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Today’s CCP military parade included flashiest-ever public display of China’s nuclear weapons. But what does it all mean for broader U.S.-China nuclear relationship? My new @Brookings #GlobalChina paper offers some thoughts. THREAD 1/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/china-and-nuclear-weapons/
BLUF: Buckle up. After decades in which nukes were basically irrelevant to the relationship, US-China nuclear dynamic is almost certainly headed in a more competitive direction—for reasons this parade reinforces but that are rarely discussed explicitly by either side. 2/
Parade reminds us that China (like US & Russia) pursuing major nuclear modernization program. PRC arsenal growing larger, more capable of penetrating missile defenses, better able to hold at risk U.S. cities, quicker to fire, more easily concealed. 3/ https://fas.org/blogs/security/2019/10/china-military-parade/
Beijing’s nuclear activities are fueling anxiety in Washington, as numerous official statements and reports make clear. 4/ https://www.dia.mil/News/Speeches-and-Testimonies/Article-View/Article/1859890/russian-and-chinese-nuclear-modernization-trends/
Publicly, U.S. government officials predict that China’s arsenal size may soon double, and that China’s commitment to long-standing No First Use policy might be weakening. 5/ https://freebeacon.com/national-security/stratcom-china-rapidly-building-up-nuclear-forces/
Even if doubled, however, China’s arsenal would still be dramatically smaller than those of US & Russia, and little concrete evidence suggests China is abandoning No First Use in order to adopt a Russian- or North-Korean style strategy of coercive nuclear first use. 6/
Rather, changes in China’s nuclear arsenal look to me to be mostly about survivability—trying to disabuse US of notion that its ever-growing counterforce and missile defense capabilities could enable a splendid first strike against China. 7/ @Journal_IS
https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/files/publication/isec_a_00273_LieberPress.pdf
https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/files/publication/isec_a_00273_LieberPress.pdf
US has long resisted acknowledging a state of mutual nuclear vulnerability with China—aka Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), in which due to the mutual presence of secure second-strike force, neither side can “win” a nuclear war, no matter who goes first. 8/
As Twitterless Brendan Green shows in forthcoming book, US didn’t embrace MAD even in the Cold War. Instead US pursued damage limitation—a position of nuclear advantage intended to meaningfully limit costs US would suffer in an all-out nuclear war. 9/ https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/revolution-that-failed/FEA339C3F57E1C55D2E196EF30D512D3
Today, 2018 Nuclear Posture Review notes continuing US pursuit of damage limitation. 10/
This desire for damage limitation is central to US concerns about improved Chinese survivability. US likely believes that ability to hold Chinese nuclear forces at risk confers deterrent and coercive advantages, even well below nuclear threshold. 11/
Likely U.S. objective is to make China to worry that if it starts crisis/conflict w/ risks of nuclear escalation, US will have higher tolerance for bearing these risks due to relatively greater ability to limit damage US would suffer in all-out nuclear exchange. 12/
This capability would, in theory, make China less likely to initiate conflict, or more likely to back down if one started. Twitterless Austin Long spells out this logic in more chapter 5 of America’s Nuclear Crossroads book by @ericgomez @CDDorminey 13/ https://research.cato.org/americas-nuclear-crossroads
None of this mattered much when prospects for US-China grey zone or conventional conflict were low & US conventional capabilities massively overmatched PRC. But those days are over & US is worried about credibility of its extended deterrent. 14/ https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR392.html
Unfortunately, continued US pursuit of damage limitation carries real risks & trade-offs, as paper outlines. These include heightened escalatory danger & likelihood that China will eventually adopt a more ambitious nuclear doctrine than otherwise. 15/ https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ISEC_a_00248
Policymakers can mitigate some of these problems a bit, as paper also discusses, but US pursuit of damage limitation & PRC pursuit of survivability seem on fundamental collision course. So like I said—buckle up. 16/ 16
