The Real Challenge of China’s Nuclear Modernization

1 See, for example, Evan Braden Montgomery, “Contested Primacy in the Western Pacific: China’s Rise and the Future of U.S. Power Projection,” International Security 38, no. 4 (2014); Eric Heginbotham et al., The U.S.–China Military Scorecard: Forces, Geography, and the Evolving Balance of Power, 1996–2017 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2015); Thomas Shugart, First Strike: China’s Missile Threat to U.S. Bases in Asia (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, 2017); Toshi Yoshihara and James R. Holmes, Red Star over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy, 2nd ed. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2018); and Eric Edelman and Gary Roughead, Co-Chairs, Providing for the Common Defense: The Assessment and Recommendations of the National Defense Strategy Commission (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2018), 14.

2 Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2021 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense), 90.

3 Statement of Charles A. Richard, Commander, United States Strategic Command, Before the Senate Armed Services Committee,” March 8, 2022, 6 (emphasis omitted), https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/download/richard-statement-03/08/2022.

4 See, for example, Abraham Denmark and Caitlin Talmadge, “Why China Wants More and Better Nukes,” Foreign Affairs, November 19, 2021, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-11-19/why-china-wants-more-and-better-nukes.

5 John Speed Meyers, Mainland Strikes and U.S. Military Strategy Towards China: Historical Cases, Interviews, and a Scenario-Based Survey of American National Security Elites (Dissertation, Pardee RAND Graduate School, 2019), https://www.rand.org/pubs/rgs_dissertations/RGSD430.html.

6 Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda, “Chinese Nuclear Weapons, 2021,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 77, no. 6 (2021).

7 Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2021, 93.

8 Ibid., 92.

9 See, for example, Richard, “Statement Before the United States Armed Services Committee”; Marcus Weisgerber, “Air Force Secretary Warns of China’s Burgeoning Nuclear Arsenal, Reveals B-21 Detail,” Defense One, September 20, 2021, https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2021/09/air-force-secretary-warns-chinas-burgeoning-nuclear-arsenal-reveals-b-21-detail/185486/; David Martin, “Exclusive: No. 2 in U.S. Military Reveals New Details about China’s Hypersonic Weapons Test,” CBS News, November 16, 2021; https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-hypersonic-weapons-test-details-united-states-military/.

10 See, for example, David Logan, “The Dangerous Myths about China’s Nuclear Weapons,” War on the Rocks, September 18, 2020, https://warontherocks.com/2020/09/the-dangerous-myths-about-chinas-nuclear-weapons/.

11 Austin Long, “Myths or Moving Targets? Continuity and Change in China’s Nuclear Forces,” War on the Rocks, December 4, 2020, https://warontherocks.com/2020/12/myths-or-moving-targets-continuity-and-change-in-chinas-nuclear-forces/.

12 Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, “The End of MAD? The Nuclear Dimension of U.S. Primacy,” International Security 30, no. 4 (2006).

13 Caitlin Talmadge, “Would China Go Nuclear? Assessing the Risk of Chinese Nuclear Escalation in a Conventional War with the United States,” International Security 41, no. 4 (2017); and Josh Rovner, “Two Kinds of Catastrophe: Nuclear Escalation and Protracted War in Asia,” Journal of Strategic Studies 40, no. 5 (2017).

14 Evan Braden Montgomery, “Posturing for Great Power Competition: Identifying Coercion Problems in U.S. Nuclear Policy,” Journal of Strategic Studies (2021), https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01402390.2021.1886932.

15 Gerald C. Brown, “Understanding the Risks and Realities of China’s Nuclear Forces,” Arms Control Today, June 2021, https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2021-06/features/understanding-risks-realities-chinas-nuclear-forces.

16 Glenn Snyder, ‘The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror’, in Paul Seabury, ed., Balance of Power (San Francisco, CA: Chandler Publishing, 1965).

17 Caitlin Talmadge, “China and Nuclear Weapons,” Brookings Institution, September 2019, 7, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/FP_20190930_china_nuclear_weapons_talmadge-1.pdf.

18 Montgomery, “Contested Primacy in the Western Pacific.”

19 Brian Radzinsky, “Chinese Views of the Changing Nuclear Balance,” War on the Rocks, October 22, 2021, https://warontherocks.com/2021/10/chinese-views-of-the-changing-nuclear-balance/.

20 Department of Defense, 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2022), 11.

21 Defense Intelligence Agency, China Military Power: Modernizing A Force to Fight and Win (Washington, D.C.: Defense Intelligence Agency, 2019), 91.

22 Kristensen and Korda, “Chinese Nuclear Weapons, 2021,” 320, 328.

23 Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda, “United States Nuclear Weapons, 2021,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 77, no. 1 (2021), https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00963402.2020.1859865?needAccess=true. See also Montgomery, “Posturing for Great Power Competition”; and Valerie Insinna, “Biden Administration Kills Trump-Era Nuclear Cruise Missile Program,” Breaking Defense, March 28, 2022, https://breakingdefense.com/2022/03/biden-administration-kills-trump-era-nuclear-cruise-missile-program/.

24 Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, 2021), 163, 125, 66.

25 John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai, China Builds the Bomb (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 213.

26 Bates Gill, James Mulvenon, and Mark Stokes, “The Chinese Second Artillery Corps,” in The People’s Liberation Army as Organization: Reference Volume 1, James C. Mulvenon and Andrew N.D. Yang, eds. (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2002), 543, 557, 542.

27 Thomas G. Mahnken, Gillian Evans, Toshi Yoshihara, Eric S. Edelman, and Jack Bianchi, Understanding Strategic Interaction in the Second Nuclear Age (Washington, D.C.: CSBA, 2019), 79-81.

28 江天骄 [Jiang Tianjiao], “同盟安全与防扩散—美国延伸威慑的可信度及其确保机制 [Alliance Security and Counterproliferation—The Credibility of U.S. Extended Deterrence and the Mechanisms for Securing It],” 外交评论 [Foreign Affairs Review], no.1 (2020): 128; 江天骄 [Jiang Tianjiao], “美国实战威慑核战略: 理论, 历史与现实 [U.S. Nuclear Warfighting Deterrence Strategy: Theory, History, and Reality],” 国际安全研究 [Journal of International Security Studies], no. 2 (2021): 36; and 王政达 [Wang Zhengda], “核威慑机理: 实力基础, 信号传递和心理博弈 [Nuclear Deterrence Mechanisms: Power Base, Signaling, and Psychological Games],” 国际论坛 [International Forum], no. 1 (2022): 117.

29 See, for example, 刘芝平 [Liu Zhiping], “冷战时期联邦德国促使北约双重决议萌芽的原因 [The Reasons Behind West Germany’s Push for NATO’s Dual-Track Decision During the Cold War],” 南华大学学报 [Journal of University of South China] 11, no. 4 (2010): 57 and 员欣依 孙向丽 [Yuan Xinyi and Sun Xiangli], “北约核政策与核态势的回顾及展望 [Retrospect and Prospect of NATO’s Nuclear Policy and Nuclear Posture],” 国际安全研究 [Journal of International Security Studies], no. 5 (2017): 145-151.

30 Evan Montgomery and Toshi Yoshihara, “Leaderless, Cut Off, and Alone: The Risks to Taiwan in the Wake of Ukraine,” War on the Rocks, April 5, 2022, https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/leaderless-cut-off-and-alone-the-risks-to-taiwan-in-the-wake-of-ukraine/.

31 Max Fisher, “Putin’s Case for War, Annotated,” New York Times, February 24, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/world/europe/putin-ukraine-speech.html; and David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, “Putin Declares a Nuclear Alert, and Biden Seeks De-escalation,” New York Times, February 27, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/27/us/politics/putin-nuclear-alert-biden-deescalation.html.

32 Max Fisher, “As Russia Digs In, What’s the Risk of Nuclear War? It’s Not Zero,” New York Times, March 16, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/world/europe/ukraine-russia-nuclear-war.html; and Aaron Blake, “Why Biden and the White House Keep Talking about World War III,” Washington Post, March 17, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/17/why-biden-white-house-keep-talking-about-world-war-iii/.

33 Seth Cropsey, “Going vertical: Ukraine, Taiwan, and the nuclear ploy,” Asia Times, April 14, 2022, https://asiatimes.com/2022/04/going-vertical-ukraine-taiwan-and-the-nuclear-ploy/; Hiroyuki Akita, “What the Ukraine war has taught China about designs on Taiwan,” Nikkei Asia, April 16, 2022, https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Comment/What-the-Ukraine-war-has-taught-China-about-designs-on-Taiwan; Mark Magnier, “Russian missteps in Ukraine offer Chinese Lessons in better military strategy, stronger troop morale,” South China Morning Post, April 21, 2022, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3174926/ukraine-war-china-can-learn-much-russias-invasion-and-not-just; and David Sacks, “What Is China Learning From Russia’s War in Ukraine?” Foreign Affairs, May 16, 2022, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2022-05-16/what-china-learning-russias-war-ukraine.

34 Minnie Chan, “PLA adopts nuclear deterrence to stop foreign intervention on Taiwan: analysts,” South China Morning Post, August 21, 2022, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3189597/pla-adopts-nuclear-deterrence-stop-foreign-intervention-taiwan.

35 Koichiro Takagi, “The Future of Cognitive Warfare: Lessons from the War in Ukraine,” War on the Rocks, July 22, 2022, https://warontherocks.com/2022/07/the-future-of-chinas-cognitive-warfare-lessons-from-the-war-in-ukraine/; and David Logan, “The Dangerous Myths.”

36 Michael S. Chase and Arthur Chan, China’s Evolving Approach to “Integrated Strategic Deterrence” (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2016), 35-45.

37 肖天亮 主编 [Xiao Tianliang, ed.], 战略学 [Science of Military Strategy] (Beijing: National Defense University, 2020), 137.

38 Eric Heginbotham and Richard J. Samuels, “Vulnerable U.S. Alliances in Northeast Asia: The Nuclear Implications,” The Washington Quarterly 44, no. 1 (Spring 2021): 164-166.

39 Jesse Johnson, “Japan should consider hosting U.S. nuclear weapons, Abe says,” Japan Times, February 22, 2022, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/02/27/national/politics-diplomacy/shinzo-abe-japan-nuclear-weapons-taiwan/; On the prospect of U.S.-Japan nuclear sharing, see Evan Braden Montgomery, Extended Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age: Geopolitics, Proliferation, and the Future of U.S. Security Commitments (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2016); and Evan Braden Montgomery, “Sources of Instability in the Second Nuclear Age: An American Perspective,” in Lawrence Rubin and Adam Stulberg, eds., The End of Strategic Stability? Nuclear Weapons and the Challenge of Regional Rivalries (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018).

40 Eric Edelman, Tyler Hacker, and Josh Chang, Arming America’s Allies: Historical Lessons for Implementing a Post-INF Treaty Missile Strategy (Washington, D.C.: CSBA, 2022), 23-29.

41 See Eric Heginbotham and Richard Samuels, "Vulnerable U.S. Alliances in Northeast Asia,” 170-171; and Evan Montgomery, Extended Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age, 33-35.

42 Matthew Kroenig, Deterring Chinese Strategic Attack: Grappling with the Implications of China’s Strategic Forces Buildup (Washington, D.C.: Atlantic Council, 2021), 17-20.