In a bid to soften Chinese opposition to President Bush's controversial US missile defence plans, the US will not actively oppose a build-up in China's relatively small nuclear arsenal or its resumption of underground nuclear testing.
The policy moves, reported yesterday in the New York Times, mark a significant shift by the US away from a stance of encouraging nuclear de-escalation and confirm its less than lukewarm attitude to the global voluntary moratorium on testing.
But such is the opposition to the missile defence plans among allies, the Russians and the Chinese, the paper reports, that the Administration believes a radical approach is needed to convince the Chinese that the system is not targeted at them but at so-called rogue states like North Korea and Iraq.
In the bizarre logic of nuclear deterrence, by building more missiles China would ensure its ability to circumvent the US system and preserve the crucial guarantee of mutually assured destruction.
Responding to the paper's claims yesterday, the US National Security Adviser, Dr Condoleezza Rice, denied an explicit quid pro quo: "The implication here that the US is acquiescing in the Chinese nuclear modernisation in order to buy China's acceptance of missile defence is just not right," Dr Rice said.
"The United States will continue to say that further nuclear build-up is not necessary and is not good for peace and stability. There's no conscious policy to try to take advantage of this recognition of the Chinese military modernisation for something else." But Dr Rice's acknowledgement of the inevitability of a Chinese missile build-up and confirmation by other officials of the US approach to the testing moratorium will convince diplomats here that the essence of the report is right.
The Washington Post also reported that the US will give the Chinese advance details of its plans for testing its missile defence system.
Dr Rice said the US will begin intensive talks over the next several weeks to try to convince China it would not be threatened by the shield.
"We want to engage China on issues regarding missile defence, and we really haven't," Dr Rice told the Post.
"No one likes the fact that there is a modernisation going on. We don't think it's good for the world," she said. "But if we stopped all of our missile defence plans tomorrow, you would not see the Chinese cease their military modernisation. This is a modernisation that predates serious missile defence negotiations."
But the Times report has already produced a furious reaction from the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr Joe Biden. "This is absolutely absurd," he said. "It shows that these guys will go to any length to build a national missile defence, even one they can't define." The "headlong", "irrational" and "theological" desire to build up such a system would send the wrong message to the world, he said, warning particularly of the effect on India which would try and balance any Chinese build-up.
Observers warn that an increased Chinese nuclear build-up may also destabilise Taiwanese and Japanese non-nuclear defence postures but State Department officials dismiss such concerns with the argument that Chinese modernisation is happening anyway, irrespective of US plans.
Beijing has currently fewer that two dozen nuclear missiles capable of reaching the US as part of the minimal deterrence created by Mao Zedong in the 1950s and 1960s but is currently developing a new generation of mobile ICBMs better able to withstand a first strike. US intelligence reports in 1999 suggested the Chinese would have a few dozen missiles capable of reaching the US by 2015.
Both the US and China have signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and Mr Bush has made clear he wants it to remain in limbo in the Senate.