The Empire Strikes Back: ‘Stanford 5’ Help Beijing’s Effort to Discredit the Authoritative Cox Committee Report

(Washington, D.C.): “Friends of China” is a term the Communists in Beijing use to identify
individuals and organizations in the West upon whom the PRC can rely to promote its party line.
In the United States, they have come to be known collectively as “the China Lobby.” Lenin had
a less charitable term for the breed: “Useful idiots.”

Whatever their appellation or motivation, these advocates seem determined to mark the
anniversary of the single most devastating assessment of the policies, purposes and intentions of
the People’s Republic of China — the completion of the unanimous report of the “Cox
Committee” ¹ — with a full-scale effort to discredit that
bipartisan initiative. As the dangers
associated with allowing U.S. policy towards China to be guided by naive illusions or
self-serving parochial interests inexorably grow, this cynical campaign must not be allowed to go
unchallenged.

Enter the ‘Stanford 5’

The most recent salvo unleashed at the report issued in December 1998 by the Select
Committee
on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the Peoples Republic of
China — universally know by the name of its chairman, Rep. Chris Cox (R-CA) — was fired last
week by Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). ²
This organization is chaired by William Perry — a man who has had longstanding, cordial and
often controversial ³ ties with Communist China before,
during and after his services as
President Clinton’s Secretary of Defense. Dr. Perry is currently Mr. Clinton’s Special Envoy to
East Asia and the principal architect of the Administration’s policy of appeasement toward
Beijing’s ally and client, North Korea.

For months, CISAC has sponsored a study prepared by four specialists and edited by a fifth
who
appear to share its chairman’s generally benign view of the People’s Republic of China:
Professor Alistair Iain Johnston, a Chinese foreign policy expert at Harvard University; Dr.
Wolfgang Panofsky, a participant in the Manhattan Project who has been a harsh critic of U.S.
nuclear weapons activities ever since; Dr. Marco Di Capua, a former foreign service officer who
currently is a physicist at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory working on “proliferation prevention”
regarding China; Lewis Franklin, a career intelligence officer specializing in Sino-Soviet missile
programs; and Dr. Michael May former director of the Livermore Laboratory who serves as
co-director of the CISAC program. The transparent goal of the so-called “Stanford 5” authors is
to help discredit the Cox Report, which they have characterized as based upon “skewed
research,” “misleading” information and “sloppy” analysis.

It is not hard to understand why “friends of China” want to undermine the Cox Committee’s
credibility and public confidence in its conclusions. The picture painted by the Select Committee
— on the basis of twenty-two hearings, hundreds of hours of testimony and the full participation
of the U.S. intelligence community — concerning China’s activities and their import for U.S.
security (and other) interests is damning. At the insistence of the Clinton-Gore Administration,
fully one-third of the Select Committee’s report remains classified. ⁴ Committee members, led
by Rep. Cox and his ranking minority member, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA), however, emphasized
that everything in its unclassified portions is supported by the large quantity of material redacted
prior to the report’s release to the public. Among the most important of these findings were:

• The PRC has stolen design information on the United States’ most advanced
  thermonuclear weapons and associated re-entry vehicles; the PRC’s next generation of
  thermonuclear weapons, currently under development, will exploit elements of stolen
  U.S. design information, including targeting, penetration aids, MIRV capability and
  greater survivability owing to the enhanced mobility afforded by miniaturization; and,
  PRC penetration of our national weapons laboratories spans at least the past several
  decades and almost certainly continues today.
• These thefts enabled the PRC to achieve capabilities on a par with our own much sooner
  than would otherwise have been possible — leaping from 1950’s-era technology in a
  handful of years to a level which took the U.S. decades of work, hundreds of millions of
  dollars and several nuclear tests to reach.
• The deployment of weapons based on the thefts could have a significant effect on the
  regional balance of power; the PRC has also stolen or otherwise illegally obtained U.S.
  missile, guidance and space technology that improves the effectiveness and reliability of
  the PRC’s military and intelligence capabilities that could be used to attack American
  population centers and assets; and the PRC has proliferated such technology to other
  countries, including regimes hostile to the U.S., notably Iran and North Korea.
• U.S. technology export controls and laws are insufficient and lack proper enforcement
  and the Nation’s intelligence community is insufficiently focused on the threat posed by
  the PRC to obtain militarily useful technologies by legal (commercial and political) and
  illegal means.
• Finally, the PRC’s long-run geopolitical goals include incorporating Taiwan into the PRC
  and becoming the primary power in Asia, goals which conflict with current U.S. interests
  in Asia and the Pacific.

Far from being a one-sided, partisan or strictly congressional critique, these findings have in
the
main been reinforced by independent assessments subsequently conducted by the President’s
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a CIA damage assessment and a National Intelligence
Estimate, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and, not least, by a number of admissions by the
PRC. The latter include public acknowledgments that Beijing has acquired the neutron bomb
and is doing pre-deployment testing of the Jl-2. In addition, federal indictments and other
judicial proceedings — most recently against former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee — appear
to confirm the thrust of the Cox Committee’s warnings. ⁵

No Sale

Fortunately, despite some favorable publicity, ⁶ the
CISAC team has failed in its effort to
impugn the Cox Report described by the New York Times as “the most comprehensive
examination of the issue ever conducted by any part of the American government.” ⁷ This is
due, in part, to the CISAC team’s acknowledged inability to evaluate the as-yet-unreleased
classified information that underpins many of the Select Committee findings about which they
express such criticism. In part, it is because their effort is full of strawman arguments,
mis-characterizations of the Cox Report and their factual errors. ⁸

But most importantly, the CISAC effort ultimately fails to debunk the Cox Report
convincingly because it is driven by a competing and ever-more-incredible world-view —
one that is not only sharply at variance with that of the Cox Committee, but with the facts,
as well. ⁹ The Stanford 5 appear to
perceive the PRC as a nation that is squarely on a glide-path
toward becoming a status quo power, one with whom the United States can — perhaps after a
tense transitional interlude — safely divide the world into spheres of influence with Asia
rightfully conceded to China. A central tenet in this conception is that “China will only
become
an enemy if we treat it as one” or if we fail to accord the Chinese sufficient prestige.

Indeed, this theme has become a leitmotif for China’s “friends” in the United States.
Notably,
the Clinton administration embraced the concept of a “strategic partnership” with China so that
the latter would feel it was being treated as at least a prospective co-equal. In this fashion, the
theory went, Beijing would be given an incentive toward status quo behavior —
including
curbing proliferation and joining Western regimes on arms control and other matters.

In fact, “engagement” as pursued by the Clinton-Gore Administration in particular,
and as
advocated by the Stanford 5, is creating the basis for China’s growing, comprehensive
national strength, especially benefitting its military and strategic nuclear and
information
warfare capabilities — this is manifestly not in our interest.
Especially worrisome it the fact
that the policies being advanced in the name of engagement will not lead to mere linear advances
for the PRC over decades. ¹⁰ Rather, they are likely to
translate into ominous technological
leaps. Worse yet, they are likely to be of the sort that the blue-ribbon commission headed by
former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned last year will be hidden from us and very
costly to counter. They may be of a character that will cause one or the other party to
miscalculate or act precipitously in future crises.

‘What, Me Worry?’

Incredible as it may seem, some like CISAC “friend of China” Alistair Iain Johnston, evince
no
concern about such a development. In fact, he appears less troubled about growing Chinese
ballistic missile threats than about American efforts to defend against them. As he wrote in
China Quarterly in March 1998, just as U.S. “plans for the unilateral deployment of
ballistic
missile defenses threatened to destabilize U.S.-Soviet deterrence in the 1980’s,” so too
“asymmetric ballistic missile defenses will destabilize Sino-U.S. relations in the 21st Century.”

Johnston says that rather than protecting U.S. interests, allies and troops in the region from
missile attack from North Korea, China or anyone else — thus creating disincentives to their
further investment in threatening ballistic missile capabilities, “the United States ought to be
assisting China to develop an assured second-strike minimum deterrence capability [including]
submarine-launched ballistic missile technology in return for verifiable, bilateral and/or
multilateral commitments to eschew MIRVing, ballistic missile defense, and anti-satellite
weapons development and deployment.”

Unfortunately, it turns out that China has indeed acquired from the United States, albeit
illicitly,
this sea-based missile technology and integrated it into its new submarine-launched ballistic
missile, the JL-2. What is more, far from eschewing the acquisition of MIRVing capability the
PRC is actively pursuing it (thanks, again, in part to technology thefts and diversions from the
United States. It is engaged in anti-satellite weaponry development and ABM-defense research
as well.

A similar line was taken earlier this year by the RAND Corporation’s Jonathan Pollack at a
two-day Carnegie Endowment event. He averred that it might have been bad form for the
Chinese to steal the United States’ “legacy codes,” representing the fruits of some fifty-five years
of U.S. nuclear weapons development and deployment experience, “but that doesn’t mean it is
bad [that] they have them.” This view, well-received at the conference, seems to mirror that of
the Clinton Administration which reportedly encouraged China to rely upon such data and the
powerful supercomputers (whose unprecedented transfer President Clinton has repeatedly
approved) needed to exploit it. ¹¹

The theory goes that such a quantum enhancement of the technology base of the PRC’s
nuclear
weapons program would be desirable insofar as it helped to wean Beijing from
underground
testing and, thereby, clear the way for China’s accession to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
Never mind the fact that, as the U.S. Senate determined earlier this year, the CTBT is wholly
unverifiable and that militarily significant Chinese cheating could go undetected. ¹² In the minds
of China’s “friends,” strengthening the People’s Liberation Army is a necessary and desirable
contribution to strategic stability.

CISAC Misconstrues China’s Guiding Philosophy

Such thinking is dangerously out of touch with reality. Even the Clinton Administration’s
Pentagon felt constrained in its 1999 Strategic Assessment to note that:

China’s official Defense White Paper [dated July 1998] lays out a vision of the future
security
environment that is antithetical to that embraced by the United States….In the first decade of the
21^st Century, China’s rise could alter the roles and relations among major powers,
including
Japan and the United States….The PLA intends to develop a sea-denial capability out to the
so-called Second Island Chain and eventually control that space [an area including Japan,
Philippines and Indonesia and the sea-lines of communication through which half of world trade
transits]….In the near-term, China’s military modernization raises the stakes in any regional
dispute involving the United States, Japan or an outside coalition. Coupled with an adequate
nuclear deterrent, this may be all Beijing needs to influence regional issues in the near-term

It seems likely that the PRC will do this in accordance with techniques taught by Sun Tzu —
that
is, via stealth and deception, seeking to “alter the enemy’s strategy,” “cloud his perceptions,”
“disrupt his alliances,” “feign weakness when strong” and by exploiting asymmetric technologies
that place the United States at risk, making respectable gains at an acceptable level of cost.

A key ingredient in the realization of this Chinese agenda is the utilization of the PRC’s
growing
economic strength to support the military’s program. Few points more clearly illustrate the gap
between the views of the “friends of China” and those with a more clear-eyed appreciation of
Beijing’s thinking than their differences over the meaning and implications of Deng Xiopeng’s
“16 Character Statement” featured prominently in government offices throughout China and
cited in the introduction to the Cox Report: “Combine the military and the civil;
combine
peace and war; give priority to military products; let the civil support the military.”

The CISAC report attempts unconvincingly to portray this broad and sustained “16
Character”
policy as one limited to defense-conversion projects under a leading commission, COSTIND.
Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, the correct interpretation of Deng’s slogan is evident in its
implementation,
especially since Tiananmen, when the Communist Party’s dependence on the military to retain
power was placed in sharpest relief. This record is summarized by one of the world’s leading
authorities on China’s politics, the South China Morning Post‘s Willy Wo-lap Lam,
in his new
book The Era of Jiang Zemin:

After June 1989 [i.e., the time of the Tiananmen massacre], Deng himself reversed many of
his
earlier doctrines. He boosted the party’s “absolute leadership over the gun”….His previous
teachings on army modernization were superceded by one central concern: to ensure that the
PLA become a “steel Great Wall” that would protect the Party against the onslaughts of hostile
foreign forces” ….Throughout the 1990’s Politburo and Central Military Commission members
and leading generals “were having a bigger say in the use of economic resources, even in
industrial policy;” articulating polices of “fusion of peace-time and war-time needs…the
synthesis of war and peace” and “Army production should take precedence over the civilian
sector.”

…Shanghai party boss and Politburo member Huang Ju…said development in the civilian
sector
should take place “in lockstep” with that of the army.” “The National Defense Law of
1997…enshrin[ed] the PLA’s status as a ‘state within a state'”….This ran counter to Deng’s
original insistence that…it must be subordinate to the requirements of economic
development”….Li Peng in his National Party Congress address of 1997…called the army a
“special guarantor” of economic development; other government units were asked to furnish the
PLA with unquestioned assistance: “All levels of government must support the PLA.”

Clearly, the all-pervading aim of the Chinese regime is not the conversion of the PRC into a
pluralistic political system with a free market economy modeled after, and integrated with,
Western institutions. Rather, its purpose is to perpetuate the Communist Party’s rule. For this it
needs nationalism and the army; all else is subordinated to the furthering of those indispensable
instruments of state power.

The Bottom Line

The CISAC report shows that there will always be those who argue in the face of all history,
fact
and logic that conflict is improbable or outmoded because of “global interdependence,” parity of
“status,” or other factors of dubious relevance except to their partisans. For them, factors like
espionage, technology controls and effective deterrence are extraneous issues or bothersome
hypotheticals.

The truth of the matter is, however, that the only thing more recurrent than these shopworn
and
historically discredited propositions is conflict itself. The studied inability (or unwillingness) of
the Stanford 5 to see the larger pattern behind the PRC’s relentless militarization over two
decades is precisely why the Cox Report remains such a valuable and necessary benchmark
work.

¹For a copy of the Cox Report see the Select Committee’s web site
(https://cox.house.gov/sc/index.htm).

²The same acronym was applied to this organization during its
previous incarnation, when it
was known as the Center for International Security and Arms Control. The substitution of “and
Cooperation” for “Arms Control” in CISAC’s title presumably reflects a recognition of the
dwindling relevance of the arms control theology — or at least its cachet — in the post-Cold War
world.

³See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
‘Inquiring Minds Want to Know’: Does Bill Perry
Have What it Takes to Make Sound Defense Policy? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=94-D_13″>No. 94-D 13, 2 February 1994).

⁴It appears that the Administration took full advantage of its ability
to control the
declassification process to delay the public release of the Cox Report and to control the contents
of such information was released and its characterization. Predictably, some — like the “Stanford
5″ — are now exploiting the Committee’s refusal to disclose material that supported its
conclusions and recommendations in deference to the CIA’s assertions that doing so could harm
sensitive sources and methods.

⁵For additional information about the various ways in which the
Cox Committee’s assessments
have been confirmed or otherwise reinforced, see “Update on the Select Committee Report” on
the Committee’s web site ( href=”https://cox.house.gov/sc/index.htm”>https://cox.house.gov/sc/index.htm).

⁶Notably, a laudatory report in last Wednesday’s Washington
Post by staff reporter Walter
Pincus. In this article as in many previous ones, Pincus appears to be trying to excuse, obscure
or otherwise minimize the damage done by the Clinton-Gore Administration’s security policies.
See Giving ‘Clinton’s Legacy’ New Meaning: The Buck Stops at the President’s
Desk on the
‘Legacy’ Code, Other D.O.E. Scandals (No. 99-D
52, 29 April 1999) and The Politicized
C.I.A.: The Real Problem Has Been Under – Not Over – Estimating Moscow’s
Weaponry (No.
95-D 95, 20 November 1995).

⁷An even more impressive testament to the Cox Report’s credibility
is the fact that, after
members of the House of Representatives had an opportunity to review this lengthily classified
document in its entirety, legislators adopted fully two-thirds of the Cox Committee’s
recommendations by a vote of 428-0.

⁸These errors are detailed in a response to the CISAC study (and
three similar critiques
published previously) that was written by Nicholas Rostow, a former senior member of the Cox
Committee’s staff and present Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence. Rostow’s essay, entitled “50 Factual Errors in the Four Essays,” can be accessed at
( href=”https://cox.house.gov/sc/coverage/SenIntell.pdf”>https://cox.house.gov/sc/coverage/SenIntel
l.pdf).

⁹Interestingly, this world-view similarly afflicted CISAC in its
earlier incarnation. In the
1980’s, the organization went to great lengths to “document” Soviet arms control compliance in
order to gainsay the Reagan Administration’s intelligence-driven conclusions about widespread
Soviet cheating on its disarmament obligations.

That CISAC effort became increasingly untenable after 1989 when the then-Soviet
Foreign
Minister Eduard Shevardnadze acknowledged that the Soviets had violated the ABM Treaty by
deliberately building a prohibited large, phased-array radar (LPAR) at Krasnoyarsk in Siberia.
With greater access to damming Soviet and Russian internal documents and memoirs following
the Berlin Wall’s collapse — concerning such matters as the USSR’s illegal territorial
anti-ballistic missile defense system and its chemical and biological weapons — all but the most
determined of the “useful idiots” recognize that purposeful violation of the USSR’s arms control
commitments was endemic in the “Evil Empire.”

¹⁰For example, as Yale University’s Paul Bracken points out, the
PRC perfected its DF-15
medium range missile’s targeting capabilities between its firings in the Taiwan Straits in July
1995 and its March 1996 reprise from an initial accuracy of 2.5 miles to within a few hundred
feet. This astonishing achievement means that in a mere 8 months the PRC did what it took the
U.S. and the Soviet Union, with vastly larger resources, 25 years to perfect. Thanks to, among
others (most notably Russia) American help, China is expected to have 1000 improved ICBM’s
and cruise missiles before 2010.

¹¹See Broadening the Lens: Peter Leitner’s
Revelations on ’60 Minutes,’ Capital Hill Indict
Clinton Technology Insecurity (No. 98-D
101, 6 June 1998).

¹²See C.T.B.T. Truth or Consequences #5:
Opposition to a Zero-Yield, Permanent Test Ban’s
is Rooted in Substance, Not Politics (No. 99-D
111, 11 October 1999) and C.T.B.T. Truth or
Consequences #4: The Zero-Yield, Permanent Test Ban’s Pedigree is Hard Left, Not
Bipartisan or Responsible (No. 99-D 110, 11
October 1999).