China: The Forgotten Nuclear Power

Brad Roberts, Robert A. Manning, and Ronald N. Montaperto

From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2000

Article preview: first 500 of 3,482 words total.

Summary:  Washington is leaving a crucial piece out of the nuclear puzzle. It will be China, not Russia or any rogue, whose nuclear policy will concern America most in the years ahead. The People's Republic has started to modernize its arsenal, and Western actions will help determine just what form China's force ultimately takes. Before rushing to deploy missile defenses, Washington should consider whether they would solve a problem or create one.

Brad Roberts is Fellow at the Institute for Defense Analyses. Robert A. Manning is C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director of Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Ronald N. Montaperto is Senior Research Professor at the National Defense University. The opinions expressed herein are their personal views.

EYES EAST

A decade after the end of the Cold War, the world faces the risk of new strategic instability. Policymakers in Washington, Beijing, and Moscow are moving toward decisions that may unintentionally increase nuclear dangers. The heart of the problem lies in insufficient attention to the intersection of three policy currents: American missile defenses, U.S.-Russian nuclear diplomacy, and Chinese nuclear modernization. Unless all three are given full consideration, American decisions in coming months could lead China to initiate a major buildup of its nuclear forces, increase Sino-Russian strategic cooperation, and jeopardize both efforts at arms reduction and the effectiveness of any American missile defenses that are eventually deployed.

A lingering bipolar mindset has left China the forgotten nuclear power. It is time that Washington turned its eyes to the East and came to grips with the fact that over the next decade it will likely be China, not Russia or any rogue, whose nuclear weapons policy will concern America most. The People's Republic has been modernizing its modest nuclear arsenal for 20 years and will continue to do so regardless of the actions of other nations. But external developments will influence the final contours of China's nuclear modernization program. In fact, Western actions have already had some effect, and not for the better. The Gulf War and the air war over Kosovo, for example, reinforced Chinese worries that precision-guided conventional weapons could destroy China's existing nuclear second-strike capability.

Such concerns about the erosion of China's nuclear deterrent have been largely dismissed by Americans, whose debates about national missile defense (NMD) have centered instead on the emerging dangers of small-scale missile launches from countries such as North Korea or Iran. Apart from questions of technological feasibility, the greatest obstacle to the deployment of such defenses has been thought to be the negative effects they might have on U.S.-Russian arms control agreements. Yet Washington seems determined to proceed with NMD whether or not it can find some way to overcome the current disagreement with Russia on modifying the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

Less often discussed is the fact that whatever Moscow's reaction will be, Beijing will almost certainly regard the plans for the deployment of NMD as a challenge to its own nuclear deterrent. As a result, Chinese decision-makers may even now have begun worst-case planning to offset what they perceive to be an emerging threat. It is high time, therefore, to take a close look at China's current strategic posture, nuclear doctrine, and arms control strategy.

THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY

Examining China's strategic posture poses a major challenge, because China is quite deliberately the least transparent of the acknowledged nuclear powers. The American government keeps its own assessments of China's arsenal tightly classified, and so discussion must proceed on the basis of the limited data available.

China exploded its first nuclear device in October 1964, and its first hydrogen bomb shortly thereafter. All told, China has conducted 45 nuclear weapons tests in 33 years -- a number identical to ...

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