At this week's meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum in Bangkok, China will seek support for its opposition to U.S. plans to develop a theater missile defense. That is consistent with China's use of ARF as a forum for undermining support for the U.S. alliance structure in East Asia. China demands a free hand in East Asia, but the United States and its alliances -- especially that with Japan -- stand in the way.
In opposing TMD, China's first concern relates to Taiwan, which it sees as a rebellious province that must be brought to heel, by force if necessary. A TMD system, China fears, would reintegrate Taiwan, de facto, into the U.S. alliance system. China also worries that TMD would integrate Japanese and U.S. military planning and strengthen the U.S.-Japan alliance. And it fears that TMD would undermine the value of its own small nuclear arsenal, tempting it to bust the bank if it tried to maintain its deterrent capability.
But China's claims that TMD is a destabilizing factor are spurious. TMD is nonnuclear and defensive; it is China's missile buildup that palpably threatens regional security. Across the strait from Taiwan, China is building a complex of intermediate and short-range ballistic missiles, as well as land-attack cruise missiles, which will be guided by new imaging and radar satellites. This complex is intended to give China the capacity to overwhelm Taiwan's defenses. Beijing hopes that the island will then be intimidated into submission -- the classic Chinese strategy of winning without fighting. Seeking to deter the U.S. from intervening in a future Taiwan crisis, China is also buying from Russia destroyers equipped with surface-skimming missiles, whose purpose is to penetrate the defenses of a U.S. carrier task force.