| dc.description.abstract | This paper provides an assessment of the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
proliferation from China, and highlights a link between China’s energy security policy and
WMD proliferation. It puts forth the suggestive argument that China’s energy-driven foreign
policy is taking a form of a “String of Pearls” grand strategy that aims to achieve resource and
maritime security along its energy supply routes stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Indian
Ocean to the Malacca Straits. Having established key “pearls” of WMD client states of Iran
in the Middle East, Pakistan in South Asia, and DPRK in East Asia, China is procuring
additional pearl nodes along the Indian Ocean (e.g., Sri Lanka, Burma, Bangladesh, etc.) and
establishing naval ports, electronic surveillance, military cooperation, nuclear technology and
bio-chemical weapons cooperation with these nodes.
This “arms for oil” trade policy with resource-rich countries in the Persian Gulf, and military
concessions as well as defence cooperation for forward-bases with countries along the Indian
Ocean littoral, have serious international security implications for the E.U., U.S. and her allies
in Asia. With China’s rapid military (especially naval) modernisation and perceived declining
U.S. influence in the region, concerned Asian powers such as Japan and South Korea in
northeast Asia, ASEAN countries in southeast Asia, and India in South Asia, might be
spurred into a competitive arms race and WMD proliferation in the region—especially India
which fears strategic encirclement by China. Nonetheless, these challenges provide
cooperative opportunities for the E.U., U.S. and Asia to harness the underlying competitive
drive and engage India and China via multilateral organisations such as IEA, APEC, ARF to
address the collective common goals of energy security and economic growth. |
