Introduction to translation
Russian President Vladimir Putin's threat to put the "nuclear deterrent" forces on standby has awakened the world from its slumber, and made nuclear war fears a real concern, not just a theoretical possibility.
But according to Michael Schumann, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Global China Center, in his analysis published by The Atlantic, China's nuclear buildup in recent years is the foremost risk.
Schumann believes that the nuclear threat from China is the most dangerous thing facing the United States now, reviewing some lessons learned from the Cold War in dealing with such a threat.
translation text
The possibility of nuclear war usually does not attract much attention outside think tanks, intelligence agencies, and units of military commanders. The nuclear nightmare of the Cold War faded with the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago, while the idea of a country using a nuclear weapon in an arena of mutual destruction seems only a memory. The era of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a dark memory of an era gone.
The Federation of American Scientists estimates that China has 350 nuclear warheads, a low number, but the unusual jump in the Chinese arsenal shows a shift in strategic policy.
But the danger remains, not only because of the current Russian war in Ukraine, but also because China, the old and relatively lightweight player in the nuclear game, has significantly increased the size of its arsenal.
In the latest US Department of Defense assessment of China's military capabilities, the Pentagon predicted that by 2030, China would have nearly tripled its current stockpile of nuclear warheads to 1,000.
No other single census shows us so clearly to what extent the relationship between the United States and China has fundamentally and fundamentally deteriorated, and to what extent this trend threatens American national security, as well as world peace.
Throughout China's entire nuclear history, dating back to the 1960s, the country has been content with a relatively modest arsenal.
The Federation of American Scientists estimates that China has 350 nuclear warheads, a low number compared to Russia's (6,257) and the United States' (5,600).
However, the unusual jump in the Chinese arsenal shows the change of China's strategic policy in this regard.
This does not mean, in any case, that Beijing is preparing to use nuclear weapons, as the Chinese leadership has not clearly stated its intentions, and its Foreign Ministry has officially denied any major expansion of its nuclear arsenal.
But what appears clearly are the potential risks of this new nuclear focus for China. The new nuclear warheads may enhance the weight of Chinese foreign policy, affect how Washington interacts with this file, and may ignite a regional nuclear arms race, as the countries with which it links with China will strengthen turbulent relations. Of its nuclear arsenals as well, especially India, and the Chinese expansion increases the risk of escalation of any conventional war (because of Taiwan, for example) into a nuclear conflict.
On the global level, the growth of the Chinese arsenal may accelerate a return to a chaotic competition of great powers that the world has not witnessed since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Shadows of the Cold War
The main purpose of President Richard Nixon's 1972 interview with Mao Zedong was to draw communist China into the orbit of the United States.
Efforts to avoid this nuclear scenario alone have shaped US foreign policy for half a century.
For example, the primary purpose of President Richard Nixon's 1972 meeting in Beijing with Mao Zedong, the founder of the People's Republic of China, was to draw communist China into the orbit of the United States and cement its abysmal rift with the Soviet Union.
By the 1990s, the fall of the Soviets and the capitalist rise of China seemed to have validated that approach, and perhaps heralded the eventual victory of American democracy over authoritarian threats, and ushered in a prosperous “flat” world.
Unfortunately, 2022's taking shape looks set to bring the Cold War back, with an unhappy ending.
The hostile shift in China's public position, along with President Xi Jinping's willingness to support Russia's aggressive stances in Europe, may put the United States in exactly the same predicament that it escaped decades ago, confronting a team made up of several countries. A nuclear-armed authoritarian intent on rolling back American power.
While relations between Beijing and Washington are strained, relations between Beijing and Moscow are friendlier than they have been since the 1950s, as if the two countries are making up for lost opportunity from the Cold War by supporting each other in the attack on the US-led world order.
The United States may not be ready to meet this multiplying threat.
Matthew Kronig, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council, told me that what's going on is "an unprecedented challenge that together poses a threat to [the United States] in the ranks of the nuclear major powers." We've always been able to build a nuclear power To deal with the Soviet Union and then Russia, and then to a lesser extent China, North Korea and Iran, the strengthening of the Chinese nuclear arsenal raises very fundamental questions for US nuclear strategy.
Making comparisons with the days of the Cold War to understand US-Chinese relations today is not appropriate, but it may be useful to some degree with regard to nuclear weapons, as the two parties are now engaged in doing what America and the Soviet Union did in the early stages of the Cold War, which is the rush towards a nuclear confrontation without Mechanisms to address potential risks.
“If we look at the Cold War calendar, it is as if we are in 1960, when the two sides were preparing for a strategic competition, but The United States, for its part, at least has not yet demonstrated a coherent strategy.At some point, a bilateral crisis will erupt between us and China, and at that point, we will both look to the abyss, just as the Cuban missile crisis forced us to do the same, and thus prompted us to decide on parameters for dialogue.
Beijing's nuclear ambitions will fuel mutual accusations in Washington, where the question is constantly raised: Did American naivety empower the enemy that the United States sought to deter?
The transformation of Beijing's nuclear strategy may not be the product of US decisions as much as it is the result of Xi's unprecedented desire to amplify Chinese power and prepare for a new era of great power competition.
The most important question remains: Why now?
Often, Xi sees the United States as more dangerous, so he acts on it, and, according to Colfer, it is likely that the reason for the buildup of the nuclear arsenal is "Beijing's assessment now that there is a significant risk of it entering a war against the United States. They are witnessing The trajectory of the (deteriorating) bilateral relationship, and they have now decided that they need major capabilities for nuclear deterrence."
What does China want?
Chinese President Xi Jinping
Beijing's nuclear expansion cannot be viewed in isolation from Xi Jinping's broader agenda to project his country's power in Asia and beyond.
“Xi has decided that the time for waiting and hiding is over,” Kronig says, “and it’s time for a party to announce what has been brewing all that time.” Since the PLA will be “a world-class army, it must possess nuclear power by global standards,” Kronig says. ".
Perhaps China's nuclear buildup will not immediately change certain dynamics in the current strategic situation, as the United States will still have much more nuclear warheads, while China is already capable of striking deep into the American mainland (with the limited warheads in its possession).
Measuring the threat depends, in part, on speculation about Xi Jinping's ultimate goal, perhaps striving for a closer equilibrium with the United States in the hope of achieving greater deterrence, the kind of nuclear stalemate that prevailed during the Cold War.
Perhaps "Xi" is preparing his country for a possible US attack on China.
By bolstering his country's transcontinental capabilities, the Chinese president "want to ensure that China can withstand a US first strike and penetrate US missile defenses with any remaining Chinese nuclear weapons," James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, told me. International.
However, we cannot rule out Shi's malicious intentions.
Unlike the United States, China adopts an official policy that states that it will never initiate the use of nuclear weapons, and perhaps "Xi" intends to adhere to that policy.
However, the hundreds of missile silos that the Pentagon says China is building are not necessarily the most effective investments in a purely defensive strategy. It is easy for US missiles to target and destroy these specific sites, for example, and then, as Kronig says, “these are not the weapons they are promoting.” If you are really concerned about a US first strike," he said, adding that such capabilities would make more sense if China were to have "a power similar to the great powers."
Beijing's possession of a stronger nuclear arsenal may help it advance its foreign policy goals.
So far, Asia is the most prominent influence of Xi's nuclear buildup, with most of Beijing's foreign policy interests concentrated there.
Instead of a transcontinental nuclear fight, Beijing may be better able to employ its nuclear weapon in a regional conflict close to it, by striking a US military base in Japan, for example.
"I think that China's development of regional power is more of a concern to me," Acton says. "It's likely that these forces are directed on an offensive basis. I think China would like to have options for a limited nuclear war, which is a new component of its strategy."
Ultimately, it may be a little lighter than limited nuclear war, as Beijing's possession of a stronger nuclear arsenal may help it advance its foreign policy goals by constraining how the United States and its allies respond to China's actions toward Taiwan or elsewhere in the region.
According to Hans Christensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists: “The US in the past could do whatever they wanted there (in Asia) and the Chinese couldn't really do anything about it. Now that's not possible."
In the long run, China's boosting of its arsenal could prompt its neighbors to respond in kind.
The allies of the United States who are under the nuclear umbrella of America, such as Japan and South Korea, may pressure Washington to develop and deploy nuclear capabilities regionally to confront China, and what is worse, they may build their own nuclear capabilities, such as India, which has a tense relationship with China, which may decide In turn, at some point expanded its small nuclear arsenal.
Echoes of Chinese ambitions
It seems clear that Washington needs a new strategy, and according to experts, the answer is not simply to build more nuclear weapons, and perhaps not even necessary to do so in response to China's expansion alone.
In a recent research paper, Kronig emphasized that "the United States should maintain the balance of power between it and China in its favor at every level of escalation," as a continuous deterrent to Chinese military moves.
Kronig suggests that this may require the United States to improve its capabilities to fight a limited regional nuclear conflict in Asia, where China currently has an advantage in this regard.
Perhaps the most urgent need is to urge the two sides to start a dialogue.
Unlike Washington, China has no history of agreeing to limit its nuclear weapons and has long evaded negotiations.
However, the two countries are already talking about holding talks, as Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said that Presidents “Xi” and Biden agreed at their online summit, which was held last November, to “move forward the discussion on stability.” strategic."
However, even if the talks achieve little in the short term, they may eventually develop into arms control negotiations that can eventually mitigate the nuclear threat, similar to what happened during the Cold War.
"We have to think about managing a potentially catastrophic situation, using not only our military power, but all the tools of management and governance, especially diplomacy, to rebuild a strategic dialogue and set some boundaries," Colfer says.
However, the Cold War brings us another lesson, which is that avoiding nuclear conflict requires not only diligent diplomacy, but also a clear strategy.
The United States is already a nuclear superpower, and the trick is to convince both its adversaries and allies that it will continue to defend its interests, whatever the cost.
Acton said that if China "used nuclear weapons, it would be because they were suspicious of the United States' will (to respond) rather than their ability."
Therefore, dealing with China as a nuclear power is a matter of the desire to do so, as much as it revolves around the balance of arms power.
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Translation: Hadeer Abdul Azim
This report has been translated from The Atlantic and does not necessarily reflect the website of Meydan.