In a recent article, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command called for a new deterrence strategy to address the threats posed by China and Russia, including the “real possibility” that a regional crisis with both countries could turn into a nuclear conflict. At the same Time, the Biden administration extended the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the United States and Russia for five years and said it would strengthen arms control efforts to reduce the nuclear threat from China during the extension period.
U.S. Strategic Commander: Escalation of Regional Crisis with China and Russia into Nuclear Conflict “a real possibility”
Writing in the February issue of the Naval Institute journal Proceedings, Strategic Command Commander Admiral Charles Richard said both China and Russia have begun to use force means and threats of force to challenge international norms, arguing that the post-Cold War era of unlikely direct armed conflict with nuclear power rivals is over. He warned that the possibility of using nuclear weapons remains low, but not impossible.
A regional crisis with Russia and China has the potential to quickly escalate into a conflict involving nuclear weapons if they perceive that losses from conventional warfare would threaten their regimes or states,” he said. Therefore, the U.S. military must shift its primary presupposition from ‘nuclear weapons are not likely to be used’ to ‘there is a very real possibility that nuclear weapons will be used,’ act to confront that reality and prevent it from happening.”
The four-star general argued that recent actions by China and Russia are destabilizing and, if left unchecked, would increase the risk of a major power crisis or conflict. He noted that China’s and Russia’s investment in developing nuclear and strategic capabilities and the deployment of advanced strategic forces in recent years require more U.S. action to enhance deterrence capabilities and adjust deterrence plans in response to new threats.
Strategic Command is responsible for the areas of missile defense and strategic deterrence. A spokesman for the command told Voice of America that the concerns are not new and have been mentioned by Strategic Command generals on multiple occasions in the past.
Admiral Richard suggested at a hearing last year that if the current trajectory continues, we will face two nuclear adversaries in a decade with capabilities to match ours and will need different deterrence strategies to deal with them,” he said. It is important to have a discussion now about the relationship between future strategies, strategic deterrence, and resource requirements.”
Steven Pifer, a visiting fellow on arms control at the Brookings Institution, argues that the current concern is not a large-scale nuclear strike of the kind seen during the Cold War, but rather an escalation of conventional conflict to the use of some small nuclear weapons. He argues that “the possibility of that happening is there, but the probability remains low.”
According to Andrew Scobell, a China military expert at the RAND Corporation, Admiral Richard’s assessment is “measured and appropriate. He said the admiral noted that the likelihood of nuclear war is low at this stage, and that his concern is that “in a future crisis, Russian or Chinese leaders might decide that a conventional conflict with the United States would lead to imminent or tangible defeat and decide that they have no other option but to resort to nuclear weapons.”
China’s nuclear forces to at least double in the next decade
In comparing the Russian and Chinese threats, General Richards argued that China’s military buildup is making it a strategic peer to the United States and that the United States should not erroneously classify China as a “lesser included case.
He said China continues to invest significant resources in conventional weapons systems to develop supersonic and advanced missile systems and to further expand its space and space countermeasures capabilities. China also continues to build its nuclear forces, including land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched missiles, and is nearing completion of a new generation of nuclear-capable long-range bombers, seeking to build a “trinity” of nuclear strike capabilities.
China is expanding its nuclear arsenal, he said, with the number of warheads expected to at least double, if not triple or quadruple, in the next decade.
China has never made public the size of its nuclear arsenal. Figures from the Federation of American Scientists estimate China’s nuclear warhead count at 320.
Hong Kong‘s South China Morning Post earlier this month quoted a Chinese military source as saying that China’s nuclear warheads have increased to 1,000 in recent years, but fewer than 100 are in active service.
China says it pursues a nuclear strategy of self-defense and “always adheres to a policy of no first use of nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances.”
But Admiral Richards argued that China’s pursuit of a massive build-up of missiles and other strategic weapons is inconsistent with its stated “strategy of minimal deterrence. While China has pursued a ‘no first use’ policy since the 1960s, claiming it will not be the first to use nuclear weapons, its increased build-up of advanced military capabilities should make us think twice,” he said. That policy could change in the blink of an eye.”
According to Stauffer, China’s nuclear capability building in recent years has focused more on survivability and reliability than on the number of nuclear weapons, but he notes that China is quite vague on its strategic intentions.
China’s nuclear strategic thinking is often described as ‘minimal deterrence’ or ‘guaranteed retaliation,'” he said. While China remains committed to its long-standing ‘no first use’ pledge, there is a great deal of ambiguity about the circumstances under which China believes it can justify launching nuclear weapons.”
Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC), served as the official in charge of nonproliferation policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense during the Bush administration. He believes that China is also alarming in terms of its civilian nuclear program.
If you look at their civilian sector, particularly the rather ambitious fast breeder program, which produces plutonium that can be used to make nuclear weapons, and you add that to the nuclear warhead and weapons material they already have, you get a pretty large amount, very close to what we’re already deploying over the next decade,” he said. decade that we’ve already deployed. That’s still fairly conservative and doesn’t take into account the other aspects.”
Deterrence and Arms Control
Adm. Richard, commander of Strategic Command, argued that the U.S. military needs to take a number of actions to prepare strategically for the response, including rethinking how it assesses strategic risk and how it procures weapons systems and other capabilities in order for the U.S. to maintain strategic advantage.
A Pentagon spokesman said Defense Secretary Austin shares the same concern, “We don’t want to escalate to a conflict of that magnitude.”
The U.S. nuclear arsenal is estimated to have 3,800 nuclear warheads in active service, with 1,750 deployed, far exceeding China’s nuclear arsenal. The United States has submarines and aircraft that can conduct nuclear strikes, as well as land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Pifer, a visiting fellow on arms control at the Brookings Institution, believes the United States needs to make good trade-offs between nuclear and conventional force development.
I think it’s important for the United States to modernize some of its nuclear forces, but maintain a strong conventional force,” he said. My view is that if a conventional conflict can be prevented from occurring in the first place, then there is no fear of escalation into a nuclear conflict.”
Stanton believes that the United States should engage in an ongoing dialogue with China on nuclear issues in both official “track one” consultations and “track two” consultations involving experts, scholars and former officials to address China’s nuclear threat. He believes that these dialogues help ensure that both sides understand each other’s nuclear strategies and developments and reduce the potential for escalation.
He and other arms control experts agree that China should be included in negotiations to limit strategic nuclear weapons, but the question is how to facilitate the negotiations or make China’s inclusion constructive.
The Trump administration had insisted that China join U.S.-Russian consultations on strategic arms reductions and was prepared to let the New START treaty signed between the United States and Russia expire this February without China’s participation. This 2010 arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia stipulates that each can deploy no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads. Trump Administration officials say Beijing has for years used the U.S. to develop nuclear weapons at its whim while it complied with the arms control agreement.
But Beijing has refused, saying it is unrealistic at this stage to ask China to participate in nuclear disarmament talks with the U.S. and Russia.
The Biden Administration announced this week a five-year extension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia and said it would pursue arms control efforts with Russia on all nuclear weapons issues during the five-year extension, as well as arms control efforts to reduce the threat of China’s growing modern nuclear arsenal.
Pifer argues that trilateral negotiations between the United States, Russia and China alone are impractical; the United States and Russia have far more nuclear warheads than China, and Beijing will not agree to unequal nuclear weapons reductions, nor will Washington and Russia reduce their nuclear weapons to China’s level.
One possible scenario, he argued, is for the United States to reach another agreement with Russia that includes all nuclear weapons and then convince China and other nuclear-armed states to make a cap commitment. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty limits only deployed strategic weapons and is not binding on about 60 to 65 percent of all nuclear weapons, he said.
In its statement extending the New START treaty, the State Department seemed to indicate that the Biden administration would negotiate further with Russia on disarmament issues involving all nuclear weapons and engage in a separate dialogue with China, Pifer said. He believes that is the right direction.
I don’t think it will be a negotiation, but there will be an avenue, maybe starting with a strategic stability dialogue and then gradually evolving to include China,” he said. There may be some areas where trilateral negotiations are feasible. The scale is very unequal in terms of the number of nuclear weapons, but if it’s in the area of space or cyber capabilities, maybe there are possibilities for negotiations.”
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