House report warns ofanti

House report warns of
anti-U.S. alliance

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES 9/25/2000

The Clinton administration's failed policies toward Russia
have created a growing anti-American alliance between
Moscow and Beijing based on arms sales and joint efforts to
curb U.S. power and influence, according to a congressional
report.
"To challenge America's
dominance, Russia today cultivates
its strategic partnership with the
People's Republic of China — a
partnership explicitly targeting
American policies and interests
around the globe and founded on
increasing both the PRC's and
Russia's military capabilities against
the United States," the report said.
The report by a panel of House
Republican national security
specialists stated that
"mismanagement" of U.S. policy
toward Russia "has led to a
growing military and political
relationship between Russian and
the [People's Republic of China]
that is meant to seriously challenge the United States, our allies
and existing security arrangements in the Pacific."
Russia, which at one point in the early 1990s cooperated
with the United States on missile defense, no longer looks to
any kind of strategic relationship with the United States and
has increased military and intelligence sharing with China in a
true strategic partnership, the report stated.
Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican, a member of
the panel formed by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of
Illinois, said in an interview that the Russians in 1992 declared
they wanted a strategic partnership with the United States, but
that failed administration policies ended any chance for close
ties.
"We drive Russia and China together," Mr. Weldon said.
"The level of high-technology weapons transfers has never
been higher."
Arms sales from Russia to China were limited in the early
1990s by Moscow's fears of enhancing China's military
capabilities and arms export potential. They increased from
about $1 billion a year in 1993 to a major weapons-buying
program that will be worth about $20 billion between now and
2004, the report said.
"It is not only deeply ironic but tragic that this state of
affairs follows $112.2 billion in Western assistance to Russia,"
the report said. "After eight years of a Clinton administration
policy that has yet to place highest priority on the basic steps
needed to create a free enterprise economy in Russia, the
U.S.-Russia relationship is in ruins, characterized by deep and
growing hostility and divergent perceptions of international
realities and intentions."
Russian weapons sales have undermined key U.S. strategic
assumptions about the emergence of China as a threat, the
report says.
"The sale of increasingly sophisticated Russian weaponry
and technology to the PRC, and the establishment of close
security cooperation between Beijing and Moscow, calls into
question the fundamental prediction undergirding much Clinton
administration security planning: that the United States will
face no peer competitor in the military field during the next two
decades," the report said.
"Any truly thoroughgoing combination of Russian and PRC
technology and resources would surely produce a peer
competitor for the United States more quickly than is otherwise
commonly supposed."
The anti-U.S. alliance was cemented following NATO's
recent expansion, which Russia opposed, and the U.S. bombing
of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, during
operations in Kosovo. China viewed the bombing as a
deliberate attack; the United States insisted the air strike was
accidental based on faulty intelligence.
The most visible sign of the new alliance is increasing arms
sales. Russia has sold two advanced Sovremenny-class missile
destroyers with SSN-22 anti-ship missiles that were designed
to sink U.S. aircraft carriers.
Other state-of-the-art Russian weapons sold to Beijing
include advanced Kilo-class attack submarines, Su-30
long-range attack jets, MiG-31 fighters, airborne warning and
control aircraft, T-80 tanks, advanced air defense missiles and
rocket engines.
The report also states that the Russian military has made
"far-reaching" commitments to aid Beijing in the event of a war
between the mainland and Taiwan.
If the U.S. Seventh Fleet were dispatched to defend
Taiwan from a mainland attack, Russia's Pacific Fleet would
be ordered to stop them, the report says.
"Today, Russia and the PRC coordinate their policies
across the spectrum of sensitive foreign policy and security
issues," the report said. "Both vehemently oppose U.S. national
and theater missile defense programs, and U.S. efforts to
amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
"Both oppose NATO expansion, despite the evident lack of
a PRC national-security interest in Central Europe. Both
bitterly denounce the sanctions and U.S. use of force against
Iraq. Both oppose NATO policy in Kosovo. Both reject any
outside scrutiny of their human rights abuses in Chechnya,
Xinjiang, and Tibet. Moscow supports Beijing's position on
Taiwan, and Beijing supports Russia's war in Chechnya," the
report continues. "After eight years of Clinton policies designed
to woo both Moscow and Beijing, the United States is the odd
man out."
The report blamed Clinton administration policies for
ignoring Chinese threats and bolstering its economy while
prompting Russia to turn toward China's model of development
and reject American-sponsored reforms.
"The perceived contrast between America's aggressive
economic engagement with the PRC and its virtual
disengagement from Russia strengthened those in Russia —
and in the PRC — who argued that a harder line against the
United States in the foreign policy and security spheres does
not hurt in the sphere of economics and trade, and possibly
might help," the report said.