The treaty does not include non-deployed nuclear weapons or tactical nuclear weapons. Efforts to get China to join New Start have failed. China reportedly has an ambitious nuclear weapons program that reportedly has over 300 nuclear weapons. Recent media reports state that China is constructing at least 250 new long-range missile silos at as many as three locations, fueling speculation that it plans to substantially expand its nuclear weapons arsenal. The fragility of New Start, given that it does not include tactical missiles or non-deployed nuclear weapons, and that China is not participating in this arms reduction treaty are issues of concern. Also of concern are the new technologies that could challenge missile defense programs. Indeed, recent developments with hypersonic missiles and low flying cruise missiles are potential challenges to missile defense systems that play a critical deterrence role. Working to acquire an agreement for the complete and verifiable denuclearization of North Korea is of paramount importance. If unsuccessful, other countries in the region will seek their own nuclear weapons. And getting Iran to commit to IAEA inspections to prove that they will not again pursue nuclear weapons will be necessary if we don’t want a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. And working on getting China to join New Start will be vital if we want a meaningful arms control regime that commits all nuclear weapons states to reduce their arsenal of nuclear weapons. A nuclear arms race and nuclear proliferation are issues requiring the attention of all countries, especially the nine nuclear weapons states.

North Korea was the only country to quit the NPT ― in 2003 ― and is reported to have provided Syria with training, materials, and assistance in constructing a plutonium reactor in Al-Kabir. Israel bombed this facility in September 2007, just prior to its going operational. Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons program until 2003 and in 2015 signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with China, France, Germany, the U.K. and the U.S., committing Iran to halt numerous nuclear programs for a certain period, to be verified by the IAEA. Iran, however, has breached the accord several times, restricting IAEA inspectors’ access to some of their declared or suspect nuclear facilities. The U.S. quit the JCPOA in 2018 and is currently in negotiations with Iran to re-enter the agreement. The immediate concern is that if North Korea is permitted to retain its nuclear weapons, other states in the region, like South Korea, Japan and others, eventually may seek their own nuclear weapons capability, despite U.S. extended deterrence commitments. And if Iran, a nuclear weapons threshold state that pursued nuclear weapons until 2003, decides to acquire nuclear weapons, then countries in the region like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt will also pursue their own nuclear weapons capabilities, despite the U.S. extended deterrence commitments. And given that Al Qaeda had sought nuclear weapons and fissile material for dirty bombs to attack the west, it’s incumbent upon us to ensure that nuclear weapons and fissile materials are secure and protected from terrorists. Separately but related, the U.S. and Russia recently signed a five-year extension (to February 2026) to the New Start Arms Reduction Treaty.

If corrective actions aren’t taken immediately, the world will witness a nuclear arms race resulting in a world with more nuclear weapons states and more nuclear weapons and fissile material sought by rogue states and terrorists. Thus, the danger of stumbling into accidental nuclear conflict or a terrorist group acquiring fissile material for a dirty bomb will become more of a security threat to all nations. The Treaty of the Non-Proliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT), signed by 191 countries in 1968 that included the five nuclear weapons states, was established to prevent the spread of atomic weapons and weapons technology and cooperate in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and nuclear disarmament. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) established and implemented a safeguard system to ensure compliance with treaty obligations. The recent death of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the architect of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb program and who was under house arrest in Pakistan, is a stark reminder that even one person, with knowledge and access, can be a serial nuclear proliferator. In the late 1980s and 1990s, A.Q. Khan provided Iran with P-1 and P-2 centrifuges, blueprints and components for its enrichment facility in Natanz. He provided North Korea and Libya with centrifuges, training and manuals for its enrichment programs. Libya eventually abandoned its pursuit of nuclear weapons in return for international legitimacy and normalized relations with the United Kingdom and the U.S. North Korea and Iran persisted with their Highly Enriched Uranium programs for nuclear weapons. Currently, North Korea has conducted six nuclear tests. It reportedly has an inventory of between 40 and 60 nuclear weapons.

China, then, is clearly not the economic superpower it would have us believe it is. It is a totalitarian state which is not immune to the market rules that govern capitalism or economic pressure we could bring to bear. It is President Biden’s duty to take advantage of and increase China’s economic problems. But he won’t. He is soft on China, as demonstrated by his removing Trump-era restrictions on Chinese media operating in the U.S. and his promise to reverse U.S. policy that said the Chinese Communist Party was not the legitimate ruler of China. Mr. Biden could and should do more. China’s imposition in 2020 of a new security law on Hong Kong ended the island city’s autonomy. That law provides, for example, that people accused of the crimes of “subversion” and “collusion with foreign forces” may be tried in mainland China where the administration of justice is government-controlled. Mr. Biden should invoke the Hong Kong Autonomy Act and, under the Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992, end its special status. If he did, sensitive U.S. technologies could no longer be exported to Hong Kong, and its exports could be subjected to the same tariffs that are imposed on Chinese goods. We can have an even greater effect by imposing sanctions on Chinese banks that do significant transactions with entities that materially contribute to the contravention of China’s obligations. Last year, the Senate considered such actions under a bipartisan bill and then dropped the ball. Those actions wouldn’t cripple the Chinese economy, but they would certainly worsen China’s economic problems. This opportunity may not come again, but Mr. Biden won’t do any of those things.

China’s central bank has had to bail out several big lenders. These effects aren’t as catastrophic as the failure of Lehman Brothers was in 2008 (which helped create that year’s U.S. financial crisis), but they are significant dents in China’s economy. Last month, Chinese bankers reportedly bought more in low-risk financial instruments than they made in loans to meet their government-imposed lending quotas. This is contrary to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s desire for the banks to lend more and will limit China’s economic growth. An even more significant event is the reported slowdown of China’s “Belt and Road Initiative.” The BRI, in which China has reportedly invested $4 trillion, has been lending 50 developing countries massive sums for construction projects to be built by Chinese companies. Those loans have the effect of turning those nations into tribute states that owe China more than they can pay. There are conflicting reports, but many of the BRI projects apparently have been excavated but not built. This probably indicates a reduction in the availability of Chinese capital. A Wall Street Journal report stated, “China is experiencing a slow-motion economic crisis that could undermine stability in the current regime and have serious negative consequences for the global economy.” It also said that “this is a potential threat to the implicit social compact in China” and that the U.S. should not assume continued Chinese economic growth. China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology is almost certainly the place from which, intentionally or not, the COVID-19 virus was released. China’s economy is still being hit by COVID-19 lockdowns of whole cities that are home to tens of millions.

A nation is powerful if its economy is too, if it has nuclear weapons with which it can fight, or both. Our economy made us a post-World War II superpower as much as our nuclear arsenal did. China, like the U.S., is a superpower due to its economy and its nuclear arsenal. But if its economy fails to support its aggressive strategies, China’s strength and its hold over its people will diminish greatly. There is considerable evidence that China’s economy is in a deepening slump. It is in our strategic interests to worsen those problems. We have been in a cold war with China for three decades. China threatens us and our allies in the Pacific with military action, perpetrates thousands of cyberattacks against us every day and steals hundreds of billions of dollars in intellectual property from us each year. Its purchases of Iranian oil keep the world’s principal terrorist regime in power. North Korea is a Chinese client state for which China builds such things as missile launching trucks. For decades after World War II, America’s economy was by far the world’s largest. China has been catching up steadily. In 2020, our Gross Domestic Product was about $21 trillion, and China’s was about $16 trillion. China had a record trade surplus in 2021, despite slower overall growth in the second half of the year. China’s economy is projected to equal or surpass ours by 2030, but several intervening factors may prevent that from happening. Evergrande and Kaisa are two of the largest Chinese property development firms. Both defaulted on their debt payments in late 2020 and entered bankruptcy last month along with several other over-leveraged firms, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Don’t forget that during these hectic 2020 winter months, Dr. Anthony Fauci was doing Mr. Daszak’s parallel work to direct suspicion away from Wuhan. Dr. Fauci wrongly advised the public and former President Donald Trump as late as Feb. 29, 2020, that the new virus strain would not affect us much. He, too, funded Wuhan. In June, Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, disclosed emails that showed a scientific colleague of Dr. Fauci had examined the virus in Jan. 2020 and said it appeared “engineered.” But after a conference call with Dr. Fauci, the scientist publicly debunked talk of a lab leak as a “crackpot theory.” I’ve previously written that Democrats show little interest in running down the exact virus source - a discovering that would help beat the next sprouting and determine if the Chinese Communist Party is a gleeful mass murderer. My opinion is that liberal American oligarchs bathe the left in so much operating cash while profiting greatly off China that Democrats don’t want to interrupt that supply chain. Rep. Michael T. McCaul of Texas produced a report that concluded, “We now believe the preponderance of the evidence shows the virus accidentally leaked from one of the WIV’s facilities” via a worker. China did not report the first “official” case to the World Health Organization as required. And the lab’s online virus database suddenly disappeared in the November-December timeframe as COVID-19 cases multiplied within six miles of the laboratory. This psychopathic behavior is why medical detectives will likely never find the smoking gun.

The degree to which the Daszak-inspired letter in a beloved British journal infected the Washington debate can’t be overstated. Its mocking of “conspiracy theories” gave pro-China, Trump-hating liberals the weapon they needed to savage not only the president but also his allies, particularly Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican. Both men suspected the virus derived from a manmade lab leak, not from nature, not from a wild animal. But gradually, with the help of conservative journalism and inquisitive Republicans, the Wuhan lab theory escaped from the fringe. The February 2020 letter did another China chore. The signers heaped praise on the regime’s antivirus operation, creating a smokescreen that deflected attention away from Chinese Communist Party deception. China repeatedly lied. Its global propaganda organs said this new coronavirus wasn’t human-contagious. Without conscience, as thousands were dying (later millions), China blamed the virus escape on the U.S. military or various spots in Europe. And there was Chinese suppression. Whistleblowers disappeared. China refused entry to a truly independent full-access inspection team. When Australia called for such a probe, the communist party threatened to destroy it economically. Mr. Daszak, the letter impresario, had a vested interest in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. For years, his New York City-headquartered EcoHealth Alliance funneled millions of dollars in grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health to the lab. This financial/professional collaboration is the conflict of interest The Lancet’s Horton condemned. America was financing risky coronavirus experiments for a communist party that attacks us in various ways.

The Lancet has had a breakup with Peter Daszak, the scientist whose public letter hosted by the British medical journal protected China’s Wuhan laboratory at a pivotal time as the coronavirus began contaminating the world. February 2020 was a confusing month. We didn’t know much about China’s latest homegrown germ as it went country to country, person to person, and people started pointing fingers at blame. At that moment, The Lancet published an open scientific letter immediately celebrated by Beijing’s Washington apologists. Organized by British zoologist Mr. Daszak and signed by 26 other scientists, the letter categorically ruled out the Wuhan Institute of Virology as the birthplace of the new coronavirus, or SARS-Cov-2. Two years later, in a remarkable switcheroo, the Lancet came close to outright repudiating the letter and Mr. Daszak. And the repudiator was Lancet’s top editor, Richard Horton. Mr. Horton wrote in a Dec. 11 Lancet column, “They argued that the overwhelming majority of scientific opinion supported the view that SARS-Cov-2 ‘originated in wildlife.’ And they signed off their letter, ‘We declare no competing interests.’ But what fast became clear is that one author of that Lancet letter did indeed have an interest to declare, and an incendiary one at that - a direct link to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, including experiments on viral spillover events and recombinant bat coronaviruses.” The unnamed “author” is clearly Peter Daszak. Mr. Horton testified before a parliamentary committee. “there were indeed competing interests that were significant, particularly in relation to Peter Daszak.”

Just how many trillions depends on what activities and operations are included – low numbers are two trillion, higher numbers are several times that. Whatever the cost, the 2003 Iraq war was a massive policy and operational failure, primarily of the George W. Bush Administration, but also of the Congress, and with policy support from the Clinton Administration and continuation of many programs by the Obama Administration. So why has no one been “held responsible” for such a massive failure — nor is it likely anyone will ever be? As Donald Trump learned when he criticized the Iraq war, the “establishment” GOP, especially many so-called “NEOCONs,” came out against him. Many former senior officials joined the fray. Most Washington Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives alike (especially in Congress that funded it) “bought” the Chalabi-inspired Iraq “WMD” ruse. Thus, there are far too many “people in the boat” for there ever to be anyone, or any group, held responsible for the catastrophic failure. “Safety in numbers” is the rule for Iraq and always will be, as Mr. Trump learned the hard way. However, Trump’s election in 2016 changed these dynamics, despite his unpopularity with most of “traditional Washington.” Voters were as tired of the Iraq catastrophe as Mr. Trump - and that was likely one of the main reasons he was elected. Our leverage in international negotiations changed for the better. So, can we recover from our costly obsession with Iraq and our negligent ignorance of Russia and China — and the growing threats from North Korea and Iran? We hope so, but we are not optimistic.