U.S. resistance to extending the maximum permissible range of
South Korean missiles amounts to shutting the stable door after
the horse has bolted in view of the arms race already underway
in the region, pundits say. Among reasons for its resistance,
the U.S. has sometimes cited fears of provoking China and Japan.
Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed
Services, recently expressed support for extending the range but
on condition that it should not provoke Beijing or Pyongyang.
But China, Japan and North Korea are already engaged in a
frantic arms buildup, drastically bolstering their missile
capability including intercontinental ballistic missiles, or
developing solid rocket boosters that could be diverted for
ICBMs. In the 1960s, China launched a 15-man special committee
to oversee development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles
and formulated a plan to develop four kinds of ballistic
missiles within eight years. As a result, it already in the
1970s had four missiles which put U.S. b