfarlane said, "the most effective counteroffensive to threatened invasion by overpopulated Asiatic countries would be directed towards the destruction by biological or chemical means of tropical food crops and the dissemination of infectious disease capable of spreading in tropical but not under Australian conditions."
Macfarlane, who headed the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1960. His purely genocidal intent is not hidden: "The main contribution of local research so far as Australia is concerned might be to study intensively the possibilities of biological warfare in the tropics against troops and civil populations at a relatively low level of hygiene and with correspondingly high resistance to the common infectious diseases," he said in January, 1947.
He explicitly wanted to replicate the success of the nuclear bombing of Japan: "The main strategic use of biological warfare may well be to administer the coup de grace to a virtually defeated enemy and compel surrender in the same way that the atomic bomb served in 1945. Its use has the tremendous advantage of not destroying the enemy's industrial potential, which can then be taken over intact. Overt biological warfare might be used to enforce surrender by psychological rather than direct destructive measures."
After visiting the United Kingdom in 1950 and examining the British chemical and biological warfare research effort, Macfarlane told the Australian committee working on these weapons: "In a country of low sanitation the introduction of an exotic intestinal pathogen, e.g., by water contamination, might initiate widespread dissemination. Introduction of yellow fever into a country with appropriate mosquito vectors might build up into a disabling epidemic before control measures were established." The subcommittee recommended that "the possibilities of an attack on the food supplies of S-E Asia and Indonesia using B.W. agents should be considered by a small study group." In 1951 it recommended that "a panel reporting to the chemical and biological warfare subcommittee should be authorised to report on the offensive potentiality of biological agents likely to be effective against the local food supplies of South-East Asia and Indonesia."
Besides the explosive nature of this release, it must also be considered that it was intentionally released at this time to further play up the "mad dog" policy, as in the leaking of the nuclear doctrine, to generate fear, and to force the discussion of the possibility of the unimaginable.
India Will Remain Politically Crippled During Time of Critical Global Tensions
Although face-saving measures, orchestrated through the Indian Supreme Court, kept the mobs away from Ayodhya, site of the Muslim-Hindu violence last week, it is almost a certainty that pressures will be exerted to blow up the situation from time to time. On March 15, following the Supreme Court order that no ritual worship for future construction of the Lord Ram Temple will be allowed at Ayodhya, the fanatic Hindu group the VHP (a faction within the ruling BJP Party) backed off. However, a state of tension prevails in the provinces of Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh, and it is unlikely that the situation will improve in the near future.
This also means that India will be off the world political scene for at least six months, if not two years, when the next general election is scheduled. This will affect New Delhi's ability to consolidate relations with both China and the United States. Also, Indian initiatives in southeast Asia will decrease.
There is another danger. The Opposition, instead of trying to split the BJP Party, by backing Prime Minister Vajpayee and going after the radical VHP et al. as being responsible for the violence, is going after the entire BJP. This is going to cripple Vajpayee further. The Opposition gameplan could be to force a situation in which Vajpayee would resign. The present President will be in office until May 2002, when a new President will be elected. The Opposition may bring the situation quickly to a head and call for Vajpayee's resignation before President Narayanan leaves office, thereby forcing new elections to take place.
|