The recent expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal is a striking detail of its progress toward the status of a marvelous force. Even in the most intense periods of Cold War rivalry, Beijing maintained a small and remarkably vulnerable nuclear force, probably no more than two hundred warheads. Although modernization continued after the end of the Cold War, it really only accelerated in the last decade, when Beijing more than doubled the number of warheads deployed since 2020.
Since this expansion continues while the arsenals of the United States and Russia are still limited by the numerical limits of the New START Treaty, intense nuclear arms races have receded into foreign policy, and the stockpiles of secondary nuclear states are frozen or only They are gradually expanding. , China’s motivations may seem somewhat confusing. Tong Zhao’s recent essay in Foreign Affairs (“The True Motivations of China’s Nuclear Expansion”) represents a vital contribution to our understanding of them. Zhao argues that China’s nuclear expansion is driven by Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s basic confidence that nuclear weapons are unique tools to “show off Chinese power” in the face of a United States that “has become increasingly hostile to Beijing. ” “. It is therefore aimed at a “strategic counterbalancing” mission that, according to Zhao, aims to force “the United States to adopt a more accommodating stance towards China. ” Therefore, deploying “a larger nuclear arsenal would require Washington to actually comply. ” Beijing and act more cautiously” both in times of peace and in times of crisis.
Although Zhao seems skeptical of this reasoning (such confidences are “probably more a product of instinct than of rigorously tested logic and evidence”), confidence that strong nuclear functions serve to protect a country’s core interests has been widespread since the start of nuclear war. age. Beijing’s focus on how the United States views the balance of forces to advance its interests at a time when China may have to deter the full force of American military dominance in various regional contingencies (most importantly, a crisis that involve Taiwan) deserves to be not a fact. amazing. This may also recommend that China’s leaders be truly quite rational and recognize that capable nuclear forces provide them with the ultimate in any long-term confrontation with the United States. Zhao’s research subtly underscores this basic point: despite the understandable interest of Chinese pro-military officials in “preparing for war” and “achieving strategic victories,” a “persistent opposition to [nuclear] war” prevails, and China’s leaders continue to view nuclear weapons primarily as political tools that provide their possessors with “overall influence” in competitive circumstances, “particularly given rising tensions with the United States. “
This conclusion is vitally and fundamentally correct. But Zhao’s claim that China’s nuclear modernization is “driven more by a nebulous political mandate than by clear military necessity” — which includes “the absence of well-defined military objectives consciously regarded as military objectives” — is more puzzling. China’s decision-making procedure regarding many facets of its nuclear transformation is opaque. However, the perception of a “strategic counterbalancing mission” suggests that, to the extent that rivalry with the United States is most likely the defining feature of China’s strategic environment for as long as it is possible to anticipate it, Beijing will gradually move toward something akin to nuclear parity. This may involve simply eventually seeking numerical equality with U. S. frontline nuclear forces, or simply settling for some kind of “strategic equivalence” with U. S. nuclear deterrence. .
It is unclear exactly where Beijing will end up, but the expectation of developing an antagonism with the United States turns out to be leading China to strengthen its nuclear functions at all levels, under the assumption that it will be mandatory to get as close as possible to Chinese interests in the face of overwhelming American power. Proponents of rational deterrence theory would not be surprised by this outcome.
China’s ambition to counter America’s current nuclear superiority involves more than just an increase in the number of weapons. Beijing is also focusing on obtaining various technologies and institutionalizing unprecedented adjustments to its force posture that allow it to expressly achieve A close examination of this effort therefore does not reflect Zhao’s assertion that Beijing largely views “nuclear weapons as symbols of the army’s strength” rather than as a means “to achieve obviously explained military objectives, as well as how to dissuade an enemy from undertaking express military activities. “
The available evidence on China’s nuclear transformation suggests that it pursues four stated military objectives. First, Beijing is trying to increase the survivability of its forces. The numerical increase in China’s arsenal of warheads and the diversification of its delivery systems, adding the creation of a full-fledged nuclear triad, are motivated by the purpose of expanding the survival fraction of China’s nuclear deterrent, i. e. the number of Chinese weapons, which would even mean a global first strike introduced through the United States. Chinese military planners have a clever appreciation of America’s traditional and nuclear capabilities, as well as the vulnerability of its own deterrence in the past.
In an era of expanding competition, Beijing’s preference for preventing Washington from concluding that it can “win” a nuclear war by executing “splendid first strikes” (those that can succeed in neutralizing China’s nuclear arsenals) takes on new urgency. Thus, China has sought to increase the number of nuclear warheads it deploys, diversify its deployment and launch patterns, and replace its force posture by expanding alert rates that would allow it to inflict immense damage on U. S. cities and other targets, even after suffering. A lot of damage. A first American strike. These transformations are not aimed at supporting nuclear war – at least not yet – but at least not yet – but at strengthening strategic deterrence, so that China’s emerging ability to inflict “unacceptable” damage to U. S. objectives saves Washington from contemplating nuclear attacks on China in the first place. .
Second, Beijing seeks to increase the effectiveness of its retaliation. Chinese military leaders and planners are keenly aware that a successful nuclear deterrent against the United States ultimately requires China to be able to put a variety of high-value American assets at risk, even in the face of determined efforts. to protect them. Currently, U. S. missile defenses are weak and would most likely be useless against threats posed through the offensive forces of a primary nuclear force like China. But as the US-China conflict evolves, Beijing cannot count on US strategic defenses remaining so underdeveloped that it can unleash its offensive nuclear operations. As a result, China is investing heavily to develop the ability of its nuclear weapons to penetrate American defenses, even as those defenses become more complicated in the coming years. Whether by deploying increasingly complicated penetration aids (such as decoys, jammers, and maneuverable reentry vehicles) or advancing unconventional delivery platforms (such as hypersonic glider vehicles or fractional orbital bombardments), their goal is to ensure that can defeat any American strategic defense.
Third, Beijing is trying to increase its competitiveness in an escalation. Given the crises China anticipates, it needs to be able to compete with the United States in all degrees of nuclear use. China’s Transformation of Its Nuclear Weapons Arsenal by Deploying Low-Power Nuclear Weapons Low-yield warheads (which can be supplemented in the long term with weapons of varying yield) suggest that its military planners have identified the demanding situations involved in facing a complex nuclear risk such as that of the United States. Nuclear weapons (i. e. , the ability to diminish their explosive force) Chinese strategists need in the event that the United States can simply use low-yield nuclear weapons to inflict discrete or limited damage on China and leave Beijing with only the problematic option of wearing itself down. Primary retaliatory attacks in response.
Because China needs to have the ability to respond symmetrically, even to small U. S. nuclear attacks — forcing the U. S. to make a further escalation — the transformation of its forces now includes the deployment of low-yield nuclear warheads that it had in the past. These functions do not yet appear to be geared toward a full-blown nuclear war (as the tactical nuclear forces of the United States and the Soviet Union were during the Cold War). Rather, they appear to be aimed at giving China the ability to respond to U. S. nuclear attacks, limited by comparable responses to render moves ineffective.
Fourth, Beijing seeks to increase the effectiveness of its regional goals. As part of its contingency planning, it aims to endanger various Indo-Pacific countries that threaten it directly or that may simply make common cause with Washington against it. China has continued its theater-of-operations nuclear systems (those intended to target its Asian neighbors and U. S. military forces operating in the vicinity), even as it has notably developed its strategic delivery systems (land-based and sea-based intercontinental ballistic missiles) aimed primarily at the continental United States. , suggests that they are well aware that they are surrounded by significant nuclear threats, such as India and even Russia, and a host of U. S. allies whose military comforts are critical to the good fortune of U. S. combat operations against China.
In an understandable effort for its deterrence, China has purchased and continues to expand a variety of short-range nuclear weapons systems aimed at vital regional targets, adding U. S. allies such as Australia, Japan and the Philippines, which are not nuclear powers. Thus, a vital facet of Beijing’s nuclear transformation is to deter any neighbor that directly or indirectly threatens China with significant traditional or nuclear forces, as well as any U. S. forces deployed and operational on the front lines that could be used simply to attack China or undermine its hard core interest.
Evidence suggests that Beijing is pursuing express military-technical goals as a logical complement to Xi’s political ambition to achieve a “strategic counterweight” to the United States. These goals seem to have been thoughtfully devised in the broader political framework of the nuclear festival. However, China’s existing military-technical projects are not yet aimed at waging nuclear war, but at strengthening deterrence. In other words, Beijing, at least for now, is not contemplating neutralizing the U. S. nuclear force through preemptive measures or preemptive strikes, as the Soviet Union did after achieving nuclear parity; rather, it seeks to save Washington from its impressive traditional and nuclear functions to coerce or defeat China in any high-stakes confrontation in which China’s important interests are at stake.
As a result, Beijing’s new nuclear functions are not only suitable investments for China, given its preference for neutralizing “the perceived existential risk coming from the United States,” but are also perfectly in line with Xi’s ambition to “strike a more advantageous balance between nuclear and nuclear forces. “”It would be a paramount miracle if Xi could also achieve this latter purpose without consciously integrating the operational goals pursued by Chinese military planners and that characterize the current transformation of China’s nuclear force. Some elements The assessment of this effort might seem confusing, but it’s hard to dismiss the overall effort, as Zhao does, as “driven by ambiguous political reasoning and thinking. “
Concluding that the ongoing transformation of China’s nuclear force is far more rational, more useful, and more goal-oriented than Zhao attributes to it, does not mean that the United States will have to respond with its own frenzied nuclear expansion. China is especially improving its nuclear forces, which are still much lower than those of the United States. Washington has time to take appropriate action. For now, the priority is to complete its ongoing nuclear modernization program while striving to talk about nuclear stability. Problems with China. No it is unexpected that Beijing has shown little interest in carrying out such a verbal exchange as it develops its own nuclear arsenal. The fact that China’s nuclear transformation is driven by deep structural imperatives – the prospect of an intensified festival with a much more adversarial approach like the United States – expectations that Washington and Beijing will be able to break the nuclear impasse in which they find themselves.
Ashley J. Tellis is the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
I appreciate Ashley Tellis’s thoughtful reaction to my essay and contribute to a broader debate about the motivations behind China’s nuclear progress. In my essay, I warned that China’s recent nuclear progress was driven more through a directional mandate from political leaders than through a new doctrine. molded through army strategists. Xi considers nuclear weapons to have a superior coercive force beyond the realm of the military, provoking and driving a nuclear expansion that lacks obviously explained military objectives and suffers from internal disorientation and inconsistency. Here’s where I disagree with Tellis: The New China Nuclear functions indeed have utility for the military, but none of the military’s goals discussed through Tellis specify the timing, scale, or scope of their progression.
For example, the People’s Liberation Army has been operating for decades to bolster the credibility of its second-strike capability. But China’s brutal nuclear expansion goes far beyond what is mandatory for this purpose. Just a few years ago, leading nuclear experts in the PLA considered nuclear deterrence between the U. S. and China to be “fairly stable,” given the lack of significant expansion (or expansion plans) of U. S. strategic nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities; therefore, only slow modernization was needed to counter American technological advances.
The PLA’s preference for climb control features also does not affect this expansion. Although this peak increase likely drove the expansion of precision nuclear forces in theater range, it cannot do so with ordinary investments in new ICB-missile silo loads or the abundant expansion of road-mobile ICB-based ballistic missiles. This expansion of strategic nuclear forces constitutes the most confusing facet of China’s nuclear development. In particular, such weapons would play no direct role in managing the escalation of a regional war over Taiwan.
Tellis extra suggests that one of the Chinese military’s goals is to deter “significant conventional” threats by targeting nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states such as Australia, Japan, and the Philippines. However, there is little evidence in official Chinese documents or in the personal analyses of its experts to support this claim, and I sometimes find that Tellis’s criteria for validating or refuting various claims about PLA military objectives are unclear. Without examining internal deliberations and policy-making processes, such speculations remain quite subjective.
Tellis says his project as a “strategic counterweight” will allow China to adapt to U. S. nuclear functions “as much as possible. “But the supposed need for nuclear parity must be deduced from the military’s technical calculations of nuclear sufficiency. Instead, it is based on intuition, as the goal of the strategic counterweight is too vague to allow for quantitative investigation of the necessary warheads. Acknowledging that China’s nuclear policy is guided by the nebulous concept of strategic counterweight states that it is motivated more by political than military objectives. Possibly or not Tellis has an understanding of the nuclear functions that serve the objective of a strategic counterweight. This inherent uncertainty explains why a politically motivated Chinese nuclear policy presents a more complex challenge than a policy motivated primarily by military-technical considerations.
The United States has a long history of combating nuclear threats and is accustomed to devising military-technical responses to certain security problems. It knows how to deter aggression when the objectives of an adversary’s army are clear. However, this is not the case in China. The nuclear challenge therefore requires a full understanding of how internal adjustments to the Chinese formula are reshaping Beijing’s classical nuclear thinking. This progression has led to inconsistencies and the development of tensions in a nuclear doctrine developed in a centralized and compartmentalized formula in which political loyalty sometimes triumphs over technical rationality. It is not difficult to see how China’s “ambiguous political reasoning and thinking” has led to significant errors, in everything from “zero Covid” to the crackdown on high-tech industries. I would have liked to share Tellis’s optimism that China’s nuclear policy goals are “well considered,” but the evidence suggests policymakers deserve to be cautious and not assume impeccable internal policy logic or coherence when analyzing strategy. Chinese nuclear
Highlighting the political drivers of China’s nuclear progress is not the same as justifying it. Nor is my essay a call to the United States to remain passive in the face of China’s expansion. Instead, it urges Washington to avoid sticking to the worst-case scenario and try to assess the most realistic threats possible. On this point, I disagree with the experts who downplay the motivations of China’s nuclear expansion, believing that only the effects matter. Understanding these motivations is imperative to anticipating long-term nuclear progression and deployment. , and employment strategies, as well as Beijing’s possible responses to U. S. countermeasures.
Such an understanding will also allow policymakers to develop more effective diplomatic methods to engage China in reducing the nuclear threat. A politically motivated nuclear expansion may simply provide more opportunities for Washington to influence China’s long-term nuclear expansion, explore agreements on nuclear restriction, and reduce the threat of misinterpretations and overreactions. Indeed, disassociating the nuclear festival from political rivalry is a pressing task, and understanding the Chinese idea is the first step.